Tuesday, April 6, 2010

It's Ok to be hungry

This post is inspired by Amy who commented that she has learned it is OK to be hungry.

That is a really powerful statement and one of the reasons why I have had so many good transformations so far living the Fast 5 Lifestyle.

It is OK to be hungry. In Dr. Herring's book he touches on this a bit.



"Nature is not stupid. If hunger alone were to incapacitate a hunter by being excessively distracting or intolerable, then the hunter would be unable to hunt and the species would have died off long ago. We're built with more resilience than that."
"The Fast-5 approach is easier than it sounds because of an amazing and surprising characteristic of hunger: given adequate adjustment, eating nothing during the daily 19-hour fasting period can be far easier than eating little. Hunger becomes a milder, more distant sensation instead of a behavior-controlling drive."

In my case, the hunger pains were quite severe before I started Fast-5. Now, looking back on it, I think that I was experiencing sugar withdrawals. Not just sugar from sweets but from carbs and other processed foods. I ate so much of it so often that my body was addicted to the sugar and SCREAMED out for more when there was even a small break in the feedings.

Now I have kicked that habit (not to say that I have stopped eating sweets or carbs, but just much less because of fasting) and my body understands that there is no need to scream. It will survive. Hunger will not kill it. It will get the nutrients it needs and in the mean time there is plenty of food to eat, it is just stored on its butt right now waiting to be burned rather than on a plate. Same difference to my body. To it, energy is energy, whether it is in the form of a cheeseburger or a bunch of fat on my mid section...

Even if I do feel hunger, I know that it is nothing to fear, it is not the end of the world. It will pass, I will be able to function and soon I can eat whatever my hungry stomach desires.

Yes, it is OK to be hungry!

2 comments:

  1. You said it so well!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Amen!! It's okay to be hungry. I'm sad to say I haven't felt true hunger this past week and am looking forward to that hunger feeling tomorrow. Great post!

    ReplyDelete

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