Only Eat When Your Stomach Is Empty
When I took the time to compare my eating habits with those of slimmer people I discovered that my pattern was to eat because I was ‘supposed to’, or because the moment dictated that it was convenient to do so, rather than because I was hungry. I discovered that I ate pre-emptively so that I never experienced hunger.
Rather than eating in response to hunger, the sound of hunger for me was a loud brass band that went off in my head. The thought of being hungry was frightening because I believed that if I got too hungry, I’d panic, and eat far too much of whatever was available. It was a revelation to me to discover that some people become so distracted by other things that they don’t even notice when they are hungry. In contrast to my brass band, they barely heard a penny whistle!
When healthy people remark that they’re ravenous, their words are rarely followed by a rush to the kitchen. It’s more a statement of fact. One of my colleagues told me that even if he was a bit hungry when he got home, he would occupy himself doing other things before he started cooking. He rarely picked or snacked while cooking. Sometimes, if he was busy, he would stave off hunger pangs by snacking on tomatoes or cucumber, and then felt that he had eaten ‘loads’.
For such people, hunger pangs do not represent a crisis situation where food is the overwhelming need. They are simply a signal that they will need to eat soon. Their association with hunger says, ‘If there’s food nearby, my needs are already or easily met’, so they feel no sense of desperation to eat.
It follows that your difficulties with weight will relate to how sensitive you are to hunger. If you feel hunger but are completely detached from it both emotionally and physically, you are likely to be underweight. If you feel hunger and emotionally and physically overreact to it, you will be overweight.
The best solution, therefore, is to tune in to your hunger: eat when you are hungry, eat slowly, and stop eating when you feel satisfied. In order to achieve this, you might need to work on changing your emotional relationship with food. It is also useful to understand the different stages of hunger. If you understand where your feelings are on the hunger scale, you will be able to assess more accurately when you should eat.
Habit 2 In Action
If you are in a situation where there are set meal breaks, so you are encouraged to eat at certain times whether you are hungry or not, consider this: eat an early breakfast – at least four hours before the set lunch break. You should then be hungry enough for lunch, somewhere between ‘comfortable’ and ‘distracted by hunger’ on the hunger scale.
Aim not to snack unless you really hungry (tummy rumbling), but if you have to, eat just a small snack that will take you back to ‘comfortable’. This will allow your hunger to build up again by dinner time.
Part of getting to know yourself and your body will be in learning what kind of foods will help you feel full up for longer, and being able to judge how much to eat during a meal to get you to ‘pleasantly satisfied’.