Constant hunger: the struggle is real if you're trying to lose weight. But I do have a few "bytes" of good news from my 100 pound weight loss. It gets easier. When I was way overweight, my stomach was bigger and it required more food to fill it, or make it feel full, which is the real issue with hunger. When I am overweight, I don't "need" that much food. My stomach just thinks I do because it has expanded to accommodate the extra.
Hunger is a tricky feeling and can really derail weigh loss if we let it. So are cravings. They are baffling, misleading and false. Listen to the folks with morbid obesity on shows like "My 600-lb Life." They talk about hunger and cravings as if they are crippling and debilitating. They talk as if hunger MUST be satisfied immediately or they will die. Well, that's logical because a food addiction is like any other drug addiction, especially if you're addicted to sugar. You feel like you are in its grip, that food is the master and you are the slave. Hunger pangs can actually hurt!
But as with other drugs, that control is illusory. And hunger "pain" is doable. Yes Al-Anon says in the first step that we must recognize that we are powerless over people, places and things. But we are not powerless over ourselves. We CAN change. We can make changes that give us power over the things we've been slave to. With a food addiction, we can find ways to fill up that burn weight rather than adding it. We can control how much we eat, and so shrink our stomachs to normal sizes. We can eat to satisfy hunger and feel relatively full, rather overfilling our stomachs. After a while of doing this, the hunger pangs will lessen to a manageable level.
I lost 100 pounds and I can promise that if you are willing to let yourself feel a little hungry and just eat to live, rather than living to eat, you WILL shed obesity. Weight loss, even huge 100 pound weight loss, is very attainable! God's peace to you all, Love, mar
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