The PERFECT HUNGER™ Guide to Transformative Eating
Simple, accessible practices to help you feel better
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I believe with my whole heart that our body is a gift, our home, our ally. I also believe that our deepest essence wants to move towards wellness and wholeness. By listening to and caring for our body, we support this movement and invite greater ease and well-being.
And it doesn’t always feel that way.
Perhaps you want to stop thinking about food, your body, and what you eat all day, every day, to the point where your happiness feels hijacked by your own mind. Perhaps you crave freedom from bingeing or restricting but are still struggling in silence, as I once was. Perhaps you’re seeking relief from a chronic health condition and feel overwhelmed by all the advice out there. Perhaps you want to shift your body composition or lose weight without fighting yourself—yes, even in perimenopause or menopause, even without medications.
As a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 2012, a practicing Buddhist and yogi for more than two decades, and someone who’s sober from alcohol and in full recovery from eating disorders, I want to tell you three things:
Shifting unhelpful patterns related to food is challenging—and deeply freeing.
Changing these patterns is possible.
This work impacts far more than what’s on our plate; it benefits our physical health, mental health, spiritual practice, experience of aging, relationships, creativity, and all the ways we show up in the world—for ourselves and for others.
If you feel entangled in unhelpful patterns around food and eating, please know you’re not alone. And if you’re exploring ways to find peace and feel good in your body again, this guide is for you.
First, let’s envision the destination:
You feel rested upon waking and experience sustained, even energy throughout the day. You get sick less often and, when you do get sick, recover more quickly. Symptoms that you long considered “genetic,” or “just part of aging,” or “completely beyond your control” begin to lessen—maybe even vanish entirely.
As the clamor of “food noise” quiets, your mind becomes calmer, clearer, and more alive. You experience a completely different sort of settling than the disconnect, dulling, and deadening that happens with numbing.
You become more connected to your body’s innate intelligence and inner knowing. You also gain a skill, practice, and way of perceiving and responding that will apply to every area of your life and which no one can take away from you.
And… you still get to love food! You still get to look forward to and enjoy your meals. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy them more, because you’ve made a few shifts that help you feel good not just while eating, but afterwards.
You’ve become a present, responsive, loving caretaker of your body. Your body feels more like home and more like a refuge.
Whatever destination feels most deeply supportive for you, I encourage you to take a moment, close your eyes, and imagine it. Imagine, most of all, what it might feel like—in your body, your mind, your spirit, and in everyday life.
This vision and possibility is why you’re here. The more you revisit, remember, and feel into it, the more likely you are to bring it to life.
Below you’ll find a complete guide to eating to feel better, including:
a small dose of tough love around physical caretaking—as in, to genuinely support our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being, we must tend to our home: our physical body
9 actionable practices to help you feel better (including what and how to eat)
7 internal practices to help you change your relationship with food in an integrated way (rather than relying on willpower or “food rules”)
an exercise to just get started, even if you’re not ready to overhaul everything
resources to support you in going deeper on topics like unhelpful eating patterns, bingeing and restricting, sugar addiction, food noise, and the science behind the practices and principles in this guide (plus links to my favorite cookbooks and recipe sources)
guiding principles to offer more nuance and room for personalization, so you can make the practices in this guide your own
Disclaimer: While I am a licensed Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, this guide is educational and not a substitute for individualized medical care. I cannot provide personal medical or dietary advice without a full clinical intake and informed consent.
Before we begin: To support you in moving towards your destination, I recommend creating a daily remembrance practice—one in which you make space for the vision you have for yourself. Perhaps writing a few cues on a post-it, or revisiting your vision in a moment of silence before eating… or while brewing and sipping a cup of tea… or before meditating… or while moving your body. Try a few approaches and find one you can return to. Even if you stop reading here, this practice will serve you.
How to take care of our bodies (and how this relates to food noise and health)
The worse we feel in our body, the more tempting it is to disconnect from it. And once we’re disconnected, it becomes easier to do more of what hurts us. This pattern fuels “food noise,” those persistent, intrusive thoughts about food and eating. It also takes a toll on both our physical health and mental well-being.
Our minds want to keep consuming information—spinning stories, justifications, explanations, plans. But the truth is simple: we are physical, embodied beings. To support our health and well-being, we have to tend to our body and its needs. We can’t think, plan, or read our way out of where we are now.
This is especially true when we’re talking about food and eating—the very means by which we continuously nurture, regenerate, and repair our cells and ourselves.
9 actionable practices to help you feel better
Let’s begin with a shortlist of practices that I’ve personally found transformative and have recommended to diverse patients with great results.
These shifts can go a long way in helping you feel better—in body and mind: