Eat When Hungry: Journey into Food and Fires
Learning to Avoid Garbage Fires In a Corrupt Food Environment
Dr. Lisle and I dig deeper into hunger and the complex processes that I went through to understand my hunger drive and to make lifestyle changes in myself. In doing so, I moved from fueling myself with the explosive garbage fires of junk foods to the slow-burning fire of satiation with a plant-based lifestyle. As always, Dr. Lisle brings powerful science and deep wisdom to our conversation.
Processes are important in self-discoveries, and there can be important variations to understand about our individual hunger drives. To that end, I focus heavily on sharing my own processes and my individual learning which may include different details from others.
My internal agitation around food comes from what and how much I eat. When I don’t eat right, I feel agitated and go on the prowl, which means looking for the corrupt junk foods that cause garbage fires in me — overeating and binge eating.
Eat When Hungry: Journey into the Science of Satiation
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.
The Equation of My Soup — Packing it with Plant-based Power
I recently wrote a short post for Instagram / Facebook where I referenced making a large pot of soup to freeze into individual containers. And, in this post, I mentioned that I had used more than 25 different kinds of plants in it, and I was asked for the recipe.
I do not follow recipes. There are benefits and drawbacks to my approach. But, recipes cause me stress, and adapting what I have on hand suits me. Instead, I use concepts to guide my cooking. And, I have gotten better at using the concepts over time. So, what I will focus on here is detailing the concepts.
Overall, I find plant-based cooking to be a forgiving form of cooking. And, keep in mind that I am several years into this lifestyle. So, if you are just getting going, you may want to consider taking a concept and experimenting with it in small steps rather than trying to do too much at once.
A significant part of my journey has been a deep dive into understanding my hunger drive and how I feel my best. Eating a soup like this is not something I would have done early into my transition – for a variety of reasons.
But, seeing what others do has helped me find my way, and seeing what I do may help you find your way as well.
Satiation: Discovering a New Sensuality
Satiation. I love this word and have only recently started to understand its meaning around my hunger drive.
Satiation is the pinnacle of what it means to fulfill the hunger drive, to eat when hungry. Satiation is the linchpin of my long-term success.
Discovering satiation was a confusing, complex process. I had lost half my weight and had maintained that weight loss for more than a year.
Yet, I was flailing and careening all over a razor blade even though the numbers on the scale held steady.
I was desperately trying not to fall into the abysses where one of my shadow selves ruled — either through the excesses of food addiction and binge eating, or the deprivations of anorexic restriction.
I had no idea how to maintain my success.