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.]

Finished Day 20 and I'm Still Sober!

Still managing to abstain from sugar (especially sugar). Hooray. Still struggling with overwhelming urges when I'm tired and stressed.

Thing I've Discovered: The more I let myself think about breaking a bright line (should I give in and have another handful of nuts?), the more likely I am to break a line. If I can interrupt the thinking and analyzing, I'm much more likely to stay on course.

There's a quote from Tim Grover (an author and performance quote) that I love: "Don't think. You already know what you have to do, and you know how to do it. What's stopping you?"

I already know that I have to abstain from sugar, flour, and snacks. I know that one cookie is likely to spark out-of-control cookie eating. I know that having a snack to "just the ease the hunger" will wake up my addictive brain and make my mind miserable.

I don't need to think about it. All I have to do is act on that knowledge. Not think about it, act on it.

And best part is, the less that I even think or ponder or wonder about breaking my bright lines -- the more that I just do the things I have to do -- the more motivated I become to do bright line eating. The more I keep my bright lines, the better the chance that I'll shatter the addictive thinking that always leads me to break my bright lines.

That sounds obvious, but for me, it's kind of mind-blowing. I always thought (even if just subconsciously) that you have to be motivated in order to act a certain way. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that motivation isn't what creates action. It's the other way around. Action creates motivation.

Behaving like a bright line eater is what creates a bright line eater.