I get hungry. A lot. Most of the day I'm either hungry, have just eaten, or am getting ready to eat. It's a good thing I work at home, for myself, or I would probably get in trouble for being in the kitchen too much. One of the benefits of exercising almost everyday, and then working with other people's workouts, is the room to eat a large quantity of food that fuels all my movement. When I'm out of my normal routine and not as active, my hunger drops significantly, until I get bored. Then something inside me rages, and this is the lie I'm going to unravel.

Because our bodies are amazing, miraculous machines, with lots of overlapping systems and compensations to accommodate our choices and habits, there are times when the signals we are perceiving from our bodies are encrypted. For instance, when we sit for long periods of time, we often feel tired, but what we really need is movement. We may feel like staying up at night to worry about a possible or real problem when what we really need is to sleep so that our brains can "flush" the accumulated thought patterns that we don't need out of our consciousness. Maybe there have been times when you have continued to exercise through fatigue or pain, thinking that you needed to "just do it" and quit being a wimp about your fitness, when you really had an underlying issue that only manifested as an injury after too much exercise. All these signals are simple examples of misreading our bodies, not because we aren't hearing it speak to us, but perhaps because we are not listening. Just like intrapersonal communication is fraught with misunderstanding, we can misinterpret body signals just as easily. It takes a good "ear" to know what is really being "said" to us.

How do you get good at understanding your body? From my experience, the best way has been through lots of misunderstandings and mistakes. Following new advice or a specific eating program that didn't give me good results has taught me that I misunderstood my body. Of course, I'm excluding any clinical diagnosis from this lesson and simply explaining how we can learn to understand what our bodies truly need. We need not blindly follow advice from a blog, or what worked for your neighbor or sister or personal trainer. But really, what works for your body. Just like there is no one who thinks exactly like you, there is no body that responds exactly like yours. And, while there are some pretty solid parameters for healthy living that we can all adhere to for the most part, there are always some idiosyncrasies that are unique to you...call it your body personality.

One of the signals that has tripped me for most of my life is this feeling of being hungry, a lot. And, in my head, why wouldn't I be hungry a lot...I work out hard almost every day, I'm awake for almost 18 hours everyday, and I'm moving most of the time...that should add up to a lot of calories, right? Here's where the misunderstanding has manipulated my thinking, and how I've come to be able to hear what by body needs more truthfully. When I'm feeling hungry, I try to think about what I've already eaten, what movement I've done, and how much time has passed since I have eaten. I also look at what I'm working on and whether or not I just want a distraction because I'm avoiding a task I don't enjoy or a deadline I'm procrastinating on. I consider how much water I've been drinking compared to caffeine and other fluids, especially if I've already exercised and not rehydrated. All this thinking, that happens in about 10 seconds, leads me to this question: Am I hungry enough to eat vegetables? If my answer is no, then I'm not really that hungry, but rather, I am misinterpreting my body's signals to me. This simple question is a litmus test for me to know for real whether it's time to snack or if I'm bored, frustrated, tired, lonely or distracted. A lot of times, I'm thirsty and not hungry at all. Sometimes, I really am hungry and need a meal or snack with produce and protein and starches. And once in awhile, I just need some chocolate. And that's the tasty truth.