Healthy Bodies Get Hungry

I’m shocked at how often women begin an exercise and nutrition program and complain because they’re eating too much. They fear that by eating (by healthy standards) reasonable amounts of good, clean food makes them feel bloated. They worry that eating “too much” will make them fat.

Now Fun Girls know that healthy bodies get hungry. That when you have a body that never feels hungry it’s because your metabolism is as slow as Grandma driving home from church. And slow metabolisms are NOT good. In fact, the problem isn’t eating too much. The problem is a broken metabolism.

Yep, I said broken. Now that’s no scientific term, but it adequately describes what’s going on. If a woman goes from eating around 1200 calories a day (most of which I can guarantee you come from 100-Calorie Snacks and other processed crap like that) to eating 1500 – 1800 calories of whole, nutritious food, spaced out into three solid meals and two snacks (all filled with life-giving fruits and veggies) and adds a solid exercise program, yet still feels bloated and fat, it’s because her metabolism is way out of whack (probably from yo-yo dieting) and needs to be reset.

The problem is eating is more mental for many women than it is physical. Most women have hang ups from high school, or even further back, about eating in public, eating in front of boys/men, eating at certain times of day, what they eat… and on and on and on. And chances are, those women are still carrying around something somebody said at one time or another that made them feel fat. (Girls, we all have some comment that some mean girl, careless boy, oblivious parent, idiot coach, or should-be-barred-from-teaching teacher said. We can either let the opinion of some jerk define us, or we can pull up our big girl panties and move on.)

So women continue to wrongly believe that the only way to lose weight is to starve themselves… or more truthfully, eat nothing all day long until dinner, and then scarf everything in the house in such a fury that the cat high-tails it outside thinking he might be next. It’s delusional – “I can’t eat like a normal person or I’ll get fat.” It’s like they pride themselves on not feeling hungry most of the day, until the hunger becomes their lord and master.

Hate to break it to you, honey, but the way you’re doin’ it made you fat. As the good Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

Here’s the first clue that exercise and eating well works – you get HUNGRY throughout the day! However, the key to good eating is to plan your snacks so that you never get that starving-kind-of-hungry. Hunger is a biological cue that your metabolism is working. Starving is a feeling of being out of control.

So, if you’re exercising daily, eating well, and feel a little bit hungry every now and then… yay! Good for you! That means your body is healthy and balancing it’s energy intake and output in an optimal manner. (And you should answer those hunger pangs with planned snacks or a balanced meal, eaten at a table).

However, if you still allow yourself to get to the starving point, that’s no good at all. I don’t care what kind of will power you think you have, no red-blooded woman can fight off the urge for a cheeseburger, fries, and chocolate, when her miserable, fat, deprived body is shouting for calories. It’s biologically impossible (I know, I’ve tried!) And when you take in no food all day long, you’re not only setting yourself up for uncontrollable starvation later on, but your also teaching your body that food sources are unreliable so it best store as much FAT as possible.

Not good, girl! So here’s how you fix it. Eat 3 meals daily (yes, like your momma said, breakfast is the most important meal of the day) and two healthy snacks before and after lunch. And remember that you eat sometimes before you’re hungry, because that’s what you do to fend off hunger. (It’s a matter of treating your body well.) Get at least five servings of fruits and veggies (meaning every meal and snack will have at least one) and eat lean proteins and whole grains. And for God sakes, exercise. Bodies ripe with muscle need food, allowing you to eat way more than you thought you could. Bodies gushy with inactive fat don’t demand calories, and when they get them, they just add to the gush.

When you’re eating appropriately and exercising, you’ll find that you can trust your hunger cues… and feed them well!