Ever wondered why you reach for that sugar hit at 3pm, no matter how hard you resist? In this episode I discuss the body's signals and how, in our busy lives, we sometimes lose touch with these vital cues.
Our bodies talk, but are we listening? I'll share how many of my clients have identified and changed their unconscious eating habits which were sabotaging their health and how understanding their bodies' needs led to transformational change and how this could apply to you.
I also discuss the often overlooked role of magnesium deficiency and the importance of protein in making us feel satiated. And importantly, I discuss how we need to teach our children to understand and respect their body and its messages. If you think hunger is you enemy, this is the episode for you!
Learn more about Fiona's speaking, radio and consultation services at Informed Health: https://informedhealth.com.au/
Sign up to receive our newsletter by clicking here.
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Credit for the music used in this podcast:
The Beat of Nature
Ever wondered why you reach for that sugar hit at 3pm, no matter how hard you resist? In this episode I discuss the body's signals and how, in our busy lives, we sometimes lose touch with these vital cues.
Our bodies talk, but are we listening? I'll share how many of my clients have identified and changed their unconscious eating habits which were sabotaging their health and how understanding their bodies' needs led to transformational change and how this could apply to you.
I also discuss the often overlooked role of magnesium deficiency and the importance of protein in making us feel satiated. And importantly, I discuss how we need to teach our children to understand and respect their body and its messages. If you think hunger is you enemy, this is the episode for you!
Learn more about Fiona's speaking, radio and consultation services at Informed Health: https://informedhealth.com.au/
Sign up to receive our newsletter by clicking here.
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn
Credit for the music used in this podcast:
The Beat of Nature
Welcome to the Wellness Connection podcast with Fiona Kane. I'm your host, fiona Kane, and today I will be talking to you about the importance of listening to your body. I have talked a little bit about this in previous episodes and the importance of the way we talk to children and what we teach children about listening to their body and listening to their intuition as well. I think it's an important topic, so that's where I'm headed with you today. So firstly, I wanted to talk about I was actually recently talking to a client about this topic and this particular client had been quite disconnected from her body and I was talking to her about how that came about and why it's important to reconnect now. So I have discussed before that it is really important to be connected to your body because essentially well one it is the longest relationship you're going to have in your whole life you and your body and a really important way that we care for our body is we're connected, because if you're not connected, you don't notice important signals. So if you're not connected, you don't notice that you are full or that you are satisfied and not before full, but satisfied so you don't stop eating, right. So when we're disconnected, that whole like unconscious eating thing, right, you'll be sitting there eating a bag of chips and they're watching television, or in the car and you don't notice, right, it's not connected, you're disconnected, right. So we're eating, unconsciously, not consciously connected to our body. So, essentially, we can and do ignore important signs and signals when we're not connected to our body. So and just noticing things like how you're feeling or symptoms you're having. Or, you know, are you feeling thirsty, maybe you need some water, or are you feeling tired, maybe you need to rest, you know, are you feeling hungry? Maybe you need to eat? Have you overeaten? You know all of those things. They're all clues. You know your body gives you certain signs and signals and clues as to, maybe, something that you can and that you can adjust to improve how everything's working. Because, if you think about it, your body is full of a whole bunch of cells that are like a whole bunch of little factories, right? So, if you think about it, your body, being millions of little factories, all contain in this, in this body, right? Those millions of factories all require a certain level of ingredients and and certain temperature, or a certain amount of sleep, a certain amount of. Basically, your body requires certain parameters to function well. And so no, unlike, no, no different to a factory where, I assume, something would start not working and alarm would go off or something would break down or something would start making a funny noise or whatever. And you start to notice, oh okay, there's something wrong on this convey about, or there's something wrong with this door, or there's something, or you know there's something wrong with the deliveries and we're not getting the, the, the ingredients in, you know. So what we're in your body would be nutrients in. So, essentially, the factory does start to make sounds or symptoms or or hints that there's something off kilter, there's something not working.
