Episode 2_ The First Shift to Becoming a Normal Eater(Studio Sound)
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[00:00:00] So there's something that every normal eater does automatically, and if you wanna become a normal eater, you are also going to learn how to do it. And that first shift is eating a normal amount of food. In other words, normal eaters have stopped overeating. You are still overeating and your overeating prevents you from feeling like a normal eater.
So in the beginning when you're learning how to stop overeating, it's gonna feel unnatural. And the simplest way I teach this is by focusing on two things, hunger. Satisfied. Okay, so every client that comes to work with me, whether in my stop overeating mini course, my accelerator, or my mastermind learns this habit first because the number one eating habit a normal eater has is knowing when they are physically hungry and stopping eating when they are sated, or as I like to say, satisfied.
Now you might be thinking, okay, well JC, I don't stuff myself. [00:01:00] I'm not binge eating, but if you are eating until fullness. You are likely overeating. And that is a hard truth for a lot of women to hear because we were raised with beliefs like you should finish your plate. It's wasteful to leave food behind.
Eat now, in case you get hungry later. Or relying on things like the clock, like, oh, it's noon, so it must be lunchtime. I better go and eat. So normal eaters, they eat when they're hungry and they stop when they're satisfied. Not full, not stuffed. Just satisfied and that is a very important distinction. So, have you ever noticed that normal eaters, the people that you're picturing in your mind, they're not sitting on the couch uncomfortable in their jeans after dinner.
They don't feel sluggish or heavy. They feel very light, energized, and clearheaded. They can trust their body to get a little bit hungry. They're not panicking or freaking themselves out. It's not an emergency. It's not a threat, and [00:02:00] my clients, they're doing the exact same thing. They're getting really good at adapting to the hunger part of hunger.
Satisfied they become okay with skipping snacks, delaying their meals, even sometimes skipping breakfast or lunch, not out of restriction, but because they're simply not physically hungry, but stopping at satisfied. That is where the work is for most people. Satisfied is difficult. But that is where the biggest change and the fastest.
Weight loss happens. So if you have a deadline or a goal to lose a lot of weight in a shorter amount of time, like a lot of the clients who are interested in the 10, 10, 10 accelerator, mastering satisfied is the key because you might be thinking, well, I don't overeat a ton of food, but those little overeats.
Three to five times a day, they all add up and they add up into the weight that you have on your body, that excess weight that is staying [00:03:00] there, and that will continue to stay there. Or you will lose the weight, then gain the weight because of that overeating habit. It's the eating past satisfied habit that you have.
Now, here's why it's hard. Your brain, most of the time. Wants to zone out during meals. It wants to clean the plate, grab seconds, polish off the rest, not because you actually physically need the food, but because it's there and because you are responding on autopilot. Now remember, your brain is wired to conserve.
So when you zone out while eating, it's part of that wiring. It doesn't just wanna turn on during meals. It actually feels quite uncomfortable to pay attention to your body in between bites. It's actually annoying even, but the results are astonishing. When you can practice turning on your brain while you're eating food and asking yourself every few bites, am I still hungry?
Like is my body physically [00:04:00] still asking for more food? That new practice will become your default. You'll stop mid meal. If you're satisfied, you'll naturally stop overeating, and that's when the weight will start dropping. And for most of my clients, this happens very quickly. That is the power of hunger, satisfied.
And when you get this, you realize that your body does not need as much food as you thought it did. And that's not scary. It's actually very freeing. Some days you'll eat more, and some days you'll eat less. That's actually what normal eaters do. And once you learn how to trust that eating becomes effortless, you stop overthinking it and you just eat, you move on.
But let's pause for a second and zoom out. When you think about what you've been doing to try to stop overeating, it's probably one of these things. Tracking Cal. Weighing your food, logging macros, or following somebody else's meal plans, [00:05:00] food apps, or crazy rules like no carbs after seven. I remember years ago buying those color coded containers.
I think it might've been the 21 day fix. You know, it's like those containers that tells you how much greens and proteins and fruits eat. I remember portioning everything like a champ for about two and a half weeks. And then of course I was like, screw this, because at the end of the day. It took so much energy.
And here's the thing, normal eaters, they're not doing any of that. Not because they have more discipline, but because they've learned to eat in a way that doesn't require that kind of mental gymnastics every single day. So I want you to picture yourself as a normal eater. You're not logging into MyFitnessPal after I every snack.
You're not dragging your food scale to the cottage every summer. You're not constantly thinking about what you should or shouldn't eat. You're checking in with two simple cues. Am I hungry? Am I satisfied? That is it. Sometimes [00:06:00] you'll sit down and after a few bites, you'll realize, oh my gosh. I'm already sated.
That's enough. You'll stop eating, you'll feel good, and you'll move on with your day. Very calm, very energized, and complete. All right, now don't go anywhere After the short break, I'm gonna teach you how to overcome the biggest mistake when trying to stop overeating, implementing hunger. My name is Paula and I'm 55 years old.
One thing I loved most about the 12 Month Mastermind is the weekly group calls and lots of support from jc. My biggest obstacle was understanding why I was using food to avoid my feelings. And then how to handle those feelings when I wasn't using the food. I really recommend working with JCE because she was instrumental in helping me get in touch with my emotions and guided me through some old beliefs that I was unaware were driving some of my daily choices.
