What Are You Hungry For? Read Online Free PDF

without judgment, in a state that quiets the constant inner dialogue filling the mind. Awareness takes you from the level of the problem to the level of the solution.
Action Step:
The Basics of Awareness
    So how do you go about increasing your awareness? Becoming more aware is easy and can be done anytime during the day using three basic techniques. They bring the three major regions of your brain into balance naturally and without effort.
    Become aware of your body. Go inside and tune in to its physical sensations, whatever they are. Experience what your body is experiencing.
    Become aware of your emotions. Close your eyes, put your attention on your heart, and see how you feel emotionally. Without getting involved, be centered and observe these feelings.
    Become aware of your choices. Find a time when you are calm, maybe early in the morning upon waking or while you are relaxing in the shower, and examine the best way to make the decisions you are facing. The best decision making comes from an inner state of restful alertness.
    I experienced a real transformation by adopting these basic techniques, which take only a moment to practice. I hadn’t realized something quite fundamental about my mind. It’s a perpetual motion machine. Given a chance, it runs all the time, piling up thought after thought, emotion after emotion. I wasn’t giving it time to do some important things. It needed to calm down, to reflect upon the moment, to consider how I felt, to ask my body how it felt. “How are we doing?” is such a simple question—the
we
including body, emotions, and intellect—and yet most of us don’t ask it often enough. Asking a friend “How are you doing?” is a reassuring thing to do. You deserve the same if you want your body to be your friend.
    Try these techniques out for yourself, with no expectations or pre-judgment. Being in tune isn’t difficult, but many overweight people have gotten out of touch with their bodies because when you get right down to it they don’t like themselves anymore. They are reluctant to look at their emotions, because they worry about what they might find. They feel trapped by bad choices in the past, which makes it harder to look afresh at new possibilities. All of this can be overcome by weaning your brain away from its old conditioning. There’s no need to struggle. Just make these new techniques into a habit and allow change to arrive naturally.

A Success Story
    Dana is a success story of the mind-body approach, and she illustrates what I mean by an effortless way to lose weight. What’s so important is how she reached her turning point. Here is her story:
    “I maintained my college weight for years,” Dana recounts. “In my thirties I changed jobs and landed in a company that provided on-site meals. I got into the habit of popping downstairs for lunch, and most of the time I was either thinking about my job or talking to a co-worker while we ate. I didn’t walk outside enough, and if something looked really good in the cafeteria, I ate it without thinking.”
    Without really noticing it, Dana gained 15 pounds over one winter, which shocked her. She began dieting to get the weight off but found it hard to stay motivated. Assuming that all it took was more willpower, she kept promising herself that she would take charge of her appetite, but somehow that day never came. Instead, her stress level rose.
    “I left the company and started a small business, just as the downturn came. The business stalled, and then I ran short of money. I began doing something I had never done before. Every afternoon I had a big Snickers bar washed down with half a can of diet soda. Frankly, I didn’t even think about my weight. I was too anxious all the time.”
    Eventually her business troubles reversed, which was good news. But none of her old clothes fit anymore, and when Dana looked in the mirror, she felt frustrated and disappointed in herself.
    A crash diet took off about half the weight