You are not hungry most of the time. You are not always
hungry when something smells good, looks good, or tastes good, whether
or not you think you are. All food is prepared to tempt your taste
buds, even though you’re not hungry.

You are also not hungry because there is stress, a deadline,
pressure, a personal or business problem, anxiety, tension, it’s
morning afternoon evening when alone with friends weekdays weekends day
time night time money problems it rained it didn’t came with the dinner
it was there . . . You are not hungry 24 hours a day, though you might
think you are.

There are many daily food encounters: friends offering food, a
maitre d’ describing dessert, the smell of popcorn in a movie theater,
to name but a few. Acknowledging the visual and emotional blitz helps
interrupt the knee-jerk reaction that causes you to eat even though
you’re not hungry. Just knowing you are not hungry most of the time is
a helpful piece of information.

You may even have pinpointed the reasons you’re thinking of
food, reasons that seem to justify your eating when you’re not hungry.
I’ve heard excuses as varied as “I got so angry because I couldn’t get
a cab” to “I got caught in a downpour without an umbrella.” Many of
these reasons might seem a valid enough reason to make you eat. They
are not.

Certainly anger might tempt you to use food as a drug to keep
the feelings down. If you eat when you’re angry, does the anger go
away? Or perhaps frustration weakens your resolve. At which point is
your threshold for discomfort seriously challenged? Bored? At exactly
which point does a yawn become a yen? Tired? When does food become a
replacement for sleep?

Does the emotional pain diminish when you eat? Is the
celebration any better because you come home stuffed, bloated, and full
of gas, uncomfortable and with lowered self-esteem? Is it worth it?

Consider, if you will, that your past behavior has not worked.
A clear vision of what you’re trying to accomplish will. Most of all,
you need a mind open to the possibility of change.

One man I almost taught was so afraid to change that he was
locked into where he hung his coat, where I sat, and where he sat. He
was terrified I was going to pull off his covers and yank away his
security blanket of whatever food he was holding onto – whichever food
he thought made him comfortable. He was so uncomfortable with even the
thought of change, he would not tell me how much he weighed, or what he
wanted to weigh.

Of course it’s possible that some discomfort might occur while
you’re changing. The very act of weighing less than you did before is a
change. And there is no change without change. But there are ways to
lessen the discomfort of the journey from where you are to where you
want to be; to offer options, suggestions, tactics, tips, tried and
true assignments that work more and more as they are practiced. After
all, you learned to use food to calm yourself down. You can learn a new
method, a new automatic response.

Do you eat out of habit, not hunger? Identifying habits
requires guidance, introspection, and patience, but most of all
honesty. Once you acknowledge, “Yes, I do that,” you can decide you
don’t want to do that anymore and begin to do something else, instead.

It is unrealistic and self-defeating to expect to go from
habitual, compulsive, or addictive eating behavior to a calm, rational,
in-control eating person by reading an article, even this article. You
can, however, alter automatic, learned responses by creating new and
effective alternative behaviors that will result in permanent change.
The new behavioral choices add up to a permanent weight loss,
incrementally, not rattattattat. It’s worth repeating: Your original
patterns evolved over a lifetime. Now you can consciously plan the
person you want to be.

Food does not contain a narcotic. Food only has the power you
gave it by doing the same thing with it each time you encountered it.
Food has the power you vested in it as part of a ritual distraction
with your mind, many times since childhood, when you might have learned
how to cope with stressful situations by using food inappropriately. It
might have worked then, but it’s not working now. Now you need to find
a new way that will work now.

I’ll show you what to do if you are not hungry but are
tempted. There are many things you can do when food is offered, baked,
cooked, prepared, and present just for you. Learn how to handle the
compelling urges at the office, in a restaurant, or at home. Learn that
an umbrella-topped pushcart, wafting a familiar aroma, doesn’t always
mean you have to eat a hot dog.

Hunger demands to be fed. An urge passes. Know the difference?
The next time you’re at home and thinking of food, and you just ate a
little while before, set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes and distract
yourself with some activity. Sometimes I set the timer, get busy with
some other project, and when the bell goes off, I not only forget I set
the bell, I’m not even sure why I set it in the first place.

One woman recalled a walk she took one summer day. She spied a
man eating an ice cream cone, (a visual stimulus). She used the mental
repatterning techniques she’d created to distract herself. She’d
practiced and repeated the words, “Alert. Alert. Cross the street,”
which she did while laughing. She reassured herself that everything was
going to be okay, and she prompted herself to calm her breathing.“Two
minutes later, I’d found the most adorable sequined hat in a store
window,” she recounted. The moment clearly had passed.

