Hunger Management

By:  Dr. Monte Meldman

The first step in hunger management is to change the meaning of hunger. Instead of hunger meaning you feel like eating, begin to think and feel that hunger is wonderful because it means that you are losing weight. Exhult in that wonderful delightful and beautiful feeling that "Yea Team I Feel Hungry" and I Love It because it means I am losing weight and that is wonderful.

The goal of a woman's life is to feel empty and that is achieved through feeling hungry and loving it. You feel empty and then smart, aggressive, active, intelligent, bright and ready to achieve.

HUNGER IS GOOD.

HUNGER IS WONDERFUL.

I LOVE TO FEEL HUNGRY BECAUSE IT MEANS I AM LOSING WEIGHT AND GETTING INTO SHAPE.

YEA FOR HUNGER

For when you eat a lot and feel full, you feel stuffed, puffy, sleepy, tired, stupid and depressed. Power lunch ruins the rest of the day. Have a salad and REJOICE IN FEELING EMPTY. The woman is YIN in the YIN/YANG paradigm. She feels marvelous. Feel that and rejoice. I love to feel empty. Feeling full and stuffed sucks. I WANT THIN.

So now that you feel hungry and wonderful and empty, allow your self to say hello to your hungry feelings. Say "Hello my hunger, how are you". Remember that your hunger is always trying to help you and it is your friend. Do not fight against your hunger. It is wonderful and wants to be recognized by you. Join with the hungry feelings and, looking at your hunger from your right shoulder , see if feeling or looking at your hunger gives you a new name for it.

Work on letting a "felt sense" (from Focusing by Eugene Gendlin PhD) locate someplace behind your hunger. And then feel what you feel behind your hunger. What is that felt sense? Is it fear? Is it feeling inadequate? Do you feed yourself and make yourself inadequate every time you are feeling inadequate? Feel for the felt sense that is located behind the hunger, in between the hunger and the "MURKY SPACE" that is located somewhere behind or underneath your hunger -- which incidentally you may be surprised to find that by now that hunger is gone as you work on the feelings underneath and behind the place where that hunger used to be. Good for you.

Now, feel and accept the feeling that you found behind your hunger. Feel it and relate to it. I mean we are trying to develop a relationship with ourselves so by talking to -with- your feelings you are getting in touch with yourself. That is the true purpose of treatment. To help you become congruent in your relations with your improved relations with and in yourself.

Good. Stay in touch with your feelings. Talk with them. Acknowledge them and treat them as if they are a real part of your self. You may find that defensive hunger and defensive eating is most often a response to a sense of loss. So when you look behind or under your hunger, you may confront your reaction to grief and a loss of relatedness with a loved one. Hunger and overeating occur so often after we lose a loved one. You will need to learn to get in touch with your feelings of love and loss and find how to connect to them. Begin by talking with them. Acknowledge your feelings. “Hello sadness and remorse” Then see what is behind them. Are they defensive or adaptive? Find the right name for them and talk with them.

Then you will catch on to the connection between your feelings of loss and overeating as a denial of loss. Always remember to love yourself and locate your center of love and let yourself come out of this experience with the finding of a love inside of the murky feelings that are behind the feelings of inadequacy and loss. Then you will come out of the murky in love with yourself and have heightened self love and self esteem. You will feel transformed by love.

And that my darling is a lot better than feeling hungry and stuffing yourself. Hunger is wonderful. Love it. Talk with it. Find out what is behind it. Get in touch with yourself, with self love and heightened self-esteem.

Monte J Meldman MD Board Certified Psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of obese people, mostly women , on the North Shore of Chicago Illinois in Deerfield. Technique elucidated is derived from "Focusing" by Eugene Gendlin PhD formerly of The University of Chicago, now of The Focusing Institute.