Listening to and Learning From Hunger
With the changing of the seasons comes an opportunity for any behavioral change that realign you with your goals. Perhaps this spring you’re inspired to improve your endurance and feel more energized in your body. Maybe you’re motivated to improve physical strength, flexibility, and weight management.
When it comes to reaching your health and wellness goals, understanding hunger is a vital resource. In her TED Talk, “Your Hunger is the Key to Understanding your Unmet Needs” Physician Nutrition Expert, Dr. Youdim explores the many forms of hunger and how they offer an opportunity to explore your true desire.
“Our hunger represents our unmet emotional and spiritual needs. We hunger for connection and belonging, for validation and self compassion. When those hungers go unmet we experience difficult emotions like sadness, anger, boredom, and frustration, that we then soothe with smoking, drinking, overworking, shopping, gambling and yes, food. The science backs this up.”
When it comes to realigning your behaviors to support the achievement of your health goals, Dr. Youdim advises a prescription that’s available to all of us, anytime, anywhere.
“If our emotional hunger reveals itself as a physical hunger and our physical hunger masks our emotional hunger how in the world are we to tell these two apart? The answer is actually simple, but it is hard. It requires us to slow down. To pause and listen to our hunger.”
The power here is in the practice of mindfulness. To be an observer of ourselves and what we’re experiencing in the present moment.
According to Dr. Youdim, this practice can also be applied within the workday.
“Maybe you’re behind your desk all day in front of your computer and you’re tired and you need a break. So give yourself a break. Go out and get some fresh air. When you do this you’ll find that you’re more intentional about your hunger and about the way you eat.”
As the founder and CEO of a workday well-being company that specializes in taking wellness breaks within the day, I couldn’t be more thrilled about this advice.
So this spring, as you realign with your goals, empower yourself to adapt the practice of slowing down and pausing before acting. As you can see, it's the doctor's orders!