Listening to Your Body’s Hunger Signals

Our bodies send clear signals telling us when to eat and when to stop – but are we listening?

I was talking with a new client the other day and I asked her to describe her appetite.  She thought for a minute, then told me, “I can’t really say that I ever get hungry.”  She ate frequently throughout the day (maybe a little too frequently), and on a fairly set schedule.  So she relied on the clock – not her hunger – to tell her when it was time to eat.  And when I asked her how she knew when she’d had enough –that it was time to stop eating – she was completely stumped.  “I don’t have a clue,” she said.  “I’ve never really thought about it.”

When I ask questions like this, what I hope to hear someone say is that they eat when they feel hungry and stop eating when they feel satisfied – not stuffed – and their hunger is gone.  But when clients tell me that they don’t get hungry – or that the signal to stop eating is that “there’s no food left” – it tells me that when their body is speaking to them, they’re just not listening.

Your body sends clear and unmistakable signals when it needs attention.  You know what it means when your mouth is dry, your eyelids are heavy or your bladder is full.  And while you might be able to ignore those signals for a little while – sooner or later you’ll be driven to drink something, get some sleep, or make a trip to the restroom.

If you think of hunger and fullness the same way – as clear signals from your body that it’s time to eat or time to stop – it can really help to regulate your how much food you eat.  To be fair, not everyone feels hunger quite the same way – most feel a little rumble in the stomach, but some get a little lightheaded or their thinking gets fuzzy when their blood sugar dips between meals.  But these are still very clear signals coming from within – your body is telling you that it’s getting low on fuel. And when your stomach begins to fill, nerve impulses are sent to the brain, telling you that you’re satisfied – at which point, it’s appropriate to stop.

When we’re thirsty, we generally will drink – not to excess – but until our bodies tell us that we’re not thirsty any more.  But when you eat, do you stop eating when you’re not hungry any more? Or do you stop because you’re stuffed?  Or do you stop because your plate is empty, or because you’ve scraped the last helping out of the serving plate?

Learning to recognize your body’s natural signals of hunger and satisfaction – and responding appropriately – are skills worth practicing.  Try keeping a food diary for a couple of days.  Each time you eat, rate your hunger on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 means you’re weak and starving, and 10 means you’re so stuffed you almost feel sick) both before you start eating and after you’ve finished.  Ideally, you want to start eating when your hunger is at about a 3 or 4 – your stomach is growling a little and you feel ready to eat – and you want to stop when you’re at about a 5 or 6, which means that you’re satisfied and pleasantly full.

It’s amazing how this little exercise can help to put you back in touch with your body. When your body starts to tell you it needs fuel, don’t ignore the signals.  If your usual habit is to let yourself get too hungry (a 1 or 2 on your hunger scale), you’re likely to overeat (hitting a 9 or 10).  Train yourself to eat just enough so that you’re comfortable, satisfied and no longer hungry – not until you’re stuffed.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife.

 

I’ll never forget a client I had years ago. He brought in a ‘perfect’ food diary. He followed his meal plan to the letter, and every calorie (or so he thought) was accounted for. But his weight just wasn’t moving the way he’d hoped. As we talked, I noticed that he kept popping breath mints in his mouth. When he started unwrapping his second roll of mints, I just had to ask –exactly how many mints was he eating every day? “These little things? – I don’t know… maybe 5 or 6 rolls.” Who knew that “those little things” added up to more than 300 extra calories a day?

We’re not always aware of everything we eat, and those extra calories can really add up.

Sometimes the extra calories are so obvious, you wonder how people don’t notice them. I had a roommate in college who was always dieting (and never losing), and I used to get really amused watching her weigh out the one ounce of cheese she allowed herself for a snack. She always cut too much. She’d weigh the block of cheese, then cut off a little bit….and eat it. She’d do this over and over, until she’d whittled a two-ounce piece of cheese down to one. Completely oblivious, she had no idea she’d eaten twice as much as she was supposed to.

Those who keep food records usually do a pretty good job – at least when it comes to noting what they eat at their meals and snacks. But when I instruct people on how to keep an accurate food record, I make it really clear…. other than water, anything that passes your lips gets written down, no matter how insignificant it may seem or how small. Because those extra little things can really add up. Don’t believe me? Here are some real life examples … courtesy of my clients.

• Free sample of a burrito at the grocery store: 100 calories

• Crusts cut off while making son’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich: 75 calories

• Six steak fries eaten absentmindedly from friend’s plate over lunch: 120 calories

• Last few spoons of mashed potatoes from dinner (not enough to put away for tomorrow): 110 calories

• Three bites of dough while baking chocolate chip cookies: 150 calories

• ½ piece of garlic toast and ½ cup of spaghetti left on child’s plate: 200 calories

• Few bites of leftover chow mein, eaten while standing up at the sink: 90 calories

• Six vodka and cranberry juices every night after work (okay, this client knew he was drinking a few calories… but he couldn’t believe that liquids could add up to 1200 extra calories)

That dash of cream in your coffee, the candy you filched from a co-worker’s desk, a few handfuls of your date’s buttered popcorn – it all adds up. Take a look back over your last few days – have a few extra calories have sneaked up on you?

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife.

Bigger Portions, Bigger Bodies

A few weeks ago, the US Coast Guard announced a major downsizing.  Not in their staff, but in the number of passengers that will be allowed to travel on commercial boats.  The reason?  The average passenger weight is being bumped up by 25 pounds – which will determine, and now lessen, the number of people a boat can safely hold. It’s yet another nod to the staggering statistic that two-thirds of adults in this country are overweight or obese.

It’s well documented that we’re getting bigger and bigger.  And it seems that as we get larger, everything else is getting larger, too – from dinner plates to dashboards.  Like the “chicken and egg” question, though, it’s not always clear which came first. 

The amount of food we purchase, prepare and eat has increased dramatically in the last 30 years or so.  The number of ‘large size’ packages in supermarkets has gone up ten-fold, and restaurant portions are 250% larger than the recommended government serving size.  Today’s dinner plate holds 36% more food than it did 30 years ago – and since small spoons look funny next to 14 inch plates, some of our utensils are nearly the size of small shovels.  In other words, our “consumption norms” are shifting – the amount of food that we consider to be a normal portion is getting bigger, and bigger and bigger. And that’s making us bigger, too.

And just as we’ve been adjusting our view of what’s a normal portion of food, we’re also adapting our environment to accommodate our expanding waistlines.  Cars are outfitted with larger cupholders and dashboards that could accommodate a Sunday brunch – because customers demand it.  We walk into buildings with revolving doors that are a foot wider than they were 10 years ago, and we shield ourselves from the rain with umbrellas that have swollen to 1 ½ times the standard diameter.  And the demand for sturdier toilet seats, double wide recliners and – I’m sorry to report – double wide coffins are all on the rise. 

I hope this doesn’t mean that we’re giving up – that we’ll start shifting our norms of what we consider acceptable weight, too. Yes, the statistics are sobering, but if we begin believing that “250 is the new 175”, then we’re well on our way to convincing ourselves that the battle of the bulge can’t be won.  

Shifting our consumption norms is an uphill battle, and it’s one that each and every one of us has to fight at some level every day.  Even if we know that larger packages, larger plates and larger servings lead us to eat more, knowledge isn’t enough.  We all have deal with the environmental influences that determine how much we eat.  We need to teach ourselves to act on that knowledge by buying smaller packages and serving ourselves smaller portions on smaller plates – and we need to learn to be satisfied with less.   

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD. Susan is a paid consultant for Herbalife.