Speaker 1:And that's why it's important to be connected, because when you're connected you can kind of notice those things. You know simple, small things, and when you notice simple small things you often are able to correct things really quickly and you know. An example for me would just be like if, basically, you know my how does it like a too much when I stop eating vegetables or if I'm not having enough water? So all of a sudden I start sort of not being regular and my first thing is to say, okay, what have I been doing, what have I been eating, what have I been not eating? Okay, I have anything green for a couple days, right. So it's just a really quick corrector for me to kind of go alright, this isn't normal feeling uncomfortable, feeling bloated. Okay, what do I need to do? All, like I said before, so I'm thirsty. What do I need to do? I need water, yeah, or I'm hungry, I'll have an, even for hours. No, no wonder, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I was having this conversation with a client and I've had this conversation with many, many clients over the years and this client had had a job that meant that she wasn't able to be present With her body. And I'll give you examples of what those jobs might be. It might be a surgeon or a nurse, or someone just who's in an operating theater. Right, if you're an operating theater and you're doing like a Six hour operation, it doesn't really matter if you need to get the toilet or if you hungry, thirsty, whatever it's kind of like. That's not relevant because the job needs to get done, right. Or it could be that you could be on a call center, like lifeline or something, and you know, if you're in the middle of something really big, you can't just sort of think I need to go and do this thing for myself. You've got to be present for whatever is going on for you. That could be also if you're in security or if you're in police work or if you're an army or navy or those kinds of jobs no football player on the field in the middle of the game, whatever it is right.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of jobs that I'm unfortunately train driver A lot of jobs that make it hard for you to kind of just suddenly have different needs and to listen to your body the whole time. The jobs actually require you not listen to your body for several hours at a time. Excuse me, I just have some water I'm missing to my body. So because there are these kinds of jobs, people often just learn not to listen to the body, and I understand the practicality of that in your different job. So I'm not having a go at anybody for that reason. What happens is often we do it for way longer than that, like even when we're not in the job anymore and we don't have to do that, we keep doing it.
Speaker 1:And other reasons which I have discussed in previous episodes, that people might not be listening to the body I might not be connected to the body, is if they've had any sort of trauma and you kind of abuse or pain, any kind of pain or illness the kinds of reasons why someone might disconnect, and that those reasons can often be very good reasons at the time. And, of course, if some of those if I'm really painful issues there, please go get professional help to help you with this, because I know it's not as not simple for everyone, depending on why you've disconnected. However, essentially, getting well does require reconnecting, and whether or not that's something you do slowly, with some help from a therapist, or whether that's something that you can do a little bit quicker, depending on your situation. A lot of us just are connected because we just don't even have an awareness around it. Right, we just don't realize we've disconnected and so it is. For some people is quite simple because it's just an lack of awareness, and when they have the awareness, that can make all the difference. When we do start to have an awareness, interesting things will happen as well, because what I've noticed is a really, really common thing.
Speaker 1:So people who have disconnected don't often don't notice the hungry. So they go for six, seven hours and they haven't eaten and then suddenly they kind of feel sick or they whatever. They are hungry Right all. They don't even notice it until someone comes and says you haven't eaten here, have something to eat, right. And what happens with those people?
Speaker 1:When they reconnect with their body, they start to feel hunger and they actually perceive the hunger as a negative thing. Particularly if you've had a lot of dieting of your lifetime or if you've sort of carried extra weight, never felt bad about your body size or your body shape or whether or not you Too fat to thin, whatever. If you've had any of those experiences in the past and had to really think about some go on diets and all of all of that kind of stuff you've got a history of all that sort of stuff you might perceive hunger as a negative thing. Is not uncommon for people to perceive hunger as a negative thing and you know it almost to. If you've had spent a lot of time on diets, you know hungry is like, you know, alarm's going off. My god, alarm going off. Hungry, hungry. I shouldn't feel hungry.
Speaker 1:And some people actually feel like if they feel hungry there's something wrong with them. It means that they're, you know, glutton or whatever. So there's a lot of negative connotation that we can have around even just something like hunger. So if we reconnect with our body, then we experience something like hunger, we think, oh, it's terrible, that's bad, it's not bad, it's actually a really good sign that you're healthy and your metabolism is working well. You know, in very small number of cases you know it's Registry and thing and it relates to, you know, brain tumors and brain damage and things like that. But if you hung real time and it could never be satiated, but that's a whole different thing. That said, I'm talking about a pathology there. Where is Every day person and a lot of people just uncomfortable with hunger? They perceive as a bad thing and it's not a bad thing. Is that's actually a sign of a healthy metabolism, it's a sign of a healthy body. So that's, your life is good, you know.
