You say, I just don’t have time to eat. So this will be a very helpful technique for you. It’s also helpful for you if you just aren’t in tune with your hunger cues, which the majority of people are not. So I just want to give you permission that that’s totally a thing to not know when you’re hungry, to not know when you’re full, and to just not be in tune with your hunger cues.

And I also want to let you know, it is totally fine. To not pursue learning that skill because it does take some intention.  So this technique will help you lose weight, without worrying about, am I hungry? Am I not hungry? And the mental load that can take  tuning into your hunger cues.

Not knowing your hunger is a bad thing, but for some women, our hunger cues are so screwed up that that is an additional stressor by trying to guess, am I hungry? Am I not hungry? Am I full? Am I over full? This will also be helpful for you if you’re trying to separate your emotions from your food choices. 

Okay, so what eating by the clock is, is essentially, there’s two different ways that you can do it. It is eating by the clock. It can be that I simply eat breakfast at 6. 30 to 7. And it’s like in these half hour windows. I will have a snack in a few hours later. Let’s say , eating every three hours, so that would be 10.

So if it’s 6. 30 to 7, then it would be 9. 30 to 10, and then I’ll have lunch from 1. 30 to 2, and then a snack. You just get to decide how that looks. You might not have every snack. Maybe you like to have breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner. Evening snack. So the meals that you have or what you choose to call those meals.

It’s so funny that I can just  feel so loaded, right? Because we have so many thoughts associated with the meal title.  I just like to tell the women in our community, a snack is simply a smaller portion of any food. So it could be last night’s dinner, which would be fine  for  the sake of this conversation.

It is eating by the clock, setting a time that you will eat that food. I’ll tell you why this works in a second. Another way is you could also look at your day and see what opportunities you have to eat, like where you have a break in your schedule.  Now, if you’re someone who says, well, I just don’t take a break until two o’clock.

Eating by the clock and forcing yourself to take a break may actually benefit you and help you and get more things done and prevent overeating. So for me, looking at opportunities is looking at my day, seeing where I have back to back appointments, maybe long stretches of coaching where I won’t be able to eat.

And so therefore I will be eating my breakfast at a certain point. In fact, today I know exactly when I have to get in my car to go get my son from basketball.  And I have my breakfast sitting here because I’m not going to eat while I’m recording a podcast, but I know that that will be my half hour window when I can actually eat my breakfast without having to eat in the car. Not that eating in the car is a problem, but I would prefer not to. It’s also very helpful for me  when I’m in the car, like driving my son around a lot for events in the evening. Okay. 

So by eating by the clock, and when I say eating by the clock, I like to wait until I can eat in the way that I want to eat. And sometimes that might mean eating while I’m driving, or it might mean that I’m going to pack my food and I’ll pull over in a parking lot and then I’ll eat. The reason why this is so helpful is because so often we go long stretches of not eating and we create a situation, a vulnerable situation that could have been avoided  where we get over hungry.

Our brain says things like, well, I didn’t have lunch.  Our brain likes to tell us a whole bunch of things.  Will you skip that meal?  And so that over hunger creates that over desire to eat more. And you say different things. Well, ugh, it’s finally time for a break. Well, yeah, it is time for a break. And you do deserve breaks.

But we don’t have to eat large amounts of food during a break. 

And so just notice when you go long stretches of time, What your brain likes to tell you when you sit down to the meal that you allow yourself to eat and your brain wants to tell you you don’t have time to eat, but what I found more often than not, although my brain believes you don’t have time to eat, the truth is, is I’m not allowing myself time to eat. 

I remember  when I first started my food recovery and eating by the clock in this way and stopping. What I was doing was so uncomfortable. Taking care of myself was so uncomfortable. But I just kept doing it because I said I want sanity and I want peace with food. And if it requires that I take time out to do this, I’m willing to do that. 

