Eat When Hungry: Journey from the Desert to the Theme Park

My goal in my Eat With Hungry Signature Series with Dr. Doug Lisle is to offer clear ideas for consideration without reducing anything to quick fixes or easy answers. The topics covered are ones that I have used to understand myself and to navigate today’s food environment. My understandings continue to evolve over time.

Understanding Mirages of Food, Hunger, and Eating

In this episode of Eat When Hungry, Dr. Lisle and I discuss food, hunger, and eating. Like mirages in the desert, this episode is not what it seems. Barely an actual food is mentioned in our broad, sprawling conversation.

Dr. Lisle takes us from the desert of human origin and survival to theme parks as a symbol of our society where supernormal foods and their pleasure trap reign supreme. I share my personal experiences from an educational perspective, having been caught in this trap for decades.

We probe mirages around food, hunger, and eating to help us understand what humans are up against in the modern food environment. At the heart this problem: humans were not meant to solve the problem of supernormal foods in our environment.

We live in a world of supernormal foods designed for their addictive properties and medications designed to mitigate the addictive properties of these supernormal foods: two sides of the same problem humans were not designed to solve.

Yet, the problem is solvable, but it takes understanding, simplicity, and commitment. But, the results have spectacular on the other side.

The facts of our modern food environment are truly fantastical. We have more than 100,000 choices in grocery stores, and scientists are studying how to make foods more addictive for us. To curb ourselves, we now have new pharmaceuticals to keep us from overeating these addictive foods.

As someone who struggles with weight, foods, and eating, this brave new world of a medical solution looks enticing and magical. But, I have decided this is a mirage in which I will not stake my health and wellness.

Instead, I am going to stay the course of eating unprocessed plants without altering my body’s natural design. The information that I have learned in the plant-based world makes sense within the totality of my experiences. Truly, this information is the only thing that has. The deeper I have gone into understanding my hunger drive, the more I feel the truths of what Dr. Lisle and I discuss in these episodes.

I have already given decades of my life to eating unhealthy foods that cause diseases — more lifestyle diseases than reported in mainstream media. While I may yet end up with lifestyle diseases from these foods, I want the best and most hopeful long-term solution for myself, for my health, for my future, for living fully, for experiencing life in a sensuality of wellness.

The healing properties of whole, unprocessed plants are powerful, and their benefits go far beyond weight. Over and over again, I hear the idea “the body wants to heal” in the plant-based world. And, I see and feel that truth in every aspect of my health and wellness.

When I eat optimally for myself, I feel the benefits of whole, unprocessed plants permeate my whole life, from the inside out, in what I call the sensuality of wellness. I am not willing to risk that with a medication that changes my body’s natural processes.

Even with all the goodness this lifestyle brings, there are challenges to this way of living, and I fail regularly for reasons that Dr. Lisle and I discuss in this episode. Today is case-in-point, I am working my way back into my routine after falling off for from travel.

We filmed this episode on a Sunday afternoon before I went on a week-long work trip. That day, I was in a deep and strong groove of eating optimally for myself, and I was feeling great.

I had a great trip, but whenever I get away from my routine, I struggle with my shadows. This was a harder trip because I got a cold — although I recovered quickly.

I went on the road for 7 days where I drove about 1500 miles. I brought foods from home, shopped along the way for groceries, ate in parking lots, and prepared my foods in microwaves on hotel tables. I did the best I could to stay balanced without my usual routines.

My shadows returned stronger and stronger with each passing day. Adding to the challenge, I got a cold, and I was extra tired. I did well for 10 days and came close to making a smooth reentry into my usual routines.

But, 3 days after getting home, fatigue, being out of my routine, and my lack of preparation got me. I lost my balance. I ended up in my failure foods, without paying any attention to eating when hungry.

And, that is where I am as I release this episode. Just two weekends after filming this episode, I am extricating myself yet again from the slippery slope of the pleasure trap. If I get back on now, it will be a blip.

And, a blip is where I intend to keep it. I have done this before and can do it again. I exercise this muscle regularly, and that makes this familiar territory, which helps.

I am stronger today after a good night’s sleep, and I have built resolve out of feeling awful from what I have eaten — all plants without salt, oil, and sugar, consumed in the wrong balances when I was not hungry. Not as awful as I used to feel but awful enough to want out of this trap.

This is my Transform Shadows framework for making my lifestyle changes. I use this model in my coaching around health, wellness, and weight loss.

My failure has happened before, and it will happen again. Success on this journey requires me to name, face, understand, fight, and reframe my human shadows again and again. In this space, I transform shadows.

Human survival mechanisms are buried deep within us, and knowing more about these helps me understand why I struggle so much to transform my shadows. As frustrating as the struggles are, knowing why they happen is validating.

Understanding the mirages helps. Many of the mainstream ideas of the cause-effect relationships between food, hunger, and eating have been wrong . Effects were seen as causes and causes as effects. So much of what I learned over the years has been turned upside down in this process.

Uprooting this misinformation is part of the process. Understanding my human nature is part of the process. Understanding myself as a unique individual is part of the process. So is knowing that I will live much more comfortably after a few days of following the rules of my hunger drive.

I know my action plan, and it works. Following this plan consistently has gotten easier with time. And, life doesn't have to fall apart if I fail occasionally. I just need to go back to the rules of my hunger drive and what works.

I was not broken, and I am not fixed. And, anything that tells me otherwise is a mirage.