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You are stronger than you think. You are more powerful than you know.

There is noise everywhere, testing you, confusing you, and complicating the connection you have with yourself.

This is a love letter to you—the part of you that is desperately missing your connection.

If you take a moment to think, to remember, you will see her with so much love. Take this moment to close your eyes and find her. Your 10-year-old self. See her. Imagine her standing in front of front of you. Take this moment to study her. Take in her hair, her skin, her clothes. Read her body language, look into her eyes. Walk around her.

What do you know to be true? Is she happy, sad, anxious, vulnerable, quiet, shy, beautiful, strong?

She is there, isn’t she?

Can you see her strength? How she bravely stands there? How she shows up and holds her shoulders up? Can you see her needing to be seen, to be heard, to be loved? Can you take her hand and feel her skin and tell her she is loved and that you see her?

This tiny human version of you—she is the one who needs you to see.

Did you know that every single time you think a thought about food, she is actually the one pulling the alarm? Every thought of “food is a good idea,” is a message that you are not okay.

If you were home and the alarm in your house got triggered, you would stop whatever you are doing—no matter how important it may seem—and walk to your alarm system and turn it off. Then you would likely look around and not resume what you were doing until you deemed you and the house were safe.

That is what the thought to eat is. It’s an alarm and your fierce, lovely, sweet, young self is pulling it. It’s your job to turn off the alarm. (Box breathing, or deep breathing, usually does the trick.)

Then it’s your job to scan your environment—your body—to see what is wrong. Here are a few ways in which you may not be okay: you could be hungry, or stressed, or bored, you could be anxious, or procrastinating.

Are you starting to see it? Yes, being hungry is a problem. But not in the way you think.

Hunger is your best friend. Think of it like needing to use the restroom. Wouldn’t we all run to the doctor if we stopping having to pee? (Yes, we would.) Most of us don’t wake up and think, “Shoot, I am going to have to use the restroom fix or six times today, let me plan that out.” That is because we trust we can find and use a restroom when we need it. It might get uncomfortable, but we trust ourselves.

When it comes to hunger, we have complicated it with outside noise from influencers and strangers and people we think are smarter than us. But I am telling you the answer to the riddle is to stop, turn inward, and see hunger—your hunger—as personal.

Hunger is a message from your body alerting you that your basic survival is at risk and needs attention.

It doesn’t go away. It only gets stronger if we ignore it, which is why we overeat: we are hardwired for survival. We have 60,000 thoughts a day in response to what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Our mind is doing this without our guidance because it’s the mind’s job to protect us 24/7 and it wants to do it in the most pleasurable way. We are not telling our lungs to breathe or our stomach to digest, and our mind is the same. It’s incredible, it’s magical, we should sit back in awe and say “thank you.”

We should also be able to scan our body, our physical environment, to see what is what. And if we can’t tell what is what, if we can’t tell whether we’re hungry or stressed, we should just breathe until we can. Hunger doesn’t go away and, thankfully, neither does the food. It might have when you were 10, but not anymore. It will be right there when you need it. And the most important thing your mind needs from you every day is a reminder, a check in that you are safe, so it can turn the alarm off.

When you get the thought to eat, simply take a few deeps breathes. This will turn the alarm off. Then, scan and check in with your body. Why was the alarm turned on? Is your chest tight? Are you in pain? Are you anxious? Is your stomach ready for food?

What would the appropriate response be if your chest is tight, or if you are in pain, or if your stomach is empty? Remember your 10-year-old self. See her. Respect her. Honor her. Love her.

I want to let you in on a little secret: when we feel hopeless or desperate, and we’re looking outside of ourselves, at what other people are doing and what they have, we may not see as clearly as we need to.

Our bodies thrive on consistency, which means we thrive on consistency. Do you notice how we wake up at the same time, go to sleep at the same time, eat around the same time, even go to the bathroom around the same time? With thrive and consistency, the paradox of seeing a person in a healthy relationship with their bodies and with food is that when they are doing the “hard” things like eating when they’re hungry, eating only as much as they need, eating whatever they feel like eating, and exercising regularly, it’s because they’re thriving.

It’s because they’re having fun that they don’t see it as hard—they only see it as “I feel good when…”

And the paradox is that it’s actually easy for them.

Keep your 10-year-old self in your mind, bring back your imagination, set the mood, get comfy, get cozy, fall in love with what you love, play with your food, your exercise, and watch how your connection grows and becomes seamless in your transitions.

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