Have you ever wondered why you eat? Okay
look at a core reason you eat because you have nutritional requirements right?
You eat because your body needs things It needs energy, it needs building blocks.
That's sort of why you eat. But have you ever really wondered why you eat what
you eat? That's a fascinating conversation because once you begin to
understand why you make your food decisions they way you do, you begin to take
a step toward food freedom. And by food freedom what I mean is eating what you
want when you want as much as you want in a functional and healthy way. We've
determined having helped thousands of people in over 20 countries around the
world change their relationship with food that there are six primary hungers that
drive the eating decision. And when you begin to understand what those six
hungers are, when they come up you know what to do about them and sometimes
eating isn't the thing to do about them. I'll give you a perfect example: thirst.
Thirst is one of the six hungers. That may sound a little bit odd to you but
bear with me. The reason that thirst is one of the six hungers is that for the
vast majority of our ancestors' history they didn't have pottery and they didn't
have sports bottles to walk around with. So that meant that they weren't able to
carry water and so a lot of the water, a lot of the hydration that our ancestors
got came from the food they ate. They ate a huge amount of water-based foods and
so here's the challenge, what that created is a communication system within
the human body that says that when you begin to start to feel a little
dehydrated the body knows that one of the best sources for water is water
based foods so it sends a message that says I'm hungry eat something. But what
it's really saying is go get me some hydration. The challenge is that it's lost
in translation and so now what happens is, you go alright I'm hungry eat
something and maybe what do you go eat? Maybe a bag of chips. How much water is
there in that? Not so much and so your body's like "dude did you not hear the
message? We need some water go and eat something" and so maybe you eat the next
thing and then you eat the next thing. And so thirst when you begin to
recognize that it shows up as hunger is incredibly powerful because all you
really need to do is to stay hydrated. And by hydrated what I mean is drinking
water, you know drinking coffee and coke and that kind of stuff is not going to
keep you hydrated, it means drinking water and when you handle that one
hunger about 1/6 of your motivation to eat
will go away. A huge number of the food decisions that people make are about
emotions, to change the way they feel. Look I want you to really think about
something, do you have some foods that if you're feeling really down, that you
really want to go to those foods? Or do you have some foods that when you're
really up and you want to be celebrate that you want to go to those foods?
How did that happen? How did that get created? How did those
linkages happen? I want to tell you it was like a Pavlovian dog response and
ultimately what happened is that you were having peak emotional states, up or
down, and then you were given those foods during those times and now you've linked
them up and so sometimes when you're feeling a little low, maybe a little
lonely, a little on your own, we need chocolate help. But when you begin to
recognize that pattern then you can start to notice that there are certain emotions
that if you deal with those emotions functionally you won't need to deal with
them through food. Another one is variety. Variety is a very important need from a human perspective because you know our ancestors would often be
faced with the situation where one type of food was in regular abundance but in
order to get all of the nutritional needs met, they would kind of need to get
bored of that one food and be driven to go get another one. A great example would
be if there's a lot of plant-based foods around and they're just lying around
well you just eat them why would you risk your life and go hunting when all
this food is lying around unless of course a power drive, a powerful drive came
in for variety for something different. The challenge is that that drive which
once served our species so very well is now in overwhelm because we can have
variety not even on a daily basis but on a meal by meal basis and not even on a
meal by meal basis we can a variety in one meal. We can have five or six
different types of food on the plate at the same time. And so our need for
variety is causing all kinds of challenges because what we really need
to recognize is that we don't need nearly as much variety as we get
currently. What we do need to do is make sure we're
getting a variety of the right healthy foods coming in. And then, have you ever had
that feeling, you know 2 o'clock 3 o'clock 4 o'clock in the afternoon? When you
start to flag a little you get a little tired. Maybe you're yawning a bit, your
eyes feel a bit heavy. Well guess what's going on,
low blood sugar! Humans have two primary energy sources one is fat and one is
sugar and when you have your body predominantly burning sugar what's gonna
happen is is that you're gonna have ups and downs of your energy. When somebody
trains their body to predominantly burn fat, then they have this steady slow burn
they can run for ages and ages that's why you now have these people, ultra
marathoners who can run multiple marathons in a day when the prevailing
wisdom of the old used to be that you'd hit the wall at 17 miles and you had to
be so tough and use your willpower to get through that. That's because low
blood sugar kicks in and so the problem is is the minute somebody starts to feel
low blood sugar, they want to go out and eat something with what?
