Eat When Hungry: Journey into the Science of Satiation

Journey into the Science of Satiation probes the problem of supernormal food and what it means to eat when hungry. Dr. Lisle centers human instinct as we look at supernormal foods, taste receptors, stretch receptors, restriction, and ways our bodies work unconsciously and intuitively to ensure our survival. At the heart of this episode is an uplifting message: our bodies are exquisite, beautiful, and perfectly designed.

Trust OUr bodies, not Our fooDs

More specifically, don’t trust the foods of the standard American diet because they will lead us astray and this episode goes deep into the answer of why that is — deep into the center of Eat When Hungry into the science of satiation.

Trusting our bodies is truly is one of my favorite messages from my latest episode of Eat When Hungry with Dr. Doug Lisle. This episode looks at my most profound personal insight of moving into plant-based living and losing half my weight:  I was not broken, and I am not fixed. 

Eat When Hungry sits at the center of my health, wellness, and weight loss journey, and satiation is in the core of that center. As Dr. Lisle repeatedly says in this episode, our bodies are beautifully designed, and we all need to hear that message over and over again in a society that tells us otherwise.

I was not broken, and I am not fixed. This statement bears repeating. It is far more than a self-empowering rallying cry. And, as I work with other people, I have gotten the privilege of witnessing similar reactions as they realize this profound truth — that they are not broken and they will not be fixed. As Dr. Lisle repeats throughout this episode, we are “beautifully designed to work perfectly.”

The fault, then, is not in ourselves but in our foods. With that line, my English-teacher self cannot resist a literary allusion to a line from William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves …”

It turns out that being an English teacher is a great background for diving into psychological journeys and recurrent themes in human experiences around this problem. The more I talk with others, the more I learn about myself and the broader nuances of this problem. We are not broken, and we are not fixed.

The problem is our food and the pervasiveness of addictive, supernormal foods in our environment. This food is everywhere and it disrupts our bodies, dysregulates our systems – fooling our satiation mechanisms and propelling us to overeat and binge. Our human instincts tell us to eat the rich foods, and our intellect tells us to have the healthy foods. Instincts often win.

My own instincts almost always won until I got rid of the foods that dysregulated me – and even then, I don’t always win against my instincts. But, I am determined to win the long-term war even if I lose a few battles.

My English-teacher self is compelled to go deeply into the psychological journey to understand and take action around the problem of supernormal foods and how they impact our health, wellness, and weight loss journeys.

And, as I talk with people, the discussions around personal change are as deep and layered as the classroom discussions that I used to lead around literature, characters, human motivation.

I developed the Transform Shadows framework to help understand my own mental processes, and I use the same ideas in my coaching with others.

Having the right information helps me act in my best interests, and this episode continues my learning. I have watched Dr. Lisle and my interview multiple times since we filmed it, and I still have more to learn.

If our instincts tell us to eat the richest foods, the antidote to that problem is our minds, our intellect, and our psychological journeys. In my own journey, I find many complexities that drove me to go public with my story and these complexities drive me to spend my spare time telling the stories as authentically as I can. 

The complexities of this journey are why there is a 97% failure rate to sustain long-term weight loss and to make changes around health and wellness. Some of us struggle more than others with our individual hunger drives in an environment that we were not made to live in, with a problem our bodies were not designed to handle. 

We can take action and succeed. When we accurately understand the problem and solution, we can get to the right answers for ourselves. There will be similarities in our fundamentals, and there will be individual differences in the ways we solve the problem. Dr. Lisle lays out the fundamentals that are the foundation of a successful journey, and I have found all of them to be true in my experiences of losing half my weight.

Journey into the Science of Satiation probes these fundamentals through looking at our instincts and misinformation around hunger, food, and weight. Dr. Lisle takes us through foods as supernormal stimuli, taste receptors, stretch receptors, restriction, and ways our bodies work unconsciously and intuitively to ensure our survival. Our bodies are beautiful, wonderful, and all too often misunderstood in mainstream society.

Our minds are also beautiful and wonderful. But, the weight of weight, of health and of wellness, of not acting in our own best interests can wreak havoc on our minds and self-perception. The inability to solve this problem seared me with shame, self-beratement, and fear about what I was doing to myself. The problem impeded me in myriad ways.

Choosing health for me has meant understanding that the public stories around weight, health, food, and eating have been full of the wrong information. Restriction is not the answer. The solution is getting rid of the supernormal foods and replacing them with unprocessed plants — especially fiber and water – while also eating enough foods and calorie density to be satiated. And, this approach has changed my life.

I hated that, and I hated the fact that I could not figure out how to act in my own best interests. Even though I liked myself, sometimes it was hard to remember that. My anguish around my own failures became more pervasive the more I learned about the direct connections between the foods I ate and the diseases of modern life. To be clear, I knew those connections for years before I was able to act successfully.

I am not alone. The high failure rate around sustaining long-term weight loss and the daunting magnitude of the problem are why people seek medication and surgery – answers to help them in the face of an overwhelming problem. Nearly every person I talk to has considered these as possibilities, including myself. 

Eat When Hungry is the definite solution to my weight, and it is best action for my long-term health and wellness – for reversing and preventing lifestyle diseases. I don’t want a band-aid. I want health from the inside out. Eating whole, unprocessed plants regulates my hunger drive, reverses lifestyle diseases, and offers the best hope of longer-term disease prevention.

Beyond that, eating according to my hunger drive fills me with a deep sensuality of wellness that permeates every aspect of my life. This is the magic answer that people seek, but the actions that go with it do not feel like magic.

In short, food matters. What I eat matters. And, the nuts and bolts of what to eat will be the topic when Dr. Lisle and I get together for the next episode of Eat When Hungry, which will come out at the end of May or early June.

Staying Out of the Shadows of Myself means pulling the pieces of my healthy lifestyle back together every so often. I often have to balance and rebalance my life and energy around eating fresh plants, getting enough exercise, and spending time with family and friends.