And I knew that I was just trying to push through and do a whole bunch of tasks because I was trying to believe that doing more was better, that being productive was related to my worth.  I just did everything kind of out of proportion back in those days, over-eating, over-tasking. It was just living in extremes. 

And I find that eating by the clock is one way that we can start to temper our lives to say, yes, you’re human.  You require food if we can eat in this more sane, peaceful way,  it does reduce the vulnerable situation, the extremes of being overly hungry and all the thoughts that go with that. 

And I wanted to release this episode during the holidays because we have even more exciting tasks and things that we want to get done. And so really eating by the clock is a wonderful tool and you will find your brain will hate stopping what you’re doing and you can coach yourself through that.  

The benefits of this is that it does create a safer environment for when you do eat.  You don’t have so many thoughts of I missed a meal or I’m extremely over hungry or low blood sugar. It just really keeps you stable, physically stable. It might actually be revealing what’s keeping you overweight. One of the reasons why I started eating by the clock when I came into food recovery is because I needed to tell my brain and show my brain that it was safe and that it had enough food that it was well nourished and that way if I was hungry outside of those times.

I knew that there were emotional reasons and what’s so cool you guys is when you know and you’ve shown your brain that you will be able to eat in just a few hours. It creates that safety for your brain so you can say, Hey, brain, you know what? We’re going to eat in an hour. We’re not going to die. We don’t need to eat food right now. 

So you can coach yourself to not eat between the set times.  And it also helps you tune into,  Oh, my body’s  trying to create safety by this hunger feeling. But what is really going on? What are the emotions? Where am I feeling stressed?  And that my friends is when you get a neon sign of the Lord saying, this is what I really want you to look at.

This is what really needs to be solved for in your life where you’re feeling extra stress. That’s creating that feeling of hunger.  So by eating by the clock. You can notice yourself feeling hunger or stress and coach yourself to say, Hey, we’re going to eat in a little bit. It’s not a problem.  Finally, it helps create.

The skill and cultivate the skill of planning for you and your day. Putting you in your day, planning to take care of your needs in your day. It’s a skill. Planning is a skill, friends. And by eating by the clock, it helps you do this skill. You have to do this for the rest of your life. No,  you might find it helpful. 

You might find it helpful for a season.  You might find it helpful and then not helpful, and then it comes back to being helpful. But this is just a tool. It’s a technique. You’re not making a decision for the rest of your life. 

You’re simply trying something.  You guys, the Lord gave you this day for you, for you to live it, for you to decide what comes into your day,  whether it’s tasks.  Whether it’s emotions and feelings,  whether it’s thoughts, now all that stuff comes into your life, those thoughts and feelings, but you get to decide what you do with it and the food that comes into your life. 

If you don’t want something in your life, this is the other thing. This is like a bonus part. You guys, especially as this is being released during the holiday season, I want you to start loving your reasons for what is in your life. And if you feel stress or pressure, just see if you can get to a place of why you choose to keep it in your life and start to love that reason. 

The final benefit is it removes the skill of having to eat by hunger cues, which is an advanced skill. It’s not a bad thing. Some people are super tuned into it and some people it really works for, but if you eat by the clock, you won’t need to worry so much about hunger cues. Maybe layer these two tools together. 

Listen, this is not a perfect science at all. It’s a tool. You can experiment with it. You can try it. You can tweak it.   And the food that you plan, you’ll start to experiment with the portion sizes. What makes me get to the next bit, to the next meal?

So I’m ready for it. What makes me feel overful? I promise you.  You’ll figure it out. The stakes aren’t high. We’re just trying things. Try it and tweak it. If it doesn’t go as planned, it doesn’t mean anything.  You have new information for how you want to plan differently.  So in review, the two ways to do this are to look at your specific calendar, find where you have an interval where you can eat the way that you want to,  or you can simply eat by the clock and during your day you set a timer and that’s when you eat.

All right, everybody. I hope this has been really helpful. Have a blessed day.