September 2025 – Choosing Health Now

I’ve been in celebration mode with my kiddo’s birthday, so I am keeping today’s newsletter real short and sweet.

First is that I want to make sure everyone knows that the 4th Annual Park Avenue Fitness Health Fair is this Saturday, Sept 27th from 12-3pm. There will be lots of great health and wellness practitioners there and I will be doing free in-person Unstoppable Health Discovery Sessions! For more info, click here. I’d love to see you there and there are multiple raffles with great prizes–all proceeds support Second Harvest Food Bank.

Okay so now I want to let you in on a huge health tip that can help you keep your muscle…and it is extremely important to preserve your muscle if you want to look and feel your best.

Muscle tissue is metabolically active meaning that the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns, making it easier to maintain a healthy weight range. The more muscle you have, the stronger and more functional you are, making it easier to move around in the world and do fun activities. I could go on and on: there are dozens of books about how important it is to have a higher lean body mass! But today, I’m really just going to focus on an incredibly important dietary tip for you to help you keep your muscle which is to eat enough protein!!

Eat Enough Protein…It’s More Than You Might Think

Studies show that if you only eat the RDA of protein (.8g/kg), that is insufficient to support muscle growth or maintenance of lean tissue as you age! Many experts now agree that eating double the RDA,1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (or more), is recommended for keeping muscle tissue around and in good condition.
Additionally, eating the ideal amount of protein per day–even without exercise–leads to significantly more preservation of muscle during weight loss (double or more!)–and that’s what you want if you are trying to lose weight is to lose excess body fat and keep as much muscle as possible.

It should also be noted that not all protein foods are as helpful for muscle protein synthesis: “Lower quality proteins, such as soy or wheat protein, that lack or are low in one or more essential amino acids, fail to stimulate MPS to the same degree as higher quality sources.”

For more guidance on best protein sources and portion guidance, click here.

And of course, if we aren’t exercising, our muscle mass will decline naturally every year, so doing only one without the other is going to severely limit your results. For the best overall results, exercise AND aim for an optimal intake of protein every day (divided into 3 meals throughout the day, ideally, since we can only absorb so much protein or minerals at a time).

I know that this information can be surprising (and even intimidating), but I hope that once you embrace this groundbreaking information, you will find that it is very doable (as well as incredibly filling, energizing, and offering a lot of health benefits).

It is my passion to work with people like you whose health symptoms are getting in the way of you living life fully and with a sense of freedom in your body. I can help you to regain your health so you can feel great and free to enjoy life fully.

Until next time, I’m wishing you unstoppable health!
~Rebecca

P.S. Do you or someone you know need my help? Please apply for a complimentary Unstoppable Health Discovery Session. http://bit.ly/schedulinghealth (subject to availability).

If your goal is to be healthy, feel good in your body, maintain your ideal weight range, have stable energy, and good digestion, then listen up. Today we are going to talk about hunger…and the ways in which you fuel your body (with what, how much, and how often) ties into all of those goals.
So first off, what is hunger?

Hunger is a signal from your body…it’s feedback. But we create a story about it that it is “bad” or “good”. And then we tend to act on that story.
I’ve got some helpful questions for you today to help you identify and understand your hunger story, but first, I want to make a key distinction between physical hunger and emotional hunger.

Physical Hunger

Physical hunger arises when your BODY needs fuel. This usually occurs 3-4 hrs after your last meal, but can happen sooner if you are extremely active, pregnant, or have a medical condition that could require more frequent calorie consumption. Physical hunger tends to gradually build up versus come on suddenly.
When you’re physically hungry, your hunger can be satisfied by a variety of foods and once you eat, you feel satiated (full/content).
Now let’s compare that to emotional hunger.

