Ep 59: How I Did It Part 1: Eat Only When Hungry
03/14/22 | 23:18 | Episode 59
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Audible | Amazon | iHeart
This episode is the first in a multi part series where I’m going to share with you HOW I actually achieved food freedom, what I actually did that has allowed me to lose 30 lbs. And keep it off for over four years at the time of this recording.
Here’s what you need to know:
Dieting causes metabolic dysfunction which screws with our hunger and satiety hormones, resulting in chronic overeating and yo-yo dieting.
You can recalibrate those hunger and satiety hormones by eating only when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re not.
You can use the hunger scale to help you do that, and you can learn more by taking my free 17-min training at liapinelli.com
And remember, I’m here to help! Let’s hop on a call so that you, too, can start losing weight without dieting.
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Transcript
Recently on the podcast I shared my transformation story– the story of how I went from a chronic yo-yo dieter to someone who has found food freedom.
I shared with you that after years– decades, actually-- of living in the hamster wheel of overeating and dieting I stumbled upon a tool that started me not only on a totally new kind of weight loss journey, but has led me to a life that is free of dieting where I live at my natural weight with minimal effort.
That tool, btw, allowed me to drop 7 lbs. Without even trying and I teach it for free over at liapinelli.com. You can go get started right now.
Today’s podcast is the first in a multi part series where I’m going to share with you HOW I actually achieved food freedom, what I actually did that has allowed me to lose 30 lbs. And keep it off for over four years at the time of this recording.
Let’s start at the beginning, when I learned how to eat only when I was hungry and stop when I was full.
It all started when I was listening to a podcast that was talking about the concept of a hunger scale.
The idea was this:
When we diet, we screw up our natural hunger and satiety levels.
Think about it, when you’re on a diet you are depriving your body of calories in order to lose weight, right– eat less, move more idea. That puts our bodies into what is sometimes called “starvation” mode, meaning our bodies freak out when there isn’t enough food. It doesn’t know that there is, in fact, enough food, it’s just that we are choosing not to eat it in an effort to lose some weight.
So our metabolism slows down in an effort to keep our fuel stores high– in other words, to keep us fat.
I like to use the example of a storage house full of firewood. If each day it receives 2000 logs of wood and it burns 1500 of that, then mathematically it’s all good. At that rate there will be a surplus for the winter. But if all of the sudden the deliveries are reduced to 1000 logs, management isn’t going to tolerate burning that wood at a rate of 1500– that would result in a dangerous deficit– so it slows the burning down to 1000 or less.
Our bodies manage energy in the same way.
This is called a set-point and it basically says that our bodies have built in thermostats that are designed to keep us a weight that can fend off times of famine. It has only been in recent history, and in particularly privileged communities, that we no longer have to worry about the threat of famine. But our biology doesn’t know that. That is why it is, in fact, easier to gain weight than to lose it– our bodies are designed to hold on to it.
This is why caloric restriction doesn’t work in the long term– because like a thermostat, when you open the window it is just going to kick the heat on even higher to preserve the set point.
Let me give you an example: if your body weighs 180 pounds like mine used to, and you want to lose 30 lbs.you might start counting calories, limiting yourself to, say, 1200 per day. Just like that wood storage house, your body is going to expertly reduce the amount of calories it is willing to burn by slowing down your metabolism to keep you at a “safe” (i.e. 180, or maybe 175) weight.
Same with the thermostat analogy– window.
For so many of us this causes us to get frustrated and angry with our bodies– when really they are working so hard to keep us alive!
But I don’t care, you say! I want to lose 30 lbs.!!
OK, don’t worry, I’m going to get to it, but first it is so important to understand why caloric restriction doesn’t work– because your body will slow your metabolism to keep you plump and pretty. PLUS, equally as important, caloric restriction encourages binge eating at some point.
Fall of the wagon, case of the Eff its, call it what you want but I’ve never met anyone who was counting and restricting calories who didn’t restrict and binge with frequency, totally sabotaging weight loss results.
