Eat only when you’re hungry, and stop when satisfied (not full)
Three common questions that I get from people that I teach to lose weight are 1) When should I eat, and 2) How much should I eat?. 3) When should I stop eating?
When should I eat?
Listen to your body and eat only when you’re physically hungry. Don’t eat when you are not! A lot of people don’t know when they are hungry. They are so used to eating when the clock says it’s time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and taking snacks in between that they don’t know what it means to be hungry. In my courses, I teach people to reconnect with their bodies and learn to experience and recognize hunger signs. Hunger is not harmful. I teach them a 10-point hunger scale and recommend eating at level 7.
Eat at level 7 hunger
It is best to stay between 3 and 7 on the hunger and satiety scale.
Some tips to help you eat at level 7.
-Stop eating 2 or 3 times during each meal to ask yourself if you are still hungry or beginning to feel satisfied.
-Some people take a 5-minute break halfway through their meal before continuing to give time for chemical messengers to be sent to their brain to tell them that they have eaten.
-Feelings of satisfaction do not happen right away. Eating slowly will help. Take 20 minutes to eat meals.
-After you finish eating, check again to see if you are satisfied.
-You don’t want to be too hungry or too full.
If you want to fast, there are steps you can take to help you suppress hunger.
Hunger vs. Thirst
Learn to tell the difference between hunger and thirst so that you don’t get fooled to eat when you are thirsty.
Hunger vs. Fake Hunger
Learn to tell the difference between true hunger vs. fake hunger (desiring to eat out of habit, emotion, or sensory input).
Types of Hunger
The emotional hunger type
This is the most common type. These people eat when they are happy, sad, stressed, angry, bored, or nervous. These people eat in response to a feeling instead of true hunger.
Sensory hunger type
-These people are affected by cues like Sights, smells, and sounds to trigger them to feel hungry and desire those foods.
Habitual Hunger type
These people eat not because of true hunger but because it is time to eat. They eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner because it is scheduled, not because they are truly hungry.
Pavlov – Russian physiologist known for his work on classical conditioning.
People eat for many reasons. We may eat to satisfy an appetite or just because it tastes good. We may also eat to soothe emotions, celebrate victories, or satisfy cultural expectations. If we want to lose weight, we should eat only when we are hungry.
Learn your hunger patterns
Most people are truly hungry two times a day. A good number of people are hungry only one time a day.
How do you learn your hunger patterns?
Try skipping breakfast for the first week. When you wake up, make sure you drink adequate amounts of water or very diluted juice, like orange juice. E.g. 1/4 to 0.5 cup of orange juice in 1 liter of water. Sip on it all morning and skip breakfast. This allows you to try to find your hunger patterns. Then eat lunch. Drink fluids regularly during the afternoon, preferably diluted juice drink and only eat dinner if you feel hungry. If you don’t feel hungry, skip dinner. Most people are hungry only once or twice per day. A few people are truly hungry 3 times per day and those people who are truly hungry 3 times per day will lose weight eating 3 meals a day if they eat the right portions.
Brief Mealtime Window (BMW)
This is intermittent fasting. Eat within a brief mealtime window. Eat all your meals within a 1 to 7-hour window. Don’t grace all day or spread your meals out. Pick a window, like 5 hours and stick to it.
Many people eat breakfast when they wake up, lunch because it is noon or 1:00 pm, and dinner because the time is between 5-6 pm. They don’t listen to their bodies to tell them when they are hungry. The slim fit paradigm shift is to start listening to your body and eating only when you are physically hungry.
Skip breakfast. Did you know who came up with the Breakfast is the most important meal of the day campaign? Cereal companies! Companies that sell breakfast products like orange juice also push it a lot. For them, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but not for everybody else.
Breakfast means “break-fast”. You don’t have to break your fast at 8:00 am. You can break the fast at noon!
Don’t graze. When you are hungry, eat a meal. No snacks, no grazing.
The only time you should eat snacks
Only eat healthy snacks if needed to delay hunger until mealtime. In a normal, healthy person, the only time I recommend a snack is to delay or blunt hunger till a proper mealtime. For example, if you are at level 7 hunger and can’t eat yet, eat a healthy snack to slow down the progression of your hunger till your anticipated meal time.