The techniques were there in her memory bank because she had
written the specifics of her plan, reviewed it daily to remind herself
of the details, envisioned it in her mind, so that when the ice cream
cone appeared, her new automatic response to say, “Alert. Alert. Cross
the street, take a deep breath, and keep walking,” kicked in. It is a
process everyone can learn. It begins in your mind.

If you do not eat something when you normally would have, you
might be particularly motivated to reach your goal weight for an
upcoming wedding, class reunion, or birthday celebration. If you use
will power, self-control, good intentions, and inner resolve, you’ll
find the results temporary. The next time the same circumstances or
food appear, you may be a little less motivated or a little more angry,
lonely, tired, or bored, and you’ll probably eat the food, only to
reinforce your old eating behavior, which is what caused you to gain
weight in the first place. There is no good intention, self-control,
inner resolve or will power sharp enough to cut through the layers and
tentacles of your very practiced and polished ritualized eating habits
– habits gone haywire. If you ever had good intention, self-control,
will power or inner resolve, you would have used it 5, 10, 20, 30, or
50 pounds ago.

If, however, you begin to change your overreaction to food by
doing something else, you might end up eating the object of your
desire, but, you’ll most likely not put as much on your plate, you’ll
eat a little less, stop a little sooner, and eat it a little less
intensely than if you had not attempted some repatterning techniques.

The first time you do it the new way, it might feel awkward and
uncomfortable. It is different from what you’ve done in the past. But
no matter how uncomfortable you feel at the beginning of creating a new
habit, nothing is as uncomfortable as having to choose what to wear
based on how much of your body it will cover. Nothing is as
uncomfortable as selecting what to wear based on what fits on a
particular day rather than what is appropriate for a particular
occasion.

Maintain a positive, I can do it mental attitude, and positive
results happen. Avoid negative words about yourself, such as bad or
failure or I blew it. They are just words and do not apply to anyone
who continues to try. “It ain’t over until it’s over,” Yogi Berra said.
I believe that.

For best results, attempt many kinds of change in your life. If
drinking water doesn’t help by itself, perhaps the water and deep
breathing will be helpful. Sometimes water, deep breathing, changing
location and calling a friend is what you need. It is the action of
taking an action — any action – that gets the result. It almost doesn’t
matter which techniques you use to repattern – what is important is
that you take a swift, purposeful, and immediate action. The quicker
the action, the quicker the moment of anxiety passes.

It is possible that sometimes you might try every technique
available and the moment is still difficult. It happens. But that
doesn’t mean you should stop trying. It just means your results have
not quite accumulated enough to effect a noticeable change. It doesn’t
mean nothing is happening. It just might be too subtle for you to
notice. Keep doing it anyway. It accumulates. Continue trying, and from
each seemingly failed, imperfect human attempt, the structure of the
old, destructive habit will be eroded another little bit . . . you will
be that much closer to success which is eating only when hungry.

It took many episodes of reinforcing old behavior to create
patterns as ingrained as the ones you are trying to change. It takes
many steps of new behavior until you’re hooked on the new way.

Sometimes one technique works, sometimes another. Every food
encounter is different from every other one. Everyone responds to each
stimulus differently and responds to repatterning techniques in a
different way, too. A combination of several techniques may be just the
ticket when one is not enough. Be creative.

Identify your eating patterns. Even the seemingly insignificant
ones, such as it’s only broccoli, or I only drink black coffee add up.
Do you mean an orange has the same significance as a piece of candy?
What ritual thinking is in your subconscious? Are leftovers a problem?
Does food preparation end up being one for you and one for the pot?
Does someone else serve you your food at home, in the office, in a
restaurant? Do you finish everything served to you?

One woman I teach had the habit of eating after eating. She
battled that habit for many months. When I spoke to her last week,
however, she reported a two-week period when she did not once eat after
dinner. This lifelong pattern had finally been laid to rest. She is 59
years old.

If you buy, prepare, serve, and accept a little less food, you’ll eat less. Ultimately, you’ll be a little less.

If you don’t bring it into the house you won’t eat it. Out of sight, out of mind.

If it doesn’t taste good or look good or satisfy the eye and
palate, don’t eat it. We all belong to a nation of people who finish
everything on their plate. That is not necessary. You may leave food
over. It’s okay. Food is wasted if you put it into a body that doesn’t
need it. Better to throw it away. If you order less the next time,
there will be less to waste.

When you go off your program because you’re human, you didn’t
blow it, weren’t bad, or a failure. Don’t beat yourself up. Simply get
back on your program at the very next meal. Try to figure out what you
could do next time the same thing inevitably happens. The quicker
you’re back on your program, the more you’ll want to stay on your
program. It is becoming comfortable, enjoyable, and preferred behavior.

Think of things you can do if you’re thinking about eating but know you’re not hungry.