Two Powerful Hunger-Busting Techniques to Try

For me, the biggest challenge of BLE has been hunger. Hunger, hunger, hunger. Not sugar or flour cravings, but hunger. It took me a while to figure out the difference, and to be honest they’re always inseparably intertwined. But after paying attention to the sensations for a few weeks, I did notice a difference.

-- CRAVINGS tend to be a desire to eat when I know, deep down inside, that I don’t need food. They tend to follow a trigger. It’s a particular time of day when I habitually eat. I pass a certain store, or catch a certain whiff. I’m around certain stuff. I’m feeling bored or stressed or anxious and want the feeling to go away. If I ride it out – distract myself, surf the wave, call a friend, do my EAP – the craving feeling tends to go away.

-- HUNGER on the other hand, is physical. My stomach growls. I start to have trouble concentrating. Thoughts of needing to eat won’t go away. Even with distracting myself or riding out the wave, the sensation neither disappears nor diminishes. It’s a big bold headline in my mind.

Most of my hunger was real, physical hunger. 

I’d try Susan’s advice to just sit with the feeling of hunger for a while, assuming it would go away in about a half hour. 

Nope. The unpleasantness and anxiety of it would just grow. I’d just become MORE aware of my physical hunger. I couldn’t concentrate.

I’d try saying “no one ever died of hunger.” Didn’t work. My immediate reaction was always to say, “well, yeah, duh. I’m not dying. That doesn’t change one iota the fact that this is an astronomically stressful feeling. I’m so overwhelmed with hunger I can’t focus. It’s interfering with my life and I can’t get rid of.”

Because hunger has been such a huge barrier to my having any success with BLE, I implemented some techniques borrowed from other recovery programs:

1.      YESSING. This is a technique borrowed from Eastern religions that I call “yessing.” You become aware of whatever thoughts, feelings, emotions or situation is present and also notice the panic that starts to arise. That panicky feeling is part of the problem. We have an instinctive desire to escape the unpleasant situation but we cannot. So what if we just stay with the original feeling and welcome it. Say, “Yes, I accept this feeling. I won’t do me any harm.” Then I say yes to the next moment, and then the next, and so on. This is more a thought process of, “This feeling that I’m having, I welcome it and accept it without any judgment.” It’s very powerful.

2.      7/11 BREATHING. This is breathing from the diaphragm rather than the chest. As you inhale, count to 7. As you exhale, count to 11. Inhalation invokes the sympathetic nervous system while exhalation invokes the parasympathetic nervous system. People who suffer from panic attacks and anxiety disorders practice this technique to tip the body towards relaxation rather than stress. It takes a little practice, but the results are immediate and powerful. It relaxes the emotional part of the brain, which is where the stress arising from hunger arises. And it frees up your brain power to do other things.

It sounds like most people doing BLE don’t have this challenge. In my social support group, one person said it took her about a week for the hunger to subside. Another said it took her 12 days.

It took me about 8 months until I could consistently go 3-4 hours with extreme hunger. And about 12-14 months until I could go 4-6 hours with a bearable level of hunger.

It took a long, long time for me, but it did happen.

[Disclaimer: This blog is not affiliated with or endorsed by Bright Line Eating Solutions or Susan Peirce Thompson. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.]