Ep 60: How I Did It Part 2: Over-Hunger
03/21/22 | 17:07 | Episode 60
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Do you ever feel like you can eat and eat and never really feel satisfied, and find it hard to stop because the food tastes so good? Or you’re just looking for that feeling of satisfaction and can’t seem to find it?
I used to be like that, too. Spoonfuls of pasta, mac n cheese, bread and butter, cheese and crackers… there was no off switch until I was overstuffed. I could pick at food and eat and eat for days, never really feeling satisfied.
I couldn’t figure out why I was insatiable– always had been– until I learned about a concept called over hunger which is exactly what I’m talking about on the show today.
Overhunger is the result of your body’s biochemical reaction to WHAT you’re eating on a regular basis. It’s the actual biochemistry that occurs after eating certain foods.
When we eat, our bodies respond by releasing a cocktail of hormones that do their job to convert your food for immediate fuel, store what you don’t need right now for later use, and also send out reward signals to encourage you to repeat this action of eating in the future so you don’t starve to death. These hormones also tell you when to start eating and when to stop. This is good stuff! This is what our body is DESIGNED to do.
But what happens in our modern world when we eff with our food production so much (hello heavily processed foods!!) it throws our bodies out of whack, messing with our hunger and satiety signals AND increasing our hunger drive overall. This is exactly what I experienced for pretty much my whole life, until I figured out how to undo it.
When we eat any food, our pancreas releases a hormone called insulin.
Insulin is sometimes called the storage hormone, and it’s job is to use the glucose that you just got from whatever food you ate, for energy. Any excess glucose/energy gets moved into storage for future use (aka fat).
What’s important to understand about insulin is that it not only stores fuel for later use in the form of fat, but it also increases our hunger drive, which means that the more insulin your body is producing, the hungrier you’ll be.
This matters because processed foods, which I think of as concentrated foods (explain), give us a concentrated insulin response, so to speak. Meaning, when we eat concentrated, processed foods, our bodies produce even more insulin. This, in turn, keeps us hungry.
The hungrier you are, the more you’ll eat– particularly, the more you’ll eat of the processed foods, perpetuating the cycle of hunger!
This is over hunger and this is exactly what I had been experiencing for pretty much my whole life. Essentially, processed foods cause hormonal dysregulation in my body– and luckily that problem can be solved.
So what was the solution?
The solution was to reduce my consumption of processed foods so that my body could naturally regulate itself back to its natural state.
Eliminating over-hunger does not mean eliminating processed foods completely. But how much you eat in order to get the RESULT of eliminating over-hunger is going to be different for everyone.
In my 90 Days to Food Freedom program I teach a four-step method rooted in neuroscience and psychology that walks them through the process of figuring this out in a way that feels GOOD.
When you reduce your hunger to its natural state you can live at your natural weight.
The way you will know if you’ve reduced enough is that you will be less hungry around the clock.
But here’s a word of caution: If you find yourself using willpower and discipline (both of which suck) I promise you you’re doing it wrong. You’re falling into the diet mentality trap and I guarantee you you won’t stick with it. It will be painful.
When my clients reduce processed foods they are usually floored at how infrequently they feel hunger.
If you are ready for a personalized approach to figuring out how you, too, can reduce your hunger levels to natural states like I did, head over to liapinelli.com and book a coffee chat with me so we can see if my 90 Days to Food Freedom is right for you.
In this episode we talked about how processed foods cause hormonal dysregulation in our bodies, resulting in over-hunger. We also discussed that reducing processed foods is the answer to reducing hunger, and that everyone’s threshold for that will be different.
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Transcript
Do you ever feel like you can eat and eat and never really feel satisfied, and find it hard to stop because the food tastes so good? Or you’re just looking for that feeling of satisfaction and can’t seem to find it?
I used to be like that, too. Spoonfuls of pasta, mac n cheese, bread and butter, cheese and crackers… there was no off switch until I was overstuffed. I could pick at food and eat and eat for days, never really feeling satisfied.
I’d always been the girl with a big appetite. I could eat as much as my 6’7 husband and not feel a thing physically.
I couldn’t figure out why I was insatiable– always had been– until I learned about a concept called over hunger which is exactly what I’m talking about on the show today.
On the show last week I told you all about the first step in my journey to losing 30 lbs without dieting. I shared with you how I learned about the Hunger Scale and how I used it to eat only when I was hungry and stop when I was full.
This was a total game changer for me, but it didn’t help me with overhunger. I would eat two pieces of whole grain toast with two fried eggs and half of an avocado everyday for breakfast and STILL be hungry two hours later… it was disruptive to my life! I didn’t want to be hungry two hours later.
What I was experiencing was over hunger, which is the feeling of not finding satisfaction despite eating lots of food. It also can present as being hungrier than other people, and more frequently.
If you experience this, too, here’s what I want you to know: you're not imagining it. You’re not broken, lacking willpower or discipline, despite what you’ve been telling yourself all these years.
I used to tell myself that same shit– if I just had more discipline, if I just had more self-control… but all of that is BULLSHIT and here’s why.
Overhunger is the result of your body’s biochemical reaction to WHAT you’re eating on a regular basis. It’s the actual biochemistry that occurs after eating certain foods.
