It can feel strange and a little uncomfortable…

To NOT feel the compulsion to eat something, to actually feel neutral about food itself.

Maybe you’ve relied on food to give you comfort, joy, solace, and pleasure- for years, or maybe even decades like myself.

As you make healthier food choices, balance your blood sugar, support insulin sensitivity through practices like intermittent fasting, the drive to eat can go down significantly.

This is something I hear a lot from folks who have tried GLP 1- drugs or the carnivore diet…the pleasure of food, the drive to eat, just goes away sometimes.

And that can be frickin’ uncomfortable for those of us who are so used to deriving not only pleasure- but joy, comfort, protection, and maybe our very survival, from food.

If you haven’t ever experienced total neutrality around food, it can seem like a good problem to have.

It’s easy to think, “Oh gosh, it would be amazing to not be craving food every 30 minutes! I WISH I could feel totally neutral about food!”.

And maybe for some people, it IS a great experience and actually feels good, but I myself have found it unsettling at times.

I felt this the other day. I ate my green soup, with celery, avocado, parsley, lemon, garlic, and it was fine. I felt grateful for the nutrients in the soup.

After I finished, I did NOT feel compelled to eat anything else. And it wasn’t very much soup. I usually have a low sugar fruit and some nuts or something like that after having a veggie-rich meal, and I find joy in that.

It felt strange not to feel the desire for fruit, or any other kind of food. I didn’t want anything else. I could care less about food in that moment.

And I found myself, ironically, missing the desire to have another piece of food.

Maybe someday I will feel ok with that experience of total neutrality. But in that moment, I wasn’t ready for it. Beyond that, I felt that I needed more calories.

So, I hacked my experience by having a date. It’s a healthy-ish form of sugar. Blood sugar spikes are a foolproof way to increase cravings and joy of food.

To DECREASE your joy and attachment to food, decrease or eliminate blood sugar spikes.

To INCREASE joy and attachment to food, you can create a healthy-ish blood sugar spike with a high sugar fruit like a date, banana, pineapple, mango, etc.

That fixed it right away, and I ended up having a banana and some sunflower seeds. And that felt good because I knew I needed more protein.

Not sure if this hack works with use of GLP-1 drugs.

Have you ever experienced the sensation of total neutrality around food, fellow Thriver?

If you haven’t yet, this is something you can “look forward to”, as you experiment with intermittent fasting and make healthier choices.

Reach out to me when it happens for you, I’d love to hear about it! And either celebrate with you or grieve about it, depending on how you feel about it!

Some people seem to live in that zone of food neutrality, since it’s how they’re wired.

I went out with someone in college who told me he wished that he could get all his calories from vitamin pills cuz he didn’t like chewing or taking time to eat. Feeling neutral about food is definitely NOT how I was wired!

I welcome that feeling when I’m fasting, but it still feels a bit strange when it comes up at other times.

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