written by: Tony Junkin

If we were to take everything we know about health, fitness, and nutrition, and narrow it down to just one important fact that everyone should know, one tool that everyone needs for success, one ring to rule them all, it would be this: You have to learn to listen to your body.

You already listen to your body for a lot of things: you know when you are tired, you know when you have energy, you know when you are in pain, etc. As a society, we have become so used to food giving us instant gratification, that a lot of people have stopped listening to their stomachs. When it comes to health and nutrition, you can do whatever diet you want, you can eat as little or as often as you want, you can exercise for an hour a day, but none of that matters is you are eating more calories than you need and regardless of anything else, it all comes down to this: if you are eating more calories than your body needs, you will be overweight. Period. No ifs, no ands, no buts. You can count all the macronutrients you want. You can eat low fat, low carb, high protein, high fiber, whatever, but those things ultimately affect the overall health of your internal body systems. The one simple thing that determines your weight is the number of calories you take in each day.

That sounds so simple that everybody should be able to maintain a healthy weight, right? Except most people don’t. Let me hit you with some statistics from the 2018 National Health & Nutrition Examination Survey: 30.7% of the US population is overweight, 42.4% are obese, and 9.2% are severely obese. That adds up to 82.3% of the US that has a weight problem, so there’s a good chance if you’re reading this, you are one of them. If you’re not, well done! If you are, you’re very much not alone! If you want to do something about it, the good news is that you can! Different types of diet, experimenting with eating times, etc are all ways that work best when you are trying to maintain your weight, not significantly alter it. For that, counting calories is the simplest way to lose weight because it’s what ultimately determines how your body stores fat. You can download a calorie counting app and as long as you remember to put every single bite of every single thing you eat, you’ll see results if you stay within your calorie goal. That’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. Things are much easier when you combine that with listening to your body.

We live in a fast paced world where we expect immediate gratification, especially when it comes to feeding ourselves. We want it fast and we want it to taste great and we don’t want to spend any time on making it. Look at any commercially zoned street and you’ll see a dozen options for food. Food is sold in grocery stores, drug stores, mini marts, gas stations, basically everywhere! And even better, most of it is already made so you have to put very little effort into eating it. The best thing of all? You can order it from your couch to come straight to your door from almost any food place you want. Isn’t it great?! NO, actually, it’s not.

We are accustomed to eating 3 times a day, and we tend to eat our biggest meal during the slowest part of our day. Most of the time, that food is heavily processed and full of calories. If you order from a restaurant or go out to eat, you can absolutely guarantee yourself that everything you eat will have about 3 times the number of calories it needs, but that’s what makes it taste so much better than homemade, right? Except your body absolutely hates it. You feel so full you’re weighed down or your pants are tight because you ate so much. You’re bloated and uncomfortable. You feel dehydrated because you consumed enough salt in one meal to last a week. You don’t have any energy because the healthy parts of food have been stripped out to improve the taste. You have acid reflux from all the crap you’re constantly putting into your body. These are all ways that your body is trying to tell you that you are fueling it wrong. Sure, there’s a pill you can pop for a lot of these, but to fix it at the source, all you have to do is slow down enough to listen to what your body is trying to tell you. When I decided to get back in shape, I basically had to relearn my relationship with my body because I was so used to ignoring it.

Regardless of how hungry you are, your body only needs so much food to be satisfied. Except when we are hungry we tend to overestimate that and eat too much. That’s because our body tells us when we have had enough, we just don’t listen and tend to keep going well past that point. We even go back for more! So, in order to listen to your body, here’s a little trick that can help: as soon as you feel “not starving”, put your fork down and walk away from the plate for 20 minutes. If, after that time, you still feel hungry and need to eat, then go back and eat some more. But, I’d be willing to bet you won’t. There’s a very good chance that you will start doing something else and forget that you were “absolutely starving”. I put that in quotes because rarely is anyone with access to food actually “starving”. It’s a very specific body state that we tend to exaggerate to an embarrassing degree in this instant gratification world.

Once you’ve learned to listen to the cues your body gives you while eating, you can move on to asking yourself if you are eating for the right reasons. Are you grabbing a handful of crackers because they are sitting on the counter in front of you? Or is it because you are genuinely hungry and need food? Most of the time it’s because they are just there (which goes back to my last article of not keeping junk food in the house) and we grab a handful of this and a few of those throughout the day and the next thing you know we’ve racked up an extra 1000 calories past our goal in a day just from snacking. For reference, a pound of fat is 3500 calories so if you are in this habit, you should expect to put on a pound every 3.5 days. It’s fast. If you are reaching for those crackers because you just want to put something in your mouth, grab an apple or some yogurt instead. You know what foods are good for you and you have to make a conscious effort to eat them.

Sometimes, as adults, we have to eat things that don’t make out taste buds dance because it’s good for us. You know how you tell your kids to eat things because they’re good for you? Well, that applies to you as well. The third component of listening to your body is to ask yourself if you are making the right choice. We should be eating foods that are good for us about 90% of the time and eating stuff that tastes really good about 10% of the time. As a country, we are usually doing the exact opposite. People who are healthy only eat “bad” once or twice a week so think about that the next time you want something covered in cheese and topped with sugar. Your body will respond to all of these by making you feel tired, run down, bloated, and most of all: unfulfilled. Part of the reason we keep eating well past the point of satiety is because the foods we are eating are nutritionally void of anything good for us. Stop eating out and I promise you’ll lose weight. Take the time to cook healthier recipes at home and you will feel so much better. One thing I do is snack on a bowl of raw spinach leaves while I cook. No, they don’t taste like cheesecake, but they keep me from eating ingredients I’m using to cook with and they fill me up with something that’s healthy. That works really well for me. You find what works for you and stick with it.

Ultimately, you know your body better than anyone. You know when you’re eating poorly, you know when you’re eating too much, you know that cheesecake shouldn’t be eaten every night because we live in a cruel world. You just have to listen to yourself and talk to yourself and do what your body tells you to do. Only then will you be on the road to success.