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It will take time to put all the principles in this section of the book into practice. Some of the principles you can begin to practice immediately, while others will require you to first make lifestyle adjustments or work with a health care provider. If you feel stalled on any principle, you can always begin practicing the next principle and later go back.

Remember to be gentle with yourself as you make lifestyle adjustments. Lack of motivation or willingness is often a result of blocked emotional areas. Practicing the self-care skills outlined will help you work through these areas of imbalance and unlock the keys to your resistance.

It can be helpful to practice these principles with other family members or friends. These principles are truly for everyone, not just overeaters. Anyone who wants to feel better and have more energy will benefit.

Years of chronic dieting have taught many overeaters to be afraid of their hunger. Something as basic as listening to the wisdom of our bodies and eating when we’re hungry feels unsafe. We’re not sure we can trust our body signals to guide us. Perhaps we will eat everything in sight and never stop. What if we never feel satisfied? Lack of emotional nourishment in our lives has led us to associate hunger with emptiness and unmet needs.

We definitely did not start out this way. Infants and small children intuitively eat when they’re hungry and stop eating usually before they’re full. The truth is we can relearn to listen to our bodies and trust them to guide us. In order to do this, we must once and for all give up the idea of overly restrictive dieting.

If you’ve been a chronic dieter, you’ve probably learned lots of creative ways to ignore or dull your hunger signals. Perhaps you skip meals; drink calorie-free beverages such as coffee, tea, and diet sodas throughout the day; chew sugar-free gum; or smoke cigarettes. Maybe you try to stay as busy as possible to tune out hunger signals. These tricks, which are all attempts to fool the body, disconnect you from your body’s wisdom and do not work well for sustained weight loss.

Many chronic dieters don’t remember what it feels like to be hungry many times per day. Some try to decide through their thoughts whether they “deserve” to eat. Others eat according to the clock, whether they’re hungry or not. And many tune out hunger by cutting it off at the pass: they eat large meals and lots of snacks and rarely register hunger.

Our metabolism slows down when we ignore our hunger signals, and putting off eating often leads to ravenous overeating later in the day. When you’re used to ignoring your hunger, you may not notice the early subtle signals and may register hunger only when it is extreme.