Be the Weight You Want - Part 3

In previous posts I’ve talked out the reasons why we are overweight:


1. Obsessive Eating

2. Emotional Eating

3. Faulty Programming

I’ve outlined the secrets of naturally thin people, the importance of drinking water (to identify whether you are really hungry or just thirsty) and how moving your body more will release endorphins (happy hormones) making you feel better about yourself.

Today, I want to give you the first two fundamentals of the weight loss programme (there are four in all).  It’s really simple (in fact, you may think it’s too simple!), but like I said in my first post, it has over a 70% success rate against a 9% success rate for regular ‘dieting’.  Again, this isn’t a diet, it’s a weight loss programme which will alter your pattern of eating forever – therefore, if you follow the instructions and continue to put them into practice every day, you won’t ever put any weight you lose back on again. 


So let’s get started...


Rule No 1 – Eat When You Are Hungry


When you starve yourself, your body goes into self protection mode (especially if it’s a pattern that you used to repeating ie when you yo-yo diet) and holds on tight to any food/fat reserves that it may have.  By doing this, you body is protecting your vital organs by holding on to as much fat as possible.  In fact, over time, it gets really good at leaching every bit of fat it can from your food to store in your fat cells.


Part of why naturally thin people are thin is because they never starve themselves and therefore, their body has no need to store more fat than is needed.  Make sense?

In addition to this, when we don’t starve our bodies, our metabolism speeds up as it’s not trying to conserve energy due to the lack of food (energy) we are putting in.

 

 

So what I want to you do is to only eat when you’re hungry.  So how do you identify when you are hungry?  Here’s a scale to help you:

1. Physically faint
2. Ravenous
3. Fairly hungry
4. Slightly hungry
5. Neutral
6. Pleasantly satisfied
7. Full
8. Stuffed
9. Bloated
10. Nauseous

True hunger is different from emotional hunger (which I discussed in Part 1) and before you eat anything, you should establish where you are currently on the hunger scale.  Give it a go now ... where are you on the hunger scale at the moment?

You should aim to stay between 3 and 7 at all times.  If you let yourself get to 1 or 2, you will undoubtedly overeat and your body with grab and hold on to those fat cells.  Eat when you’re at 8, 9 or 10 and you will obviously put weight on.

Try tuning into your body throughout the day and identify where you are on the hunger scale.  If you are at the lower end of the scale, have a drink before deciding to have something to eat and you may find that you are pushed further up the scale.  By recognising the feelings of hunger at their earlier stages you will be more in control of your eating.

Rule No 2 – Eat What You Want, Not What You Think You Should

As soon as you tell yourself that you can’t have something, you obsess over it and you upset the natural balance of your relationship with it.  That’s why there should be no ‘forbidden foods’.  I find that once my clients realise that they can have whatever they want, they actually don’t want it anymore!  The whole obsession with that food often disappears altogether. 

So, as long as you’re hungry (go back to the hunger scale) and follow the other Rules of this programme, you can throw out all your diet, low fat, low carb food and just buy food that you want.

From this day forward, nothing is off-limits to you.  As long as you are actually hungry ... EAT WHAT YOU WANT!

In my next post, I’ll give you the last two fundamentals of the programme, Eat Consciously and Stop Eating when you’re full.  Until then, try practicing and getting used to using Rules 1 and 2.  If you have any queries about either of these rules or anything else that I’ve written about, please let me know.

Have a wonderful day.

Jo