Jonathan Steedman (00:01.664)
All right, let's talk about hunger. What a fun and exciting and warm fuzzy topic. So it may not be the most exciting thing in the world to talk about, but it is extremely important because I suspect for a lot of us, it's one of the reasons, if not one of the main reasons, getting in the way of our past weight loss efforts, because it absolutely can. right? What I want us to remember is that hunger is the strongest biological signal on the planet.

So it's not something you can just sweep under the rug, something you can ignore, something you think you can tough your way through all of the time. Maybe occasionally you get away with that, but if that's your only strategy to manage hunger, A, cross your fingers and hope you don't get hungry and B, panic and freak out when you do get hungry. If those are only strategies, that's a problem, but I've got some good news. We're gonna upgrade that today. firstly, respect the hunger. It's the strongest biological signal.

Don't ignore it. Let's do something about it. The second thing is when you notice you're hungry, I don't want us to immediately think that something is wrong or that hunger is necessarily bad. Hunger is just information. It's just a signal. It's telling you that something is up. It might be telling you that you haven't eaten enough. It might be telling you that you haven't eaten frequently enough. It might be telling you that you're tired. There's a whole host of things that it could be telling you. And so...

That's the first mistake I see is people just seeing hunger as this bad thing. It's not bad. It's just information. So try and frame it instead as like, I'm hungry. I wonder why. And if you dig into that and answer a few questions, you won't fall into mistake number two, which is responding the exact same way to hunger every single time. That's what I find most people do. They either every time they're hungry, they're like, yep, I knew I was going to be hungry. I'm just going to grit my teeth and suck.

it up. And that's okay sometimes until it's not. Other people the second they get hungry, they panic and they reach for food. And that's the right move sometimes, but not all the time. Because like I said before, hunger is information, hunger is a signal, and it could be signaling any number of things. Because it's quite varied and because there's a whole host of variables that go into hunger, you need to have more than one plan. If you only respond in the same way each time,

Jonathan Steedman (02:25.964)
you're going to be misinterpreting a large number of your hunger signals. right? So what I instead want us to do is notice that we're view it as information, and just start to ask yourself a couple of questions. Because if you don't, you might fall into that first camp of ignoring it for too long. And that is a problem. Because if you delay doing something about your hunger for too long,

hungry human beings make dumb decisions. Because again, it's the strongest biological signal on the planet. So you think that you're going to outsmart or out-grit the strongest biological signal on the planet forever? Of course not. And so if you have waited too long and pushed it too far, you fall off a cliff. And all of a sudden, your normal meals, your normal snacks no longer fill you up. All of a sudden, you just absolutely cannot moderate any kind of food intake, probably until you're feeling

till you've eaten yourself sick. All right, so if you're listening and you're like, man, that's me, I'm not mad at you. I certainly don't want you to feel guilty. We've all done it. That's extremely human. Don't feel bad, but let's try and work our way back from that for the future. So mistake number one, delaying too long, falling off a cliff. The opposite end of that spectrum though is also a mistake. And that is treating every little degree of hunger as something I need to jump to fix.

and solve by eating straight away. Because if every single time you feel a little bit hungry, if your goal is weight loss, it's probably going to completely slow, if not completely stop your weight loss altogether. Because you do need to sit with a little bit of hunger if your goal is weight loss. Not all the time and not extreme levels of hunger, but there's gonna need to be some discomfort. You may have heard me use this analogy before, but I see it exactly the same way as the gym.

My gym sessions should not be destroying me every time. But also if I'm never breaking a sweat, I'm probably not working hard enough to get any kind of change out of my body. No more strength, no more fitness or health. And I think hunger is very much the same way when it comes to weight loss. We've got to find this sweet spot of some discomfort, but not more discomfort that we can tolerate. And so what I want you to do next time you're super hungry,

Jonathan Steedman (04:53.678)
Pause and ask yourself, all right.

When am I eating next? And what am I eating? And so if I'm feeling hungry and I'm panicking and I'm going to reach for food, but my lunch is in half an hour, I can probably just go, you know what? I can, I can sit with that. Whereas if I'm panicking and lunch is in two hours, I shouldn't wait that long. I should move lunch up or I should have a snack right now. Okay. So again, it's not just, I'm hungry, eat. It's I'm hungry, but when am I eating next? And what am I supposed to be eating?

And oftentimes that will give you the answer as to whether I should adjust my day and the structure that I was planning, or actually I can sit with this because help is not too far away.

Same thing if I'm hungry and I've been hungry for a little while and I'm asking myself, when am I starting to eat? When am I eating next and what am I eating? And I've already been hungry for an hour and food is a couple of hours away. Thinking you can make it that long is folly. Please don't fall for that trap. Again, do the same thing. All right, it's too far away. I probably need to either move that thing up or I need to add something else now.

If we start responding to hunger in that way, we start treating it with a little bit more curiosity and seeing it as information and a signal that something is up, there's something I need to investigate, rather than something to be avoided or be afraid of, we can start making way smarter choices around our hunger, ways that support us throughout the day to not get too hungry, but also support us to not overeat when our goal is weight loss. So...

Jonathan Steedman (06:36.512)
implement those things. That's a small, I pulled it out of, we have a full workshop inside the group called the hunger fix, there's a whole host of things you can do to reduce your risk of hunger throughout the day. And so that little framework is just one of them. And so there's lots of other things if you're keen to learn more about the group, there's a link in the bio as always. Bio, that's not what it's called. Show notes, that's what they're called. I'm an Instagram world at the moment, but anyhow.

Have a hungry but not too hungry week. That was the worst sign off ever, I'm so sorry. Have a great week. I'll chat to you guys next time.