With high sugar with a high GI count, they want to go eat
something with sugar and it gives them a craving for carbs and so when you begin
to recognize that you can change your metabolism to get yourself to a place
where you have a steady form of energy. Then you'll eliminate a huge reason for
snacking and a huge reason for eating dysfunctional foods. Have you ever felt
empty? You know your stomachs growling a little and you want to fill up. What I
want to tell you is that's actually not a form of hunger at all that is simply a
physical sensation. Your stomach is empty and you feel more comfortable with food
in your stomach. The challenges is that most people in the developed world today
are constantly starving. What I mean is is that they're eating a lot of food but
the food is so low on nutrition that they are actually feeling like they're
starving and the problem is is that then when their stomach is empty, while
they're starving, those things get linked up and become incredibly powerful and so
now when somebody's stomach is empty they feel like they have to fill it.
Absolutely not the case. Your stomach in normal condition is about the size of
your fist, go ahead and make a fist and take a look. How much food do you think
it takes to fill that out? And your stomach is like a transformer it's
designed to be able to expand into a large sack for times of serious
opportunity. Suddenly there's fruit on all the trees, you need to be able to eat
a lot of it because it won't be there tomorrow.
Or your clan has suddenly been very successful and had a great hunt, well
without refrigeration we got to eat as much of the meat as we can right now and
so then the stomach can expand but the problem in the developed world is that for
most of us our stomachs are expanded like that all the time, and so then when
it feels empty it takes so much more food to fill it. When we begin to
recognize that an empty stomach is simply a sensation and not an indication
of hunger at all, we can really begin to make some change and then we can deal
with the only true hunger, nutritional hunger. The rest of them are
illusionary. Nutritional hunger is the only real hunger and the problem is that
it's not very clear. You see it's not very clear because our ancestors didn't
have a grocery store to go to, so in other words mother nature ultimately
drove what was nutritionally available and so as the body said "Wow
I need this vitamin, I need this mineral, I need these fats, I need these proteins"
the body didn't say "we'll go and get this brand". It said eat something because
if you simply did that every day if you simply ate what was available around you
and nature every day over the course of the year you would get your nutritional
needs met. The challenge we have today is that most of us are not getting our core
nutritional needs met and so we are walking around with a permanent state as
a permanent feeling of hunger. The simplest way to neutralize this one is
to make sure that you follow one of our very very core principles at WildFit and
that is that your health is far more determined by you getting enough of the
good stuff than it is even by you eliminating the bad stuff, if you focus
on getting enough of the plants that you need to be eating, enough of the healthy
proteins that you need eating, enough of the hydration and water that you need. And if
you focus on that then you're gonna reduce your nutritional hunger
dramatically and then all of a sudden you're gonna have a great deal more
power to deal with emotional hunger when it comes up and you won't
have the low blood sugar issues. By getting your nutritional
needs met you'll change your relationship with food forever and by
understanding all these hungers and paying attention to them, by slowing time
down and asking yourself really, really why are you eating this thing right now?
You can make some change. Spend three months with us, if you
spend three months with us we'll take you through a process where we'll
incrementally change your nutritional relationship with food and your psychology over a steady period of time so that over time
your relationship will be changed permanently. This is not a situation
where you're gonna go on a program and get short-term results and then
boomerang back. This is how we will change your health trajectory forever.