Speaker 1:And if there are issues around Craving foods or not been out of a village, fill yourself up or feel full, all those kinds of things, then that's when you do investigate other things. I know, for example, of someone's deficient magnesium, them more likely to be craving, and the craving sugar and carbohydrates, that kind of thing, and when they've got enough magnesium in the system, they don't. What I talked about many times before about making sure eating a protein protein with every meal, cause protein helps you feel full. So there's a lot of things like that as well. But essentially, feeling hungry is a normal, healthy thing. It's normal Part of being alive and being healthy and it means your metabolism is working, so it's a good thing. The other thing to is I'll give you an example for me is that I am again.
Speaker 1:When I was talking about Moving about when I was a child, I was constipated from most of my childhood and so when I did go, it was quite dramatic because it usually meant that like I used to get the children's hospital or Taking medicines, and so when I went, it was quite a quiet and quiet and horrible event and very painful and very difficult. So I came to associate that sort of like little tummy cramp that you might get before you move your belly. I came to associate that with a bad thing, and so what? I have that feeling. I thought it was bad and it was wrong and you know and it's taking me a while to kind of just know that I should just normal just A bit of a crap, nothing major, but just a bit of a crap. That's just letting you know that that your body is getting ready for that is actually natural normal. But I didn't realize that because I'd never had natural normal, so I associated with something really negative.
Speaker 1:So we have a lot of those examples that individuals might have around certain feelings that they feel I'm not normal or whatever, and and often they are perfectly normal but we've just never experienced normal. So all we have had some pain or some experiences associated in the past. That's been really stressful, and so we now have an association always with you know this x equals why, which is not always true. It's just the association that we have created. So the other thing that I notice is is families can often make it worse with their children by teaching children to disconnect as well. So the example would be If a child is saying that they're not hungry and said, oh no, you should be and you need to eat more and all this kind of stuff, I think it's important to understand that.
Speaker 1:I don't have numbers in front of me right now, but I'm sure you could Google it, but anyway, the size of a child stomach at different ages and so the appropriate amount of food for them to eat at different ages, and it's quite interesting how we expect them to eat as much as an adult would in a baby or infant or child stomach. So it's just understanding what's actually normal and then knowing what's a normal amount of food to give that child and is important. But the other thing to is I've seen people order enormous amounts of food for children and the child will say they're full. The child, the child is actually listening to the. I saw a very specific case of this where a child was listening to the intuition and she'd already a lot and she said oh no, I'm full, I can't eat anymore. And one of the adults around her in particular said said oh no, I thought you're a big girl and and and you know, as if, like somehow she should know that, that she should be eating, that she should naturally want to eat more. So she was bypassing that child's natural intuition.
Speaker 1:I think there's a problem with my computer. I'll take a break. I'll jump back in soon. I'll talk to you soon, see ya. Okay, sorry about that. So I wanted to continue.
Speaker 1:One I was actually just talking about with children how we teach them not to listen to their body. So we try and encourage them to eat more than maybe they should be. They've listened to their body, they know they've had enough, and I know this can be tricky because there's all sorts of reasons. Sometimes children have tricky behaviors around food. So it is definitely establishing if they really have had enough or if there's something else going on. But just be very aware of not trying to overfeed children when they're allowing them to listen to their body. The other side of things is when we tell them, or the other thing is to. Of course there's a child starving somewhere in the world. Therefore you should eat more and unfortunately it's a terrible thing that there's a child starving in the world. It's horrific. But teaching your child not listening to their body and not listening to their intuition and not paying attention to their body signals to make up for that doesn't help anyone. So it really really is important that children learn how to tune into their body and learn how to respect those signs and signals.
