Eat Until You Are Pleasantly Satisfied, Then Stop

One of the turning points in my awareness of my relationship with food happened when I cooked an apple crumble for pudding for myself and a naturally slim friend. Although we’d each eaten a generous portion, there was still a lot left. Throughout the evening I kept sneaking into the kitchen to eat further spoonfuls of it. I was amazed that my friend did not seem to hear its siren-like call enticing her to eat more; so I asked her why, if she’d enjoyed it as much as she said she had, she wouldn’t want more. The look on her face was confused and her remark was brief: ‘Why would I? I’m full.’

My friend, like many people slimmer than I was at the time, always served herself the portion size she wanted rather than dividing the full amount she had cooked by the number of people eating. Whereas I would always divide everything into equal portions regardless of hunger, she left the excess in the pan.

I would start eating with the objective to finish my plate, whereas if she couldn’t manage it all, she would leave food on her plate. This difference in approach made it quite clear to me that my emotional relationship with food was at the heart of my weight problems. I was incapable of leaving food untouched on my plate. I was programmed to eat everything even if I was full. My objective was different from my friend’s.

Other people have different strategies. I have known someone to throw a paper napkin on to her plate to stop her from overfilling herself with roast potatoes. Her fondness for roast dinners related back to childhood and was a form of emotional eating. When I asked her whether she was worried that by stopping too soon she might get hungry again too quickly, she replied logically that it didn’t worry her because she knew that if she got hungry later she would just eat something else.

This might seem an obvious statement to someone who has no difficulty with food, but to someone who is a compulsive overeater, the idea that it is possible to have that degree of control can be a revelation. Rest assured that as long as you stop when you’re pleasantly full, you just have to wait until your stomach is empty again and you can eat something else.

This same friend would also stop eating her main course well before she was full so that she would have room for dessert.

In my experience, if you were full, you waited for your main course to go down and had your dessert later, the net result being that you could cram in a lot more food in total. It was revealing to see life and food from others’ perspectives.

Eating Habit 3 In Action

To summarize: if you feel hungry, eat something and then stop when you’ve had enough (level 4 or 5 on the hunger scale). If you want more but feel full, give your body a chance to digest. Wait until your stomach starts rumbling again (level 7 or 8 on the hunger scale) and then you can have more.

It takes about 15-20 minutes for your stomach to give the signal to your brain that you’re satisfied. It is actually triggered by food entering the small intestine rather than the stomach.

It doesn’t take very much food to release the hormone that says ‘I’m satisfied’. The trouble is that in the rush to eat, many of us have eaten our second helping or even pudding before food reaches the hormone trigger point. We need to slow down the speed of eating in order to feel more satisfied.

Your body weight might be seen as a reflection of your level of sensitivity to your body’s signals. If you are able to tune in to your body to the point where you stop eating before or when you feel just satisfied (level 5) or when you feel full (level 4), you will achieve a slim to healthy body weight; but if you regularly eat until you are uncomfortably full (level 3) and often feel fit to burst, or eat when you’re not even hungry, you will either become or remain overweight.

If you get the desire to eat at a time when your stomach is not asking for food (for example, immediately after you have eaten a large meal), it is likely that you are eating to try to change how you feel. Stages 2 and 6 show you how to change the way you feel and behave around food.

Your body is the expert. It knows when it’s warm and when it’s cold, when it needs the toilet and when it’s tired. Your body also knows when it’s hungry and what it physically needs to eat – you just have to let it tell you.

Little And Often?

Some weight-loss diets recommend eating several small meals per day rather than a few large meals. However, if you eat six small meals a day but are hungry for only three of them, be aware that you are still overeating. Remember, if you eat for any reason other than because you are feeling hungry, you are overeating.