Bridging knowledge with behavioural change is a challenge, but a joy to overcome! Many patients who find themselves consulting with me already know a lot about nutrition. Some of this knowledge is incorrect, thanks to the media and general misconceptions, but much of it can be sound knowledge.

Why are they still struggling to implement this knowledge into daily choices? Are they weak? Do they have no willpower? Not at all: a fundamental truth of human struggle is that changing behaviour involves a lot more than simply possessing the knowledge of what you should be doing.

Change also involves very little willpower. It does, however, involve a lot of strategic thinking and organisation. This is where I will help you. top of page. I will counsel you to be able to translate both the knowledge you come with, to the education I provide you with, into lifelong behavioural change when it comes to your relationship with eating and food.

Together we plan both short and long term nutrition centred and lifestyle goals to enable long lasting changes. I provide you with the ability to self-monitor so that you can be your own nutritionist , plans for lapses, problems, new coping behaviours and I am in frequent contact with you in between appointments where needed to provide support.

In our meetings I will walk you through how to nourish your body, but also your mind and thinking. In the beginning, it can feel quite uncomfortable, which is a common response to an increased level of awareness in any area of our lives. This means we have an increased level of responsibility and can no longer claim ignorance or unawareness as an excuse.

While awareness or mindfulness is a mandatory component of eating according to hunger and satiety, it can also be difficult to actually tune into what our bodies are telling us.

And this is not due to lack of awareness, effort, or responsibility. Our physical cues may have simply been suppressed or neglected for so long that it can take some time for them to regulate and to be felt clearly. Additionally, our feelings of hunger and satiety will vary from person to person and from day to day — especially for women due to our monthly fluctuations in hormones.

What works for us one day may not work the next, so understanding these physical or lifestyle changes and their impacts is also important. To begin getting in touch with our hunger and satiety cues, we need to dedicate a few weeks of effort and attention to what our bodies are telling us.

Again, this is always more difficult in the beginning, but it will become automated with some time and practice. One of the easiest ways to do this is to map out your individual responses to the seven stages of hunger and satiety. The stages are defined defined, and I have included a few examples of physical sensations that may be experienced.

This typically occurs after eating a light snack or hours after a sufficient meal that brings you to stage five. You could still eat more at this point.

Stage Six - Having eaten slightly beyond the point of satisfaction. Stage Seven - Eating to the point of pure discomfort and maybe pain. This is often classified as a binge. In order to become clear on what your physical cues are in each stage, I recommend journaling throughout the day for days to take note of your experiences.

Stages one and seven may be far and few between, so referencing memories is often the best route for those. Ideally, the goal is to stay within stages three and five, as we want to avoid extremes and the likelihood of sending our bodies into a form of distress. Understanding our hunger and satiety signals is a fundamental and extremely important part of developing an intuitive relationship with our bodies.

The goal of intuitive eating is to eat when you feel hungry and to stop eating with when you feel satiety — the absence of hunger. Research shows that intuitive eating, combined with a knowledge of healthy eating habits, has the greatest potential for long-term weight management.

Those who practice intuitive eating report a greater ability to trust that their body and mind will guide eating. People have also reported that intuitive eating, when combined with selecting healthy foods, can improve their ability to sustain energy between meals, increase their stamina and contentment and improve their ability to function as they move through their day.

Intuitive eating increases awareness of what the body and mind may be saying in terms of hunger, satiety, undereating and overeating. It is a process to identify what situations — or even eating patterns — that may result in inability to feel hunger and satiety.

It also may identify situations when you feel hunger, but you cannot respond to it or only respond in a limited way. Here is more on intuitive eating from University Hospitals Clinical Nutrition Services. Intuitive eating h elps establish a mind-body connection to recognize and respond to hunger and to know when to stop eating.

It also reduces the likelihood that under-eating and over-eating occur due to increased awareness of physical and mental signs and symptoms. Intuitive eating starts with identifying early signs of hunger, which may occur four to five hours after eating a balanced meal.