Speaker 1:The other issue too, with children, when we teach them to not listen to their intuition or not listen to certain signals that they get, is the issue in regards to, even say, hugging or being touched by another person or an adult or something like that, when we say, you know, kiss, auntie, so and so goodbye, or hug uncle, so and so If that child feels that they don't really feel comfortable being kissed or hugged by an adult, I think it's important that we help them or to, and not whoever it is but we support them in that, because otherwise what we're doing is we're teaching children not to listen to their intuition, which will be really, really useful for predators out there. So please really be aware that your child does have a certain level of intuition around some things. Now, I'm not saying purely child led. I you know adults need to be there and adults need to create all sorts of boundaries and rules and parameters for a safe, safely bringing up a child. So I'm not telling you to not bring in, you know, your expertise, but just have a knowledge that children do have certain they do have some sense of some things. Where they're, they're right, and it's important to help them learn how to explore that as opposed to to teaching and not to listen to the intuition. And it's important to even in other ways. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:It's interesting we have, say, a child in the classroom who's you know, come back from munch and they're jumping around and they're wanting to. They're really active and they're really finding it hard to focus. And you know we see that as bad behavior. But it's actually two things. One, it's just supernatural for a child to want to move around and to want to expend a lot of energy. They've got, you know, think of a puppy, right. Same thing, right, you know, if you have a puppy, or if you have a sort of big dogs or whatever, you know that they need to go for lots of walks and lots of. You've got to do things, throw the ball, whatever it is, but you've got to use up all of the energy. If you don't, they're going to tear your house apart. Well, you know, children are the same. They have lots and lots of energy, and so it's just that in.
Speaker 1:You know, boys in particular are quite sort of rambunctious and, and you know they, they need to jump around and make a mess and whatever they need to do. And we, we sort of what we try and do is teach them how to sit down and be quiet and all of that kind of stuff, and we know that to a certain degree, we need to do that in our society because we do need to learn how to have a job and all of those things. However, I think we need to maybe figure out sort of a way to manage that energy in a healthy way, rather than just saying it's wrong and it's bad and and then sometimes they may be acting that way because they had a lot of sugar at lunchtime and they didn't need to burn that off too. Because children naturally know sometimes in their system they have a lot of something in their system and one of the reasons that they spin around and go a bit crazy if they've had a lot of sugar is exactly that their body knows that they have to burn through it. The other thing is just from emotions too, that adults learn to kind of just push our emotions down, but children kind of express them and they express them quite loudly and proudly, and obviously all they'll be running around and doing things to sort of move those emotions through their body. But you know, obviously Children have to learn over time how to respond to certain situations and how to manage their emotions. You can't have that, you know. You can't be an adult and be kind of. You know, laying on the ground in the supermarket, stepping a feet or whatever, Does it work that way? However, we kind of.
Speaker 1:I think that there's a lot of these things that children naturally have where they are in touch with their emotions. They are in touch with their feelings, they are in touch with their body and we, rather than kind of help them learn a way to have still have that, but respond in more of a grown up way as they get older, we often just turn it off in them, as I, you know. Sit down and be quiet, don't have feelings, don't have needs, you know, and so there's kind of got to be a balance somewhere. Yes, we want children to learn to grow up and be functional in society, but we all and you know you can't be falling apart every five seconds because of your emotions but at the same time is good to have some connection with them and understand how to work them through, whether it's be talking to someone or whether it be need to go for a walk or whatever it is. So, anyway, children do have a lot of intuition about a lot of things and I think, with the help of sensible adults in their life, they can be taught how to Manage those things and how to learn how to adapt those things into a more adult way of doing them.
Speaker 1:But but what we do is we just tend to stamp it out. So, you know, don't listen to your body. Over it, who cares? You know someone starving somewhere. So therefore you should eat more than you're comfortable with. Stop listening to your body signs. You know, and body is telling you to run around and expand the energy, but no, sit down and be quiet and if you're not there, a bad boy or a bad girl you know. So I think that there's In our society we need to learn a lot about listening to a body and listen to intuition, and there's got to be a balance between the child, childish way of doing it and adult way of doing it.
