Ep. 76 Overhunger Explained

 Hi, and welcome to the mindful shape podcast. I'm Paula Parker and I'm a life and weight loss coach right now. It is so gorgeous out. So it's February and that's what I love about living in Victoria. We get such an early spring. So it's like sunny and it's even starting to warm up a little bit. And it's so different from where I grew up in the Rocky mountains, which pretty much had winter.

Eight months of the year. It was very brown in the winter, unlike here. So, and I can also hear if you, I don't know if the podcast probably doesn't pick it up, but I can hear my husband and my daughter, who's now six months, Rhea six months. And she's like laughing. She's at that stage where she's like laughing and giggling.

And it's Super cute. So I might be a little distracted as I record this. But I mean, that's awesome, right? That's exactly what you want to hear. Okay. And the last thing I just wanted to mention quickly before I get into this episode is that I do have a few spots for private coaching right now. So if you are keen on just learning what.

Private coaching is like and what's involved. And if it's a right fit for you, then I encourage you to reach out to me. You can just sign up on my wait list on my website at mindful shape. com. And that way I can contact you and we can just chat about it and see if it's the right next step for you or not.

Okay, let's talk about overhunger. When we are trying to release the weight and very importantly, keep it off permanently, we need to solve for the reasons that the weight came on in the first place rather than simply focusing on getting the weight off in whatever means necessary, which we've all been there, done that.

When we're in overweight bodies, and it's a struggle to release the weight and keep off those pounds. So say we, maybe you can release five pounds, but then we gain it right back. It means there's an over desire for food. So over desire means overweight body. What you want is a natural desire for food.

Which means you will have a natural weight. Part of what creates an over desire for food is over hunger. And that's what I'm going to focus on today. Just like there is natural desire. There is natural hunger, which is normal and not an emergency. Everyone gets hungry every day of their life. You will get hungry at some point, likely more than once a day, every day.

For the rest of your life. It's not a problem. It's not something to be feared. It's not a problem to be solved. It's not an emergency, so you can learn how to befriend that kind of hunger so that you can allow it and allow your body to, instead of using glucose and using food as fuel, it will of course use that when you eat, but When you allow hunger, you will also allow your body to use its fat stores and release your weight. 

It can be infuriating to be trying to allow cravings constantly when, you know, you've got a lot going on. So life is complicated, right? As, as women in particular, you're doing a lot of mental labor. Probably have a to do list in your head.  It has a million things on it. And you're likely doing things like keeping track of appointments, maybe for yourself or for the kids, or you have that in your mind, like, Oh, I know I have to book something.

I haven't done it yet. You're thinking about. So, you know, when garbage day is recycling day, those emails you haven't responded to, or even things like, you know, probably right now, how many eggs are in the fridge or how much milk is left, right? These are just things that like we are mentally keeping track of because we're managing our lives or managing typically the household.

You do not need food and weight loss and intense cravings added to your stress bucket, right? I love that expression stress bucket. It's like we have this bucket and it's filled with stress You don't not need to add to that bucket So the first thing we need to do is to make sure that we're addressing any over hunger that you're having Okay, so how do you know if you have it?

You may have over hunger if you often feel hangry Intense, like anger when you're hungry, feel like you can't get enough food when you're eating. So if you're at a meal and you're, you consider yourself kind of like a volume eater, then that could be a sign. If you feel like you eat a meal and then within two to three hours, you're hungry again.

It's a sign of overhunger. If you have cravings for sugar or simple carbohydrates like bread, pasta, baked goods, cinnamon buns, things like that, crackers or cereal, it's another sign. And then lastly, if you have cravings for sugar immediately after a meal, that's just a sign that there's some overhunger happening.

The good news is that we can totally solve for all of that and bring your overhunger down to a natural level and get rid of those cravings. So first. What is creating all of this? What, what creates overhunger? There's two main causes of overhunger. One is a rollercoaster of blood glucose. That's where you see big spikes and then crashes.

And then the second thing is hormones. So I'm not a doctor, as you know. So I'm not going to go into the weeds on this stuff. It's not my strength, quite honestly, nor do I think I really need it to help you. I'm only going to share with you what I think will make a practical difference. So first thing is.

blood glucose rollercoaster. When you eat, your blood glucose goes up and then it comes back down. That's natural. That's normal. But when it spikes, it comes down really hard. So when it's crashing, you are going to have cravings, high desire. For sugar and flour, like simple carbs, even if you were to look at a picture of something like a picture of a bowl of cereal or a cookie on a cardboard box, this is cardboard that you're looking at, right?

Your brain is going to start firing with dopamine.  That image will look much more interesting to you. Then if your blood glucose was steady and stable, in which case you wouldn't feel so much urgency when you see that image or even just have a thought about highly palatable food like cereal or cookies or what have you. 

So if you're having sugar cravings after your meal, this is likely what's happening, right? I have a big spike and then a crash.  Let's talk about hormones.  There are a couple of reasons that you keep eating, particularly sugar and flour or any highly palatable food, even when you start to feel physically full or you want to stop, but you feel like you're compelled with desire to keep eating.

The first one is dopamine, which is going to ignite those pleasure centers in your brain and say, this is great. We need lots of this. We need to do more of this. It's that drive to do more. I have a whole podcast on dopamine, which I encourage you to check out. It's number 40 called dopamine and weight loss. 

The other hormone that can be out of balance is leptin. Leptin is triggered as we eat and when its levels are high, we feel full. and satiated and naturally want to stop eating. Of course, you know, sometimes we ignore that signal, but that's another topic for another day. Okay. And then of course there's ghrelin, which is the hormone that tells you that you're hungry.