Early signs of hunger may include:. When you feel early signs of hunger , you are more likely to achieve satiety when you eat a meal. Satiety may take some time at meals, so it is important to eat slowly and enjoy your food. It may take 20 minutes for your mind to feel better after you start to eat, so chew your food thoroughly and drink water during the meal.

You also can feel satiety more readily felt when you eat a balanced meal, so make sure meals are complete with protein, vegetable, grains or starch, and other nutritious foods.

Here are the signs of satiety:. Many people think of feeling full to describe the end of the meal, but this is different than satiety.

Are you experiencing body shame? Cultural pressure to achieve a particular shape or weight? Optimising your nourishment involves more than simply eating a balanced diet. Accepting that the mind and body are deeply connected is a central message in my practice: Our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, relationship with pleasure, mindfulness, pain, joy and more all affects our health.

The efficiency with which we digest and assimilate food is directly impacted by the body's many stress pathways: it is vital to feel good and think positively while we eat and digest - but how do we get there?

Nutrition is about far more than what you see on the label of a packet. Understanding how to interpret the nutrition label can be helpful — but acknowledging that there is so much more to be considered when making decisions about healthy eating is crucial.

For example, an orange contains a good amount of Vitamin C, but whether we are actually absorbing and utilising the vitamin depends on many factors. How do we maximise our metabolism, absorption and assimilation?

How do we achieve our optimal body image without sacrificing our inner joy and a pleasurable, spontaneous relationship with food? Chronic stress inhibits good nutrition. Stress management is a key strategy everybody needs to learn in order to navigate life successfully: Stress dysregulates our appetite, upsets our digestion, kills beneficial gut bacteria, promotes stubborn overweight, increases inflammation and can often lead to us disengaging with life and therefore, food.

Under a cloud of chronic stress we are vulnerable to building compulsive coping mechanisms, often food centred, in order to find a way to cope. Anorexia, bulimia and orthorexia are extremes of this. The lack of a diagnosable eating disorder does not mean that an individual has a good relationship with food: mindless eating and snacking and a disengagement from a true sense of hunger or satiety are also signs of imbalance.

An imbalanced relationship with food and eating often involves the consumption of pro-inflammatory foods which lead to disease and unhappiness — a downward spiral many people find themselves in.

Detangling this web is part of the work we do together in our sessions. It will change your life for the better. Understanding your stress triggers helps to induce permanent change.

Many people need more help than simple dietary guidance. Food can be a very sensitive and multi-layered challenge for people. Enabling a recovery from an unhealthy diet or negative relationship with eating can involve delving into family, social and work life dynamics.

We then change it at a speed which suits you. We get out of touch with what the body really needs and end up eating mindlessly. Our emotional problems have to be tackled and understood. Physical and emotional hunger is not the same:. Physical hunger is a sensation of emptiness in the belly, a light-headedness, low blood sugar, a desire for food or a sense of fatigue.

Emotional hunger is the desire for something to soothe or comfort an emotional feeling. When you ignore something, and it persists, you become disconnected.

If the disconnection persists, dis-regulation occurs. We are self-regulating systems and if we dis-regulate, we lose our self-regulation and when that persists, we become disordered Gary Schwartz. Everybody has their own story; this is what I deal with in therapy. Paying attention to your hunger can inform you when to eat, how much to eat and what might be the most nourishing for you at this time?

When you have established through this practice that you are experiencing emotional hunger, you can tune into what you really need and provide what is needed: not food related comfort:. Physical and emotional hunger is not the same: Physical hunger is a sensation of emptiness in the belly, a light-headedness, low blood sugar, a desire for food or a sense of fatigue.

When you have established through this practice that you are experiencing emotional hunger, you can tune into what you really need and provide what is needed: not food related comfort: Taking a hike in nature Yoga Meditation Calling a friend Curling up with a book or magazine Singing Dancing.

What can be done about it? Let us start with the end in mind.