Five tips for honoring your cues
So maybe you have spent some of your life overthinking, judging, or even fearing hunger. Maybe nourishing your body has given you anxiety in the past, so to you hunger doesn’t exactly feel like a positive thing! Sometimes if you have abused or neglected your cues for years, it takes commitment to yourself to listen in and hear again. Here are some things you can do to begin to close the gap of distrust between you and your body.
1) COMMIT TO VIEWING HUNGER AS A CHANCE TO BUILD TRUST AND CONNECT.
If you tell yourself that hunger is bad, or that responding to hunger equals gaining weight or other fears, your body gets confused! Food is meant to be nourishment to our cells, and it is also meant to be enjoyed! The HOW behind our eating matters. When I had anxiety and fixation around my food, my digestion wasn’t happy because there was FEAR in my eating. What is your how? When you are being a friend to your body, you are trusting it knows what it needs. You can trust that when hunger arises, its communicating that it needs nourishment in order to thrive. Honor it promptly with compassion and notice how you start to feel more safe and connected to your body. It’s a chance to connect
2) SIMPLIFY IT
Toddlers eat intuitively because we were born with the ability to to honor our body’s inner wisdom. One day they may have tons of protein, and maybe the next way more fruit. One day they may eat more because they are very active, while the next maybe less because of longer naps. They aren’t freaking out about it! Somewhere along the way we learn to judge our body because of loud messaging from culture and media. The greatest gift you can give yourself on this journey is to transform your thoughts by bringing it back to that simple truth that we were all born with…YOUR BODY KNOWS BEST. You are an expert on YOU. Don’t overcomplicate it or obsess if your body is feeling it needs more protein, or maybe the next day craving more veggies. Just honor it! Don’t overthink it.
3) STRENGTHEN ATTUNEMENT
This may seem silly, but as you strengthen one body cue, your attunement to all gets stronger. It’s true! The next tine you feel really thirsty, honor it promptly! Don’t let work get in the way and push the cue down. If your body is communicating it needs a night in instead of being social for the 5th night in a row…honor it!! You don’t ignore needing to pee! You would have an accident! haha Same goes for hunger, when you push it, your body compensates in other ways that are hard on your blood sugar, stress hormones eat! Honor one cue…all are strengthened.
4) DITCH YOUR SNACKING RULES
If you have funny rules about not allowing yourself snacks, but then you get to lunch beyond starving, you aren’t serving yourself or honoring your cues. If you tell yourself in your thoughts that you can’t be trusted, then you’ll find yourself stuck in the negative habit loop of eating disconnected and eating the box of crackers to completion. When your body feels that you are going to deny it often, you may find your primal hunger takes over and you eat beyond what is comfortable for you. Your body is just trying to get fuel and feel safe! BUT when you honor those gentle cues with a simple little snack, you don’t find yourself in this habit loop! For example you may honor that with an apple and nut butter and feel balanced and good until lunch time. No big deal!
5) START YOUR DAY NOURISHED.
You may have adopted a mindset of skipping breakfast = less calories…which must be positive right? ..mmm not so much. If you start your day on coffee and no nourishment, you are running errands or doing work on adrenaline. Those stress hormones go up, and your ability to listen in and honor your cues in a gentle way for the rest of the day is more challenging! You may approach lunch grumpy, anxious, and low energy, and find that its hard to hear when your body has had enough. If you are not a breakfast person, start with something small like a smoothie or a berry bowl with some kind of protein in it. Try and nourish before coffee and watch the shift in your energy, mood, and attunement to cues the rest of the day!
xo, Joy