Not to mention, because your body already got the signal that you’re into starving it, when you do have a binge there is evidence to show that your body holds on to that even more tightly than it would had you not been dieting at all. This is known as metabolic dysfunction, when your metabolism is dysregulated due to effing with it all the time.
Tack onto that repeating this pattern for years and years, for some of us from a very young age, and you can see how this would result in higher weights and more struggle to lose than had we never dieted in the first place.
But that isn’t useful now, because if you’re listening to this podcast you likely HAVE dieted a bunch. Not to worry, we can undo this madness together.
Here’s how.
The first thing you MUST do is QUIT COUNTING CALORIES, if you’re doing that. It’s not only a waste of your time but also it doesn’t work and is actually making things worse, not better.
In fact, counting anything isn’t sustainable as it is inherently deprivation based– and when we deprive we binge, remember? So don’t do it. Stop counting calories, carbs, points, all of it.
This is usually where people get freaked out– but Lia, if I stop, I will eat myself to death! I will grow to 500 lbs. And won’t be able to leave my house!!-- I wish I could say I’m exaggerating, but the fear is real– we worry that we will be out of control with food.
Instead of counting, we are going to practice eating only when we are hungry and stopping when we are full.
NOTE: this is the FIRST step, not the only step.
But trust me and start here. This is exactly where I started, and where all of my clients started, too.
How do you do that? How do you eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not.
Here’s how:
First, you must let yourself get hungry.
I know we’re scared of that. We’ve been socialized out to fear ourselves…
Many of us don’t even know what hunger feels like so I’m going to help you out here.
Hunger feels like a growl in your tummy, or a little movement there.
Or maybe you feel a little light headed or foggy.
That is hunger.
It might not be until 11am! Don’t panic.
We’ve been socialized to ignore our hunger and eat at certain times of day– this is not helpful at this point and causes that metabolic dysfunction I was referring to earlier.
I want you to eat at the first whisper of hunger– don’t wait until you’re overly hungry!
While your eating, pay close attention to how the hunger you felt in your belly changes as you eat.
Go slowly and mindfully so that you can feel as soon as you get to the first whisper of satiety. This is the point when you’re no longer hungry.
Think of this as a scale of -10 to +10 with…
You want to eat when you’re at a -2, not -8, and stop at a +2, not 8.
This might feel alarming at first because our brains are so used to overeating, so we might panic with worry that we will get hungry in no time.
And that’s OK, because as soon as you hit a -2 again, eat again.
Share example of viet spring roll.
You may want to choose to start this on a weekend so that you have some flexibility.
I’ve had clients lose 20 lbs. Using just this one tool.
The trick is to eat only when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not. But you also must give yourself permission to eat as soon as you’re hungry again for it to work, or else you’ll overeat.
What you’re doing here is your awakening and reactivating crucial hormones that regulate hunger and satiety, called Ghrelin and Leptin, that have long gone dormant due to dieting.
Ghrelin is responsible for signaling that it’s time to eat, but because in our modern world we eat so often when we aren’t hungry (because it “sounds” good, or because it lunch time, or because we’ve had a hard day, or because the cookies in the break room are too hard to resist) we don’t give our bodies a chance to produce it.
Leptin is the hormone that is released to signal that it is time to STOP eating. And if Leptin is triggered in response to ghrelin… if your body isn’t releasing ghrelin, it’s going to be out of whack with leptin which signals that it’s time to stop.
This is a simplified version of the science, but it’s really all you need to understand in order to get results.
Try this for a few weeks and see what happens. Eat only when you’re hungry and stop when you’re not.
If you want to go more in depth with this tool, check out my free 17-minute training at liapinelli.com
And tune in next time for part two where I’ll be talking about how I made further changes that impacted my hormonal response to food, resulting in even more weight loss.
Let’s Recap:
Dieting causes metabolic dysfunction which screws with our hunger and satiety hormones, resulting in chronic overeating and yo-yo dieting.
You can recalibrate those hunger and satiety hormones by eating only when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re not.
You can use the hunger scale to help you do that, and you can learn more by taking my free 17-min training at liapinelli.com
And remember, I’m here to help! Let’s hop on a call so that you, too, can start losing weight without dieting.