When we eat, our bodies respond by releasing a cocktail of hormones that do their job to convert your food for immediate fuel, store what you don’t need right now for later use, and also send out reward signals to encourage you to repeat this action of eating in the future so you don’t starve to death. These hormones also tell you when to start eating and when to stop. This is good stuff! This is what our body is DESIGNED to do.
But what happens in our modern world when we eff with our food production so much (hello heavily processed foods!!) it throws our bodies out of whack, messing with our hunger and satiety signals AND increasing our hunger drive overall. This is exactly what I experienced for pretty much my whole life, until I figured out how to undo it.
Now, before I dive into HOW it throws our bodies out of whack, let me just say that you need not worry, I’m not going to demonize processed foods here. I am not on board with labeling any foods as “bad”. The assignment of morality to foods is problematic on many levels, particularly because the term “bad” in and of itself is a judgment, so not only are we judging the food but we are judging those who eat those foods– including ourselves. We become bad when we eat them. People say this all the time “I’m so bad– I ate the cake.” We equate the morality of the food with the morality of ourselves which is total BS. So let’s not do that.
Instead of using the term “bad” food, I choose to label food as good, better, or best. Nothing else. The way I decide which category a food fits into is determined by its nutrient density. High nutrient foods such as dark leafy greens or blueberries go in the best category, medium nutrient foods such as a super burrito with a big tortilla, rice, beans, meat, sour cream, cheese, and guacamole go in the better category, and low nutrient foods such as a McDonald’s Happy Meal go in the good category.
Now that we have that established, let’s return to how processed foods throw our bodies out of whack by dysregulating our hunger and satiety signals AND increasing our hunger drive.
When we eat any food, our pancreas releases a hormone called insulin.
Insulin is sometimes called the storage hormone, and it’s job is to use the glucose that you just got from whatever food you ate, for energy. Any excess glucose/energy gets moved into storage for future use (aka fat).
Now first can we just marvel at the efficiency of our amazing bodies! Hallelujah that our bodies are smart enough to store fuel on our bodies! (famine)
What’s important to understand about insulin is that it not only stores fuel for later use in the form of fat, but it also increases our hunger drive, which means that the more insulin your body is producing, the hungrier you’ll be.
This matters because processed foods, which I think of as concentrated foods (explain), give us a concentrated insulin response, so to speak. Meaning, when we eat concentrated, processed foods, our bodies produce even more insulin. This, in turn, keeps us hungry.
In other words, for some people like me– and maybe you– the more processed foods we eat, the more insulin we have pumping in our bodies, the hungrier we will be.
The hungrier you are, the more you’ll eat– particularly, the more you’ll eat of the processed foods, perpetuating the cycle of hunger!
This is over hunger and this is exactly what I had been experiencing for pretty much my whole life. Essentially, processed foods cause hormonal dysregulation in my body– and luckily that problem can be solved.
So what was the solution?
The solution was to reduce my consumption of processed foods so that my body could naturally regulate itself back to its natural state.
But wait!! I’m Italian- American!! I have to eat pasta or I’ll be disowned!! A life without processed foods such as bread or my mama’s pasta sounds like a death sentence!
Well the good news is that reduction does NOT mean elimination.
Eliminating over-hunger does not mean eliminating processed foods completely. But how much you eat in order to get the RESULT of eliminating over-hunger is going to be different for everyone.
In my 90 Days to Food Freedom program I teach a four-step method rooted in neuroscience and psychology that walks them through the process of figuring this out in a way that feels GOOD.
And that is the most important thing I can impart to you today– when you eliminate overhunger you should feel GOOD– you should feel better than you feel now, not worse. And that is the motivator– feeling GOOD– that will sustain this as a lifestyle change and not a diet.
You and I know that if you tell yourself “I can’t eat processed foods.” you’re going to feel like shit.
Don’t do that.
You’re a grown ass woman. You can eat whatever the eff you want. But do you really WANT to eat something that is going to keep you hungry constantly?
I don’t.
But I also don’t want to eliminate it either so that’s why I did the work to figure out the perfect way to eat for my body.
And I can help you figure that out too.
I encourage you to play with your processed food intake and allow yourself to be CURIOUS about how it impacts your hunger levels. This is NOT a diet, and the purpose is NOT weight loss– instead it is a method of eradicating overhunger in your life. Weight loss is the byproduct.
When you reduce your hunger to its natural state you can live at your natural weight.
The way you will know if you’ve reduced enough is that you will be less hungry around the clock.
But here’s a word of caution: If you find yourself using willpower and discipline (both of which suck) I promise you you’re doing it wrong. You’re falling into the diet mentality trap and I guarantee you you won’t stick with it. It will be painful.
When my clients reduce processed foods they are usually floored at how infrequently they feel hunger.
If you are ready for a personalized approach to figuring out how you, too, can reduce your hunger levels to natural states like I did, head over to liapinelli.com and book a coffee chat with me so we can see if my 90 Days to Food Freedom is right for you.
In this episode we talked about how processed foods cause hormonal dysregulation in our bodies, resulting in over-hunger. We also discussed that reducing processed foods is the answer to reducing hunger, and that everyone’s threshold for that will be different.
