Eat when you're hungry...
26/07/09 11:23 Filed in: Nutrition
Many times we eat because it is time to, it’s a mealtime, so we eat whether we are hungry or not. When was the last time your stomach rumbled because you were hungry? We are not conscious of eating when we do so in front of the TV, or a computer, and so we snack too much. We don’t enjoy food, and we may eat “junk” food as a distraction or a release for stress or anxiety. We don’t stop eating until we’ve finished the food – even if the portions are too large.
Many of us may have to reprogram our thoughts and also de-train our senses away from sugar and fat. Hypnotist Paul McKenna distilled the basic ideas into four golden rules in “I can make you thin”:
We need to have a proper meal time and not think of food as something to wolf down in a few minutes at a fast food restaurant, in between doing two other things.
We need to eat less, by having smaller portions, or using smaller plates, and to eat slowly, and chew thoroughly. Our grandmothers were right. If we eat slowly and chew thoroughly, our bodies have time to register how much we have eaten, and we will know when to stop. It takes about 30 minutes for that process – but before then, we could have scarfed down a double cheeseburger, a large fries, and a milkshake.
That’s one real danger of “fast food”; others are that we have ready access to it, and it is usually high in sugar and fat. Since access to these ingredients was not critical to our nutrition, there is no biological control feedback to regulate their intake.
How Palatable Food Disrupt Appetite Regulation
If we eat more slowly, we will stop when we feel full, or when we feel we could eat a little more – not when we feel we couldn’t eat any more! And we should not drink at mealtimes (perhaps a small glass of wine!) because doing so dilutes our digestive fluids. Simple.
We all gain weight. In fact we’re designed to. This might come as a surprise. Our bodies, like other animals, have evolved / are intelligently designed (depending on your point of view) to store fat for the winter. They’re very efficient at this, and it is more efficient to store fat with 9 kcal per gram, than as carbohydrate. Our brains have a specialized capacity to promote overeating of energy-dense foods beyond present needs, to ensure an energy reserve for potential future famine.
Corticostriatal-hypothalamic circuitry and food motivation: integration of energy, action and reward. [Caution: science
]
And what triggers our bodies to store fat is the change in day length (and low vitamin D), and the availability of fruit. Yes, fruit – which contains fructose, which switches on fat storage.
The change in day length also changes insulin signaling; adipose tissue lipoprotein lipase (provides free fatty acids for storage in adipocytes), and skeletal muscle LPL (which provides FFA for energy) to mention just a few aspects. Our fitness also changes, and we change our level of activity in the winter, and thus our energy balance. In the “wild” we would eat fruit in the appointed season, and we would put on body fat to shield us from the scarcity of food in the winter.
Short day-length increases sucrose consumption and adiposity in rats fed a high-fat diet
Seasonal changes in adiposity: the roles of the photoperiod, melatonin and other hormones, and sympathetic nervous system.
But food is no longer scarce in winter and we have lighted and heated homes and offices, so we no longer notice the change in season or shiver to keep warm (which uses energy). We can eat fruit just about any time of year; and worse yet, we can drink fruit juice like orange juice, or soft drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup.
Think Positive
Think of how you would like to be, and don’t focus on depriving yourself of something, as in a diet. Positive thoughts are very powerful. Look at people who have lost literally hundreds of pounds of body weight and you’ll find it was often for a reason. For example they wanted to get married, or to be able to go to their children’s marriage. It gave them a strong, positive image and a target to aim for. Something spurred them to have a goal to change how they behaved.
It is truly amazing to think that years ago scientists found that laboratory rats would press a lever thousands of times to get a small reward dose of cocaine. We’ll just press little keys on a keyboard, a cell phone, or a game console; and we’ll “reward” ourselves by overeating on snack food. And we’re the intelligent species?
- eat when you are hungry,
- eat what you want rather than what you think you should,
- eat consciously and enjoy your food, and finally,
- stop eating when you are no longer hungry.
We need to have a proper meal time and not think of food as something to wolf down in a few minutes at a fast food restaurant, in between doing two other things.
We need to eat less, by having smaller portions, or using smaller plates, and to eat slowly, and chew thoroughly. Our grandmothers were right. If we eat slowly and chew thoroughly, our bodies have time to register how much we have eaten, and we will know when to stop. It takes about 30 minutes for that process – but before then, we could have scarfed down a double cheeseburger, a large fries, and a milkshake.
That’s one real danger of “fast food”; others are that we have ready access to it, and it is usually high in sugar and fat. Since access to these ingredients was not critical to our nutrition, there is no biological control feedback to regulate their intake.
How Palatable Food Disrupt Appetite Regulation
If we eat more slowly, we will stop when we feel full, or when we feel we could eat a little more – not when we feel we couldn’t eat any more! And we should not drink at mealtimes (perhaps a small glass of wine!) because doing so dilutes our digestive fluids. Simple.
We all gain weight. In fact we’re designed to. This might come as a surprise. Our bodies, like other animals, have evolved / are intelligently designed (depending on your point of view) to store fat for the winter. They’re very efficient at this, and it is more efficient to store fat with 9 kcal per gram, than as carbohydrate. Our brains have a specialized capacity to promote overeating of energy-dense foods beyond present needs, to ensure an energy reserve for potential future famine.
Corticostriatal-hypothalamic circuitry and food motivation: integration of energy, action and reward. [Caution: science
]And what triggers our bodies to store fat is the change in day length (and low vitamin D), and the availability of fruit. Yes, fruit – which contains fructose, which switches on fat storage.
The change in day length also changes insulin signaling; adipose tissue lipoprotein lipase (provides free fatty acids for storage in adipocytes), and skeletal muscle LPL (which provides FFA for energy) to mention just a few aspects. Our fitness also changes, and we change our level of activity in the winter, and thus our energy balance. In the “wild” we would eat fruit in the appointed season, and we would put on body fat to shield us from the scarcity of food in the winter.
Short day-length increases sucrose consumption and adiposity in rats fed a high-fat diet
Seasonal changes in adiposity: the roles of the photoperiod, melatonin and other hormones, and sympathetic nervous system.
But food is no longer scarce in winter and we have lighted and heated homes and offices, so we no longer notice the change in season or shiver to keep warm (which uses energy). We can eat fruit just about any time of year; and worse yet, we can drink fruit juice like orange juice, or soft drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup.
Think Positive
Think of how you would like to be, and don’t focus on depriving yourself of something, as in a diet. Positive thoughts are very powerful. Look at people who have lost literally hundreds of pounds of body weight and you’ll find it was often for a reason. For example they wanted to get married, or to be able to go to their children’s marriage. It gave them a strong, positive image and a target to aim for. Something spurred them to have a goal to change how they behaved.
It is truly amazing to think that years ago scientists found that laboratory rats would press a lever thousands of times to get a small reward dose of cocaine. We’ll just press little keys on a keyboard, a cell phone, or a game console; and we’ll “reward” ourselves by overeating on snack food. And we’re the intelligent species?
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