Speaker 1:So the childish ways to Insta and loud and and in disruptive, and the adult ways it can be to pushing it down, pretend we don't have a disconnecting. Maybe there's a middle ground somewhere where we can learn how to grow up without completely disconnecting and and we can learn a lot from the way that children and animals as well I just very present there's a lot to be said for being present as well the way that children and animals are. So anyway, I just wanted to Just have that sort of reminder discussion about it is important to learn how to listen to body signs and signals. Your body does sort of whisper and tell you when things are going wrong, and it's a bit louder, gets a bit louder and rather than just ignoring things, and of course, so that's also why we have your regular checkups and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:If you have a funny thing come up on your skin, don't make assumptions about it is best to talk to doctor about it. Go to go to the skin clinic Once a year, sometimes more often if they're keeping an eye on something but just to look at my Irish skin and tell me what's going on. So you know sign symptoms. They are important and when we learn how to understand them, we learn how which ones are normal, which ones are not. Because, honestly, so many of us haven't been taught what's normal, what's not normal. We've got these weird associations with certain feelings, certain experiences, because we think there's something wrong and and quite often what's happening is perfectly normal. We just don't know that because nobody ever told us, all the other hand, something that's really not normal and it's quite alarming. We think is normal because it's all we've ever experienced, right. So that's why we need to have more of these discussions and we need to learn about and happening our bodies.
Speaker 1:What we got this body like I said, longest relationship you're gonna have in your life yet we don't really get lessons on how to inhabit that body, how to understand it, how to understand the signs and symptoms and and how to learn how to have a respect with your body, make friends with it Not necessarily gonna tell you to love yourself or your love your body or not. I don't know. That that's I mean, it's useful to it's useful. However, what we just need to do is just have a healthy respect for our body and if we have that, you look after something that you respect, all that you love. So it's just having that, that high regard for yourself that you might have for somebody else, you know. So it is important to have that and it makes all the difference in managing your health, managing your mental health and and managing your feelings and learning how to respond to situations.
Speaker 1:Because if you basically don't disconnect to your body, you're not gonna know that all the signals of whether you're hungry, not hungry, all that kind of Stuff, and you're gonna get that wrong. And, at the same time, if you're pushing down on your feelings, not having feelings, that sort of thing. Well then you are more likely to kind of react in a poor way because you're sort of not managing your feelings and then when something happens, you kind of just burst out and yeah, that somebody else not at somebody, or just act, maybe have a completely inappropriate response to something. So just learning how to Inhabit your body, inhabit your emotions, learning how to live with them, manage them, understand them and being connected, it can be quite challenging but it can also be very rewarding. And you're more likely to pick up on if you're having health issues, or pick up on if you know just like I'll notice if I start getting snappy at people, or I'll notice if I start getting certain signs and symptoms, or you know it's just you notice when things are off. If you notice when things are off with yourself, fairly quickly you are able to get on it and sort it out or do something about it.
Speaker 1:Whereas if you don't notice when things are off with you, whether it's emotionally or physically, you're more likely to end up with more physical problems or more problems that are more advanced and harder to fix. Or you know relationships that break downs and things like that, because we're kind of when we stay disconnected, we don't notice stuff. So, essentially, the more connected you are with your emotions, with your physical and mental health, the more that you can just have an awareness. It's like an alarm system to notice when things are off. Things need to be adjusted. I'm not telling you that the whole world revolves around your feelings, because I hate to tell you this, it doesn't. That's a whole other podcast in itself. But it is important that we are aware of them, aware of what we're feeling physically, emotionally, all of that kind of stuff. And, like I said, it's just your body's kind of alarm system for letting you know when things are a bit off. Things need to be adjusted. And that can help with your relationships maybe with your relationships with, or you're dealing with, people at work and or any health issues, understanding what you do and don't need or what's going on for you, and also then can help you with things like boundaries and relationships and things like that. Because when you've got a healthier relationship with your body, you understand what's healthy and what's not, and what you need and what you don't, then you're much more able to communicate that with others and or put up the appropriate boundaries.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I will leave it there Sorry for the weird interruption part way through just sort of learning the different systems and how managing my drive, space and all of that, the joys of learning how to podcast. Anyway, I really appreciate that you watch on YouTube or rumble or you're listening to this, and I'd really love to hear your feedback and any suggestions of anything that you would like me, topics you would like me to explore or different kinds of people that I might be able to get on to explore those topics with me. And, and please like, subscribe, share all of those things that is really really important for all the algorithms at all the different places, that that for me to get traction, I need people to interact with me online. So so, please do so so that, and also, you know, if you get value out of this, please do share it, because I'd love other people to get value out of it as well. Anyway, thanks for that. I hope you have a great day and see you next week. Thanks Bye.