Sounds silly, I know. Unsurprisingly, because we’re hungry. Is that really true? It’s important to know, because, it has a lot to do with our energy balance, and therefore our body composition, and therefore our health.
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ‘How can we eat?’ the second by the question ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by the question ‘Where shall we have lunch?”
Let’s be honest: yes, we eat when we’re hungry, but we also eat when we’re bored, or sleepy, or irritated, or feeling unloved. Don’t believe that last one? When we were little, and we were upset about something, Mommy or some other caregiver would give us a treat or even make us a meal. This was because they cared about us, or they wanted us out of their face. Either way, we’re trained to feel satisfaction from food in ways that aren’t just satisfying hunger. Food has calories, but it also has high emotional content. How do we break that cycle?
Intuitive Eating
When one of my greatest professors introduced herself to the Sports Nutrition class, she said that among her other credentials, she was a Certified Intuitive Eating Counsellor. Now, I’m a Science Guy mostly, and I secretly scoffed at this. The name sounded a little woo-woo to me. Later in the semester I learned just how wrong I was in a painful and ironic way.
I was working a part time job as a medical assistant at an addiction recovery center (more irony), then running off to my classes in the afternoon. I practice time restricted eating myself, so all I’d had was morning coffee and a snack or two before I got to campus around 2 PM. I had some time, so I went into their shiny new Commons, which puts most major food courts to shame. I was really hungry.
I choose a brown rice bowl with stir-fried vegetables and marinated steak. Good macronutrient balance and super yummy, especially with a little shriracha sauce. It also was in a college-kid-sized take-out box, and I sat outside in a park-like setting and dug in. It was so good! Class time was getting closer and I was getting pretty full, but about a third of it was unfinished. I didn’t want to throw-out this wonderful food, but I couldn’t stick the box in my backpack and have it hemorrhage all over my school materials. So, I ate it, the whole thing. Then, I waddled to lecture, which happened to be on Intuitive Eating.
“So,” the professor said, “one way to become more aware of your eating before a meal is to ask yourself how hungry are you really, on a scale of one to ten, from ‘starving’ to ‘extremely’ full. The idea is to stay between 3 and 7. Don’t wait until you’re starving, and don’t keep eating until you are bursting.”
Wow, did I ever learn my lesson that day. So, the hunger scale is one method, and if you’re really not that hungry, why are you eating? And if you’re getting full, why are you still eating? What need are you really trying to satisfy? Two pounds of yummy rice bowl will not make you rice as happy as one pound. Something to think about.
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