Tell me if this is a famil­iar story to you.

You wake up and have a quick cup of cof­fee before run­ning off to work.  You’ve decided that eat­ing break­fast makes you take in too many calo­ries so you’ve stopped doing that.  You rush in the front door with­out a minute to lose and set­tle in at your desk.  Your head is a lit­tle buzzy and your stom­ach doesn’t feel very good either.  You put in about an hour of work, grow­ing more and more fuzzy, a lit­tle agi­tated, and sud­denly you are starv­ing.  Too hun­gry to count calo­ries you rush down the hall to a vend­ing machine and grab a gra­nola bar (healthy choice, right?) and inhale it.

Frus­trated that you “cheated” you only allow your­self a small salad, with no dress­ing, for lunch.  By 2pm you can’t keep your eyes open and you are dream­ing of pizza drip­ping with cheese, burg­ers and fries, and a big slice of cake to wash it all down with.

You sol­dier on through the rest of your work day and hurl your­self through the drive home, dream­ing of what you will find in your kitchen.

As your din­ner is cook­ing you munch on crack­ers and cheese, cook­ies, a hand­ful of cereal, and a 100 calo­rie pack of some­thing or other.  You sit down and eat a din­ner, twice the por­tion you know you should have, because you are just that hungry.

After din­ner you are too stuffed and tired to do any­thing but sit in front of the tele­vi­sion.  Frus­trated about how you acted that day, you treat your feel­ings with ice cream and a glass of wine.  I mean, you already blew it so why not, right?

It doesn’t have to be this way.  All of those choices show that your body and mind are deprived of nour­ish­ment.  You would no sooner run your car on empty and expect it to win the Indy 500.  That is what your body is expe­ri­enc­ing.  Your gas light came on at 10 am.  You stalled out in your dri­ve­way. You lost the bat­tle before you even got your key in the door.

This is what hap­pens when you don’t trust your body.  This is what hap­pens when you have not made peace with food.

When you trust your body and make peace with food you rec­og­nize the warn­ing signs long before din­ner time. You honor the hunger imme­di­ately with food that nour­ishes you because you have the patience to get good food. This is called Intu­itive Eating.

Learn to eat things that make you feel strong when you feel that first sen­sa­tion of hunger.  There is no value in depriv­ing your­self all day to cut calo­ries if you are going to eat your way through the evening, feel guilty and try again the next day. Intu­itive Eat­ing is about get­ting re-acquainted with your body’s sig­nals and catch­ing your­self before you are ravenous.

If you are ready to learn more about Intu­itive Eat­ing and gain skills to apply imme­di­ately, sign up for this free webi­nar, “Intro­duc­tion to Intu­itive Eat­ing” facil­i­tated by Theresa Grisanti and Tamara Flan­ders.  By join­ing this work­shop you will learn more about Intu­itive Eat­ing and how vital it is to last­ing, effort­less health and nat­ural weight control.

Theresa Grisanti has been study­ing and apply­ing her knowl­edge of health, nutri­tion and intu­itive eat­ing for more than 15 years. Her train­ing at the Insti­tute for Inte­gra­tive Nutri­tion, included instruc­tion from lead­ers in the holis­tic heal­ing field, such as Andrew Weil and Mona Lisa Schultz. This means you ben­e­fits from tech­niques that have been used to help thou­sands of peo­ple to change their lives.  Find out more about Theresa and what she’s up to at Seeds of Life.

Tamara Flan­ders is the founder of Your Body Awake, Holis­tic Health Ser­vices in Rex­ford, NY. She works with busy women look­ing to reclaim their health through pos­i­tive food and lifestyle choices. Learn more at Your Body Awake.