Is that real or fake hunger your’e feeding?
Have you like me battled with food obsessions, diets and then binging and overeating for what seems like your whole life?
From the moment you woke up in your less than heavenly body, food became the thought at the forefront of your mind. Constant questions of what you should eat, what should you avoid, what were you allowed to eat on this or that new diet that you were on.
Over the years food has no doubt become the Bain of your life. It’s taken over so much of your waking day you can feel somewhat like an addict wanting your next fix. Food rules and controls you and it’s not the other way around even although you’ve tried to control food many times it always seems to get the upper hand and hits you slap back right square in the face.
Have you experienced that you have succumbed to foods advances and before you knew it were diving into a bag on rapid movement automatic pilot until the bag was empty. Especially if that food choice was not on your latest diet sheet.
You know what you should be doing or so you thought, but just can’t do it.
When hunger rises up so fast and is so insatiable that nothing seems to satisfy it, that is when you know that there is a deeper meaning to this form of hunger.
Your heavenly body is sending you a message, Rising up from your insides, the soul comes up with a feeling that is impossible to resist the desire that you have to eat something and NOW.
Discovering that I was not actually hungry in the real sense of hunger helped me initially as I began to understand what real hunger felt like and how to distinguish it from other sensations in my gut. The body needs real hunger to release certain specific hormones like Leptin that are only triggered by hunger this hormone then activates the cells to go and seek out and use up the stored energy that the body has put to one side from when we overate. Accessing this was a great discovery and felt very different to the fake hunger I was frequently getting.
The biggest gift was unravelling what I was hungry for behind this fake feeling of hunger, in the sense of learning to listen to my body and not always head to the fridge to cover over that uncomfortable feeling I was experiencing.
You have been taught to avoid pain at all costs and even the slightly uncomfortable feelings such as being sad that you were not picked for the team, or were not invited to the party, got called names, lost the job or even didn’t get the boyfriend or girlfriend you wanted, will leave you feeling something you can’t fathom out or get over quickly, It leaves a mark and affects you and your reaction for years to come.
It’s not your fault that you did not know this, your caregivers were even worse at expressing feelings and so were unable to teach you about the true nature of your feelings and their sensations, and how they showed up in your body. They were a very different generation, one locked into the primary need for survival and raising a family.
This resulted in a gaping hole in your education and in your emotional centre, which has its home in your belly, this is where you have your gut instincts that are basically your feelings, that you can learn to know as your soul and your intuition talking to you.
Your heavenly body and especially your belly area is where you will first experience the sense your emotions as feelings, from the world and people around you. You are no doubt very sensitive and empathic as you know that you are a spirit having a human experience. These feelings that you detect will spiral in and out causing sensations that can feel for the unaware like being out of control. The gnawing deep empty feeling that you thought was hunger can be an uncomfortable jittery sensation. The only way you knew how to quell this rising nauseous feeling was to eat something.
Every time you feel even slightly jittery or don’t know what to do, the only thing that seemed plausible was filling up that vast empty space, so you get to feel something else instead, and numb that unpleasant feeling before it gots any worse.
The hunger you feel deep down in your belly is not for food, you’ve had more than enough already. But it has brilliantly shown you with that churning, gnawing, empty, unstable, wobbly feeling what you really need, want and what you are lacking the most. Your intuition and soul are guiding gently for you to listen to what you need more than food, and I bet you will not be surprised when you discover what it is exactly you were hungry for.
The magic is when you fulfil this need food becomes a non issue and less and less important taking up lass of the mental obsessive space it did.
Are you curious what you are really hungry for?
EXERCISE – The next time you get an attack of the jitters and feel uncomfortable in your body and belly feels empty ask yourself this :-
What would be more fulfilling that food right now?
What is it that would really fulfil me?
Who or what would make me feel safe?
What support do I need right now?
Think back and see what situation made you feel really jittery and uncomfortable? and if you can locate that feeling in your body.
I hope this was helpful and that you can start to distinguish the real from the fake hunger.
