There are many ways our bodies talk to us, which I refer to as body speak (learning the language of your body). When we understand "our language" by connecting our mind, body, heart, and food, we become experts on ourselves and no longer need diets or outside resources to tell us what, when, and how much to eat.

To support the language of" body speak," one of the many tools I use with my clients is the hunger scale. A tool to help them begin to connect to their hunger and fullness. Many of us, especially dieters, are disconnected from our bodies and don't understand the subtle signals our bodies give us about hunger and fullness.

The lack of connection can happen if:

• You pick or graze all day, something that is often done mindlessly

• You think you are okay, then suddenly "hangry" happens, and you feel out of control

• You become engaged in a project and can become distracted from your hunger

• You are hyper-focused on dieting, the goal of losing weight, and you have learned to deny your hunger automatically

• You eat according to the clock, not your body

Like pain, hunger is subjective, and only you can know how you feel at any moment. A hunger scale begins to help you to connect your body sensations to help you gain information about your experience. 

While the scale is based on a continuum from over-hungry to "normal" eating range to over-full, you can quantify this in numbers from 0-10 or using the words unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant.

We often know what it feels like in the extremes of starving or feeling over hungry and stuffed and extremely over-full, usually connected to an unpleasant feeling. Learning to notice and acknowledge the pleasant is where you gain power in responding with kindness versus reacting to change the discomfort instantly. Understanding this continuum may take time, patience, practice, and compassion.

Rating your hunger can help avoid the "hangry's" creating the situation of having to eat everything in sight and being miserable to be around.

If you tend to pick or graze all day, this is an opportunity to check in with your hunger and notice if you are hungry or triggered by boredom, procrastination, tiredness, stress, lonely, sad, etc.

Taking the time to check in may help you pause to decide if you are hungry or begin to ask yourself if you are reacting to an emotional state. You then get to choose if you are ready to unpack the emotion or learn to let the unpleasant emotions pass. At that moment, we forget that negative emotions pass similarly to happy ones. Many of us have yet to learn to wait for them to recede.

When you learn to connect with your hunger, you will notice with time how your food choices change based on your hunger level. When you are starving, you may tend to eat the first thing you see, eat too over-full, and add the label emotional eater to it. The label emotional eater gets confused with our bodies' physical states. 

When you are pleasantly hungry, you can pause and decide what you want with the goal of satisfaction vs. the need to fill your empty stomach, which is powerful and has nothing to do with your lack of willpower.

Learning and understanding your hunger is where your power lies, and knowing your hunger may feel different than "my" hunger. There is no right or wrong, good or bad. 

A few signs of hunger to look for when you check in are you thoughts and its attention to food, loss of focus, irritability, headache, and lower energy. When you check in often, you will learn your subtle signs and understand it's not all about a growling tummy which is often a late sign of hunger.

Whether you use a scale of 1- 10, the unpleasant, pleasant, neutral, or over-hungry, "normal" eating range to over-full, find what works best for you to learn your "body speak."