Understanding Eating – Be the Solution, not the Problem

The Try Freedom Method – returning appetites to normal.

                                                                                            

Eating isn’t a behaviour to be “controlled”, it’s an instinct to be nurtured.

We all have an “appetite”. This is the amount, or kind, of food we need to eat to keep feeling mentally ok.

Our appetite must be met, otherwise we don’t feel mentally okay. This “not-okayness” feels a bit like anxiety, a sense of an “unmet need” or feeling “out-of-sorts” – and that we need to eat to keep us feeling mentally alright.

We cannot live well with an unmet, unsatisfied appetite. In the end, we feel so awful that we start to do other things to try and take away the mental discomfort e.g. drinking alcohol to soothe, self-criticism (telling ourselves to “get a grip”), over-exercising to distract us, or even develop an eating disorder).

The problem is some people have an abnormally large appetite. But, whatever the size of the appetite, it must still be met so we are able to feel okay enough to be able to function properly.

Question: But where did these larger appetites come from?

Did they come from a person’s greed? NO!

Did they come from a person’s lack of willpower? NO!

Some other unmentionable character flaw? NO!

Answer: A large appetite comes from being taught you must control your eating (usually to control weight for one reason or another).

 

Your Large Appetite isn’t your Fault.

This happened to you as a child.

When you were taught to control your eating yourself (usually as a matter of urgency) you lost what is called your “eating instinct”.

This is what the eating instinct is:

• It makes you only want to with genuine physical hunger.
• It makes you only want to eat the types of foods your body needs for nourishment.
• It makes you only want to eat just the right amount of food to meet your body’s energy demands.
• It means you don’t pay any attention (or effort) to your eating (even though you perceive you are).
• It means you eat normally and feel TOTALLY SATISFIED with this eating and always feel okay and it would never occur to you to seek to eat more, or differently than this.

 

Living Without the Eating Instinct

Without the eating instinct to effortlessly and internally control your appetite, there is nothing to stop you eating all the time, eating any food types, and eating any amount of food. You are the only resource available to try and keep the eating down to a “normal level”. Trying to live without this inner instinct to control your eating for you means you are dependent on willpower to try and set goals as reasons to eat less than you need to. You also will make up rules to help you curb your appetite.

Living this way is a downward cycle into a larger and larger appetite. You can never control an artificial appetite using willpower.

 

Who are the Willpower Champions?

This means those without the eating instinct and so struggle to control their eating are the ones who use willpower with eating. The more they try, the larger their appetite becomes. Those with the eating instinct do not use any willpower as they can only follow their instinct and naturally eat normally.

 

Discomfort becomes the eating “driver”

When you aren’t able to let your eating control itself internally for you, you need something as your eating “driver”. The eating driver ends up being the mental discomfort that are you feel. Whenever you feel discomfort, your appetite makes you crave. This is most unfortunate because, when you try and live like this there are many sources of mental discomfort affecting you.

You feel mental discomfort when you:

• use willpower (and not instinct) to control your eating.
• aren’t eating as per your genuine appetite i.e. when you are depriving yourself.
• all the Deprivation you have inflicted on yourself has accumulated in your brain and is starts to feel unbearable.
• you are self-critical (and take others’ criticism to heart). This also causes you a lot of mental discomfort.
• you don’t get genuine eating satisfaction (because you are restricting your genuine appetite) and this feels uncomfortable in your brain also.
• You become mentally exhausted, so the normal stresses of life feel so much worse to you.

This is a hell of a lot of mental discomfort and this is why your appetite is so large (remember discomfort is your eating driver).

 

Physical Hunger Tips You Over the Edge

Much of the time you are also physically hungry too. With all that mental discomfort, you can’t feel physical hunger (and even if you could your eating would still be driven by discomfort and not actual hunger). Physical hunger is a huge eating driver and this will magnify the already huge psychological drive you have to eat and makes is DOUBLY IMPOSSIBLE to control your eating.

The longer this goes on, the more discomfort your brain produces and so the more your appetite grows.

How large is your appetite now?

Is this your fault? (p.s. clue: NO!)

 

If any of the above rings any bells with you, please get in touch for a free, without-obligation consultation.

Love,

Alison

Alison Hall is an Intuitive Eating counsellor and founder of Try Freedom

There are now over 150 studies on Intuitive Eating showing benefit.

There is also a plethora of evidence of the wider topics of Interoceptive Awareness, Food Restriction/Dieting/Binge Eating/Inefficacy Harm from Weight Loss / Reactance Theory. Click below to see the science:

• Appetite Effects of Restricted Eating Restricting the eating leads to appetite increase.
• Inefficacy And Harm From Weight Loss Interventions Weight loss programmes fail and cause harm.
• Interoceptive Awareness Being aware and responding automatically to your body’s signals.
• Intuitive Eating There are now over 150 studies on Intuitive Eating showing benefit.
• Reactance Theory Restricting the eating leads to discomfort which drives the eating.