Emotional Hunger

Emotional hunger is when you experience the feeling of hunger suddenly versus gradually building up. Emotional hunger also tends to feel strong and urgent along with specific cravings (and they usually aren’t for healthy foods, they’re usually for certain comfort foods). Emotional hunger is also often not satisfied by eating…even if you’ve eaten a large meal. Also, emotional eating tends to happen in a distracted way…like all of a sudden the food is gone but you don’t really remember eating it or ate more than you thought you did.
So physical hunger and emotional hunger are quite different. In a nutshell, when you’re physically hungry, you eat and are satisfied for the most part until your next meal. Emotional hunger is a whole different situation. It is really important to be able to identify which one you are feeling as the first step towards having consistently healthy eating habits that set you up to look and feel good most of the time.

Cover Your Nutrition Basics

Now I will say that it is really important to feed your body the right healthy foods or else it can throw things off and lead to some mixed messages: If I don’t get enough protein with each meal, I’m going to be hungry a lot faster…no way would I make it to my next meal without serious hunger pangs, a cranky mood, and probably some sweet cravings. Assuming that you have good basic nutrition (eating mostly real foods versus processed foods, getting 20-30 grams of protein per meal along with some produce to give you fiber and quality carbs, and healthy fats), sleep decently, and aren’t seriously dehydrated, you’re going to be able to use the descriptions I provided to help you differentiate between physical and emotional hunger.

What’s Your Hunger Story?

Remember how I said I’d share some helpful questions with you to help you identify and understand your hunger story? Well take a deep breath…Here we go!
Ask yourself: What feelings come up when I feel hungry (i.e. fear, worry, guilt…concern, interest, etc)? What messages do I usually tell myself when I’m hungry or what are my associations to hunger from my past (i.e. I have to eat quickly before the food is gone; I have to clean my plate; food is love)? When I’ve had enough to eat, is it easy to stop or do I bargain with myself to try and keep eating? Consider your answers and ask yourself, does my hunger story seem helpful? Or does it feed into scarcity, fear, and/or overeating?
Unless you are amongst the minority of the population who has already upgraded their hunger story and habits, your hunger story is something that has been on rinse and repeat since childhood…most likely without you even realizing what it was. It is really important to acknowledge the beliefs you have around hunger, the feelings that come up for you and, of course, the habits that you have when responding to hunger. Your story isn’t set in stone. It is possible to change it…and changing it opens up a whole new world of opportunities for how you relate to food. You will be able to more clearly distinguish between physical and emotional hunger and meet your needs in healthy ways.

The irony is that in many cases, if you’ve been experiencing emotional hunger, you truly don’t need to eat more food…it would in fact be harmful and counterproductive to your health. That is why it is so important to understand the difference between physical and emotional hunger. Food will not provide a lasting solution to emotional hunger. It will instead create a downward spiral where you keep turning to food, overfeeding, and not dealing with the feelings that are crying out to be acknowledged.

Tips For Addressing Emotional Hunger

First, make sure you take a few minutes to answer the questions about your hunger story. This will be helpful to move into an updated way of interpreting the feelings that are likely to come up for you. Next, when you experience hunger, determine what kind it is. If it’s emotional hunger, ask yourself what feeling or emotion is strongest. For example, if you’re feeling bored, you don’t need food, you need to feel interested/engaged/stimulated. If you feel anxious, you don’t need food, you need to feel calm/present/peaceful. From here, you can seek out behaviors to actually address the need behind the feeling instead of using food as a crutch that will never be the appropriate solution. Reach out if you need help. This is what I do!

Through understanding your hunger story, separating your physical and emotional hunger needs and dealing with them in healthy, effective ways, you will find that the natural result is feeling good in your body, having more stable energy, healthier digestion, and a greater sense of ease.

I hope that this information helps you to have more ease, clarity, and peace when it comes to hunger.

If you’re ready to discover where your best healthy range has been hiding, I’d love to connect with you!

Apply for a complimentary Unstoppable Health Discovery Session. http://bit.ly/schedulinghealth (subject to availability).

Until next time, I’m wishing you unstoppable health!
~Rebecca

P.S. Know someone who could use my help? Please invite them to apply for a complimentary Unstoppable Health Discovery Session. http://bit.ly/schedulinghealth (subject to availability).

Keep Your Muscle