So the release of ghrelin is tied to your circadian rhythm, which is why intermittent fasting can feel so hard in the beginning. Your body gets used to eating at 7am. So at 645am, it starts producing ghrelin. If you answer with food, it will keep up that rhythm and keep producing ghrelin at that time. If you don't, you're going to, if you don't answer it with food, you're going to feel very hungry because you'll have all that ghrelin.

So we need to work with these hormones so that you're not so hungry all the time and you feel fuller, you're satiated sooner while you eat so that you don't overeat.  So let's talk about what you can start doing today to level out your blood glucose and work with your hormones so that you don't have overhunger.

We want to eat in a way that's going to utilize our natural body systems. So this is all about what you're eating and when or how often. First, you can keep your blood glucose steady by keeping sugar and flour, which cause a big spike. In your blood glucose as exceptions, how many, I get asked that question a lot, and I truly don't think it's for me to tell you that number.

What I want to do is teach you about the mechanisms and then encourage you to decide for you. And I will of course, help you make a decision here. So here's what you need to know. The more sugar and flour you eat, the more often you're going to spike your blood glucose and have these crashes. Which will continue the cravings.

The less you eat that, then the less likely you are to have future cravings. Other considerations include how much hunger you're willing to allow, because that will allow more time for your body to be using fat as fuel, how much you're eating. Remember, your leptin isn't going to be triggered in the same way when you're eating sugar and flour.

So you're less likely to feel satiated sooner, and you're more likely to overeat these things. Also because of the dopamine, right? On the other hand, you want to be eating in a way that's sustainable for your lifetime. And if a lifetime seems way too long, think of the next three years. You want to be thinking, okay, I might make some changes along the way. 

Are you going to eradicate sugar and flour for the next three years? That's a consideration you might want to make. You want to be thinking about the type of relationship. You want to have with food. You get to define that. But notice if you're eliminating sugar and flour completely out of fear, that's likely not a reason you love.

So for that reason, I don't recommend a hard and fast rule around, you know, zero per week. You might go a week without sugar and flour, but not because it was a rule, not because it wasn't like allowed in quotation marks. Yeah. It's simply because you genuinely didn't want it enough. And of course, when you do have sugar and flour, be sure to have that with protein and fat and fiber, if possible, and preferably at the end of your meal to level out that glucose spike.

Of course, I learned that from glucose goddess, which you should definitely check out. If you haven't already, she has a great Instagram account in terms of leptin and feeling satiated. We need to eat protein and fat because it triggers hormones that tell us. That it's time to stop. It tells the body, okay, we've had enough food.

It's time to stop. We also have stomach stretch receptors that signal to the brain to stop eating. So if you are grazing or snacking throughout the day with small meals, you are less likely to activate these receptors. So if you're constantly eating, another thing is your body will be encouraged to use glucose as its fuel and also keep producing ghrelin, which is going to make you hungry.

For when it usually gets food all of the time, right? So your body is used to getting food all the time because of that hormonal release. It's tied to our circadian rhythms It's going to produce more ghrelin. You're gonna feel hungry all the time if you're eating these small meals all the time So if you want to encourage your body to instead use its fat stores rather than food or glucose as fuel and feel less hungry during the day Which would mean you're producing ghrelin less often.

You'll want to eat more substantial, more satiated meals, but less frequently.  This is why the whole calories in, calories out model isn't the whole story. And can easily lead to overhunger. Because you're more focused on calories. versus how those calories are affecting your blood glucose or your hormones.

Classic example is having a bagel. So if you're going off the calories model, the best choice would just be have a plain bagel on its own. Less calories. Then, if you were to have a bagel with some butter or full fat cream cheese.  That would be more calories, right? So that is not the best framework for making decisions around food.

Because as we know, if we're thinking about blood glucose, hormones, over hunger, the best choice of course, is to have the bagel with the fat and protein. That's your best choice. So have a bagel with a butter or full fat cream cheese, that kind of thing, or peanut butter calories just isn't the whole story.

One more thing I've recently learned, which I'll share with you is that melatonin, which is a hormone that regulates your sleep wake cycles increases when it's dark and is tied to insulin resistance, which is really interesting, right? So why is this important? If you've ever heard, you know, don't eat before bed.

And you've kind of wondered why this could be the reason when it's dark. It means you're going to be prone to storing food as fat on your body versus using it right away for energy. If you live in the Northern hemisphere, like I do, this is not so great news. Is that in the winter time, it can get dark at 4 PM here.

So listen, don't stress too much about this. Eat earlier. If you can eat in light daylight hours, but with anything, it's not going to be just one thing. It's going to be incorporating all of these strategies. combined over the longterm, that's going to make a difference. Another thing you might be wondering is how long does it take to clear up this overhunger?

I can't say for sure because it's going to depend on, you know, to what extent you implement these new eating habits and of course, on your own body. But I will say that from what I've seen in clients who implement this fully right off the get go, it really doesn't take long, maybe a couple of weeks. So if you are doing these things and you are still feeling, I have all this over hunger and it's an issue, know that it won't last forever.

If you can stick with it long enough. It will subside, and when that happens, it will be so much easier to stop overeating and get to your goal weight, right? Your natural weight, because you won't have your physiology working against you, but you will be having it working for you. So this topic actually came out of a free workshop that I did recently, and I plan on doing more regular workshops this year.

So if that's something that you're interested in, you want to attend those or get the replays, make sure you're on my email list so that you will know when those are happening. You can sign up for that on my free resources page on mindfulshape. com. Listen, I know there are lots of podcasts out there, and I just want to let you know that I really appreciate you for listening.

And I will talk to you again soon. Okay, bye.