Over the past few months, I’ve been slowly revisiting earlier essays and articles. Some reflect an earlier chapter of my writing. Others surprise me by revealing ideas that have quietly stayed with me for years, where I find myself still in conversation with them.
This article is one of those, a Returning Companion.
Originally published by YourTango in 2016 and later syndicated by MSN in 2018, both with the title, THIS Is the Secret to Never Worrying About Your Weight Again, its language now feels like it belongs to an earlier season of my writing. Yet the central invitation—to listen more carefully to the wisdom of the body—still feels deeply true to me.
I’ve made only light edits, allowing the article to remain itself while reflecting the language that has matured over time.
The Body Is Already Speaking
It’s not exactly a secret that many people go to extremes and struggle to reach a specific, idealized weight in an effort to reach happiness. It’s also not a mystery that there’s more to being happy with your body weight than eating a specific number of calories. Food is intricately connected to our emotions and to our sense of identity.
Our meals should nourish not only our physical body, but also sustain us emotionally and spiritually, helping us live the fullest life possible. Sounds straightforward, doesn’t it? Sure. But by the time we’ve reached our early teens, we’ve often forgotten how to determine what real hunger is.
In fact, most of us, fortunate enough to never experience true physical hunger, have only experienced emotional hunger. We’ve complicated our food, turning it into a source of conflict rather than contentment, or even — joy.
And maybe part of that forgetfulness, is that we aren’t listening to what our body is saying to us. Before we can trust the body, we have to remember that it has been speaking to us all along.
The phrase “trust your gut” can take on several levels of meaning. Your stomach, i.e., gut, is sometimes called a secondary brain in our belly, containing over one hundred million neurons of intelligence.
By listening to the physical cues we receive — e.g., satiety, pain, discomfort, pleasure, etc. — we align with our body’s needs. Gut hunches aren’t imaginary. They’re the body’s way of giving information and advice.
Trust grows through small moments of attention. Here are three ways to begin listening more carefully to what your body may already be telling you.
Begin by noticing what you’re really feeling.
Focus first on ways you’re emotional eating. Diet books often focus on this as the key to permanent weight loss, and it’s definitely a large percentage of the equation. Burying our feelings via overeating or eating unhealthy foods only adds pounds and guilt.
Trusting your gut at this level means paying attention to what you’re feeling in the moment before you reach for the food you want to overeat. By pausing and listening, you may begin to notice feelings that were difficult to hear while moving too quickly.
If hearing that wisdom feels too difficult — your emotions (and all of that ice cream you spoon down) are drowning out your gut talk. Try this: After you eat something you regret, consider what you ate. Doreen Virtue, in her book Constant Craving: What Your Food Cravings Mean and How to Overcome Them tells us that often, the type of food we eat is a clue to the emotions we’re trying to stuff.
Sometimes ice cream helps us self-medicate feelings of depression. Crunchy, salty chips tend to soothe us when we’re feeling anxious and stressed. And that slice of pie might be a substitute for the bit of encouragement you really wanted.
If, after reading someone else’s opinion of food and emotional correspondence doesn’t feel true for you, pause. Remember, we’re all unique in our body and in our expression. Allow yourself to listen to what your body is saying to you.
Notice the feelings you felt when you craved a specific food, the correlation might surprise you. Until you address the underlying issue that’s bothering you, the unhealthy eating habit won’t stop.
Notice what else you might be hungry for.
If you’re handling your emotions in a healthy way and your appetite still isn’t satisfied, figure out what you’re really hungry for in life that goes beyond emotions. In what areas of your life do you lack fulfillment? Sometimes, overeating is connected to an urge to fill a void of happiness or deep-seated purpose.
Your enteric nervous system clues you in to your emotions, which is possibly why it is often considered the home seat of wisdom. You “know it at a gut level” if you pay attention. Once you identify what’s missing, don’t try to fill that emptiness with food. It won’t work.
Peace often follows when we stop asking food to carry what only a meaningful life can hold.
Practice listening before deciding.
Our bodies are constantly gathering and responding to information long before we’re consciously aware of it. In fact, there is individual knowledge contained within each cell of your body. It will tell you what it needs — if you listen to it.
When you explore intuitive eating, your body tells you when it’s hungry and when it’s full. Your gut will tell you what type of food your body requires and how much it needs to adequately feel nourished.
Pay attention to your body’s requests as you decide which of the many food choices are best for you. We are each biochemically unique, with distinctly individual needs. Allow your highly-tuned body-mind unit to tell you when it needs re-calibration.
Over time, many people notice that their preferences begin to shift toward foods that leave them feeling genuinely nourished. Paying attention to those changes can become another way of learning your own body’s language.
Eating instinctively is an approach to food, not a diet.
The body has been part of the conversation all along.
Learning to listen doesn’t happen overnight, but it does begin with a single moment of attention.
It’s an ongoing relationship with a body that has been speaking to you from the beginning.
Continue the Conversation
If this essay resonates with you, you might also enjoy:
- Listening to the body is one expression of a larger practice of attention that I’ve explored in Listening for What’s Already Present.
- The same quality of attention appears in my essay about the garden, where listening extends beyond ourselves into relationship with the living world.
- Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch — a thoughtful, evidence-informed exploration of developing a healthier relationship with food.
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer — a beautiful meditation on reciprocity, gratitude, and the abundance that becomes visible when we learn to pay attention.
