Hey everyone, welcome to QA Thursday. Here's a bunch of great questions about this week's topic, interoception and the somatic signature of hunger. I'm wondering if you find these QA episodes useful or not? Either way, send me a message and let me know. Also share your favorite episode with me. What was it? How did it help you? Are you using any of the frameworks or ideas from this podcast? Don't be shy, just head over to wlm.my forward slash contact and leave me a message. It'll be great to hear from you. Go to wlm.my forward slash contact. Am I doing it wrong? You might think you're failing at the exercise or that you're just numb. It's easy to panic when you go looking for a sensation and find a void, assuming that your connection is permanently broken. But this numbness is actually a very loud signal. It's information. In trauma work, we call this the freeze response or dissociation. Your body has learned that it's safer not to feel anything than to feel the discomfort of hunger or restriction. So you aren't doing it wrong. You are just starting from a place of high protection. Keep scanning. Even noticing I feel numb is a victory because you're checking in. Question number two. I feel hungry all the time. Literally 24-7. If I listen to my body, I would never stop eating. How does interoception help that? You probably believe you have a bottomless pit stomach or a broken metabolism. It feels like your body is betraying you by asking for food constantly, even after a huge meal. However, true biological hunger is rarely constant. What you are likely experiencing is hypervigilance. Your nervous system is stuck in a scarcity state, where it's constantly scanning for resources because it expects a famine, another diet, to start any minute. This isn't hunger, it's anxiety wearing a hunger costume. When you use the texture tool, checking if the feeling is high, buzzy versus low hollow, you'll likely find this constant urge is high and buzzy. That's a safety need, not a caloric need. Question number three: Is it okay to keep tracking my calories while I try to relearn my hunger signals? I'm terrified to let go of the app. The standard advice in the anti-diet world is to delete the app immediately, rip the band-aid off, and trust yourself. But for someone with high anxiety, removing the safety net overnight can trigger a panic response that leads to a binge. It's okay to keep the training wheels on while you learn to ride the bike. Use the app, but change how you use it. Before you log the food, guess how you feel. Guess how many calories it is. Check in with your body first. Then use the app to verify. You want to slowly transition from the app tells me what to do to the app confirms what I already know. Question number four. I can tell when I'm hungry, but I have no idea when I'm full. I just eat until the plate is clean. How do I find the stop signal? You likely think this is a greed issue or a lack of self-control. You watch other people put their fork down halfway through a meal and wonder what magic spell they are under. Here is the science. The stop signal, satiety, is much quieter than the start signal, hunger. If you're eating quickly, or if you are distracted by a screen, you will blow right past that whisper. The signal was there, you just missed it. Try the halftime pause. When your food is half gone, put the fork down for a full two minutes. The signal often needs a moment of silence to arrive at the brain. Give it space to land. Question number five. I realized my hunger is almost always that high-end buzzy anxiety you talked about. But knowing that doesn't make it go away. I still want to eat. Now on. It's frustrating to have the insight, but not the solution. You see clearly that you aren't hungry, but the magnetic pull toward the pantry is still there, and you feel powerless to stop it. This happens because you've taken away the coping mechanism, food, without replacing it. Your body used food to sedate that buzzy anxiety. If you take the food away, you just have raw anxiety. You need a regulatory behavior. If the feeling is high energy buzzy, you need to discharge it. Shake your hands, dance for a minute, squeeze a stress ball, or exhale longer than you inhale. You have to address the energy in your nervous system directly, rather than trying to smother it with toast.