Natural Appetite Control?!
Does that sound like an oxymoron to you? A lot of people have been conditioned to believe their appetite is the biggest obstacle to managing their weight. After all, overeating, binge eating and mindless snacking are the most obvious behaviors that contribute to those extra pounds.
And in these challenging times, it can certainly feel like we have a willpower problem when it comes to food.
But your appetite is actually not the “problem”. By design, your body knows when to eat and when to stop. There exists a very intelligent system that governs our hunger and fullness signaling.
But if you are eating and living in ways that disrupts or disconnects you from those innate mechanisms, it can definitely feel like your appetite is the enemy.
Unfortunately, it’s this misguided perspective that the diet industry counts on to seduce you yet again with the latest magic bullet methods.
So before you decide that you need another restrictive diet, punishing exercise regimen to feel back “in control”, I invite you to shift your attention to the “root cause” of your unwanted eating habits and weight gain.
Consider the Top 6 Things that De-Rail Natural Appetite Control:
- Lack of Awareness – Learning to recognize your hunger and fullness signals is an essential weight management tool. Chronic dieting and auto-pilot living has created circumstances that make it difficult to decipher emotional hunger vs. true physical hunger. Slowing down, taking your attention within and practicing mindfulness with eating are the keys to lasting positive lifestyle change.
- Excess Refined Sugars and Processed Flour – Too much sugar or things in the body that turn to sugar de-regulates blood sugar balance and deprives the body of essential nutrients. Both disrupt the body’s satiety hormones and can cause you to feel hungry all the time. Eat whole, unprocessed, plant centered meals with high quality protein and fat to keep you naturally satisfied.
- Irregular / Erratic Meal Timing – Skipping meals, eating late at night, accommodating friends’ and family eating habits, constantly grazing throughout the day wreak havoc on blood sugar balance, metabolism and digestive function. Sticking to a consistent eating schedule boosts your fat burning and lowers hunger hormones.
- Chronic Unmanaged Stress – Unless you have tools to calm your mind such as conscious breathing, meditation or yoga, eating becomes the default for regulating your mood and emotions. Poorly managed stress, leads to elevated cortisol levels that stimulates your appetite.
- Lack of Regular Physical Activity – Beyond the obvious benefits of calorie burning, fairly vigorous physical activity has the effect of lowering appetite stimulating hormones and increasing satiety hormones.
- Poor Sleep – The hormones that regulate our appetite are directly tied to how well we sleep. Bottomline, lack of sleep will cause you to eat more and not more kale either – but you will hunger for specific types of foods, such as cookies, candy, and chips. To more easily manage your food habits and weight, it’s highly recommended that you sleep and wake up at the same time every day of the week.