Since working with jc, I've learned how to be more compassionate with myself and how to move in a way that supports my [00:07:00] goals for health and for a fully lived life. Now let's talk about some of the obstacles with hunger, satisfied, because this sounds simple, but this is where most women struggle. One of the biggest pushbacks I hear, especially from women who aren't my clients yet is, but I'm hungry all the time.
When we dig in, it's not physical hunger. It is emotional hunger that you are experiencing. This is when you find yourself thinking very simple thoughts like, I'm hungry. I should probably eat. I need a pick me up. I'm feeling tired. I think I need a snack. This is not true. Hunger and how we know this is because you're having.
Thoughts about food. You're having thoughts about hunger, whereas true hunger, it starts in your body and then travels to your brain. Whereas emotional hunger starts from one of those thoughts and then suddenly you have an urge for food. Okay? Most times what's really happening is that you are feeling something.
Maybe feeling stress, boredom, frustration, and your [00:08:00] brain is offering food as the fix. So this is where most overeating happens. It's these times where you have convinced yourself to eat food when you're not even hungry. Not because your body needed the fuel, but because you are giving into a craving. You talked yourself into eating.
Even though it wasn't hunger. Now here's a simple tool I wanna offer you. I call it the chicken breast test. Would a plain chicken breast sound good right now? If yes, it's probably hunger. And if not, it's likely an urge. So the next time you say, I think I'm hungry, ask yourself, if I had a plain chicken breast in front of me right now, would I go and eat that?
And if not, it's probably not true Hunger. Okay? This is the kind of thing that most women have never learned how to separate, and it's why they keep overeating. So if that's you, if you're like, yep. Think this is my biggest struggle. I just don't know what real hunger is, and I definitely dunno how to talk myself into [00:09:00] stopping at satisfied when I know I'm there.
My stop overeating mini course might be a perfect starting place for you, and I'm gonna teach you exactly how to master hunger, satisfied, and stop overeating. You know, I've had clients tell me that they've. Finally get it after struggling for years just from that stop overeating mini course. So that would be your next step.
But let's go a bit deeper with another obstacle in stopping overeating, especially if you are a snacker. If you're somebody who eats after dinner, this is gonna be for you. There is a hormone called ghrelin. It's your hunger hormone, and it gets released on a schedule based on. When you actually eat, so if you're used to snacking every night, ghrelin, that hormone will send a signal to your brain even if your body doesn't actually need food.
That's why trusting hunger can be tricky. You actually have to rewire your patterns. This is exactly what my clients do when they stop eating at night. They realize, okay, I'm not actually truly hungry. I [00:10:00] definitely wouldn't wanna eat a chicken breast at 8:00 PM and they don't physically need fuel at that time because a lot of women, the way that they would identify a normal eater is somebody who is not eating every night in the evenings.
And so it really comes down to what is your version of normal eating. If you wanna stop overeating at night, it's actually quite a simple fix. And again, I go into that in my stop overeating mini course if you want to start there and learn that. And quite often the truth is women want the connection.
They don't actually want the chips. They wanna feel calm and relaxed. They don't actually want the cookies and those feelings. They do not come from food. That is the deeper emotional coaching work that we do, and I, I'm definitely gonna get into that in a later episode. So to close, I wanna share something very true and very important with you.
Normal eaters still overeat and I like to say. You know, roughly 10 to 20% [00:11:00] of the time, they don't aim to overeat. They don't plan to overeat, but it still happens. They just don't make it a problem. They don't track it. They don't spiral because they believe they are normal eaters. They even when they sometimes overeat.
Now the way that I help clients build that belief for themselves, we actually track hunger, satisfied. Not calories, not macros. Just hunger and satisfied, especially in the beginning. It's incredibly simple and powerful because when you see that 80% of the time that you're eating in alignment with hunger, satisfied, you start to believe that you are becoming a normal eater.
And from that belief, you can start acting like one. So to recap, learning how to eat between hunger and satisfied is the most natural way to stop overeating. This actually puts your body in a caloric deficit, which means that if you do have weight to lose. You will lose it. And when you're at your natural weight, it's what allows you to [00:12:00] maintain your weight with ease.
Again, some days you're going to be needing more food. Some days you're going to be eating less food. That is normal. Your body does not require the same food every single day. Normal eaters. Eat a little bit more sometimes, and they eat a little bit less sometimes. But beyond weight loss, hunger, satisfied will end all of your mindless eating that you're currently doing because when you're tuned into your body, you're not just grabbing snacks, you're not just eating because it's there.
You're asking, oh my gosh, wait, I was about to eat this thing. Am I actually hungry? And you don't eat unless the answer is yes. This creates safety, peace, and a sense of control around food because you realize I can always eat more later if I need to, if my body is physically hungry again. And that alone, my friend, changes everything.
So if you wanna get started on this work, go grab the Stop Over Eating mini course. I'll link it for you in the show notes. This [00:13:00] simple practice that you can actually just get started with today is where it all begins. You can stop overeating today. I will see you in the next episode where we're gonna dive in on how to follow through on your word to yourself.
