The power of paying attention

I was working at the computer the other day, and overheard an interview on a local news station with an inspiring woman who lost a substantial amount of weight - I believe she was in her 60's, and had gotten into dancing. The reason she decided to try and lose weight was because some of the dance moves she was learning required her partner to lift her up in the air - she felt bad for her poor partner, so made some changes so that she would be lighter.


The thing she did that struck me the most was this - she started paying attention to her hunger. She said that sometimes her life was so busy that she simply ate because it seemed like the thing to do - she learned that if she would simply check in with herself before eating (take a breath, focus, calm the chaos a bit, have a little water), she discovered that more often than not, she wasn't even hungry!

Here is an inspiring video to promote a new book by Dr. Michelle May, who runs a business called Am I Hungry? (amihungry.com). Dr. May is all about intuitive eating, and I am looking forward to reading (and probably wholeheartedly recommending!) her new book. It is a reminder of the power of simply paying attention to what you eat, and making sure that you enjoy it!

2009 - Bring it on!

There are a ton of New Year's Resolution advice articles out there, but I liked this one, mainly because it is great advice from some of my fellow RD colleagues. If they had asked me to pipe in for this particular article, here is what I would have added:

For 2009, commit to yourself to really pay attention to your own hunger cues. If you aren't hungry, wait until you are to begin eating. If you are hungry, go ahead and eat! And, in the middle of eating, check in with yourself - are you pleasantly full yet? Time to stop eating.

While you are at it, approach food and eating with joy only - if that piece of chocolate fudge is truly calling your name, sit down and really enjoy it! Don't force yourself to eat things you don't like, but do approach food with curiosity and openness - be willing to try, and open to learning about new foods and new ways to prepare them.

Happy New Year!

The magic of hunger

I've been thinking about hunger a lot lately; being hungry is really an essential ingredient to enjoying food. Our bodies give us hunger pangs for a reason, but we tend to ignore them one way or another.

Many people don't like the feeling of hunger (as I've mentioned in a previous post). They will try to and stay ahead of the hunger pangs by munching all day, and by overeating when possible. Most of the time, this occurs because of a negative experience with hunger - either because of a period of time when food was not available, or, more commonly, a self-imposed starvation diet.

We tend to expect our hunger to be predictable - that we should always be hungry at set times, for a certain amount of food. So, we eat this way, whether our bodies are telling us to or not. We could learn a lot by watching children eat - sometimes they are hungry and eat a lot, sometimes they are not hungry. It really doesn't matter that it is 6pm and dinner is served. If their body is not sending the signals, they will sit there and pick at their food. Until. Until the adults take charge and somehow make them override themselves and eat despite the lack of desire. (How many of today's adults learned to overeat this way?)

Some adults have become so out of touch with their bodies, that they report they don't even know what it feels like to be hungry. They have simply avoided hunger for years, and can't remember what it really feels like.

Others have learned to apply the label "hungry" to unrelated emotions, such as actual boredom, fear, anxiety, anger, etc. They have learned to distract themselves from negative emotions by labeling those emotions as "I'm hungry". Needless to say, this is a contributor to unwanted weight and does not deal with the actual emotion.

Allowing our body enough time between eating to get nice and hungry is a very healthy thing to do - plus it makes food taste much better! We also need to allow our children to get hungry - this is a tricky thing to explain to parents, because it sounds alarmingly like I am proposing we starve our chilren to make them better eaters (I am not). But, when we allow kids to munch all day, giving them access to food whenever they feel like it, they end up not hungry - ever. With kids, this also applies to drinking all day - I have talked to many parents with picky children who reveal that their child is a big all-day milk drinker or juice drinker.

Try it for a few days - really check in with your body, and don't eat until it is sending clear hunger signals. Notice how much better the food tastes. If you have children, try to limit between meal eating and drinking (except for water), and see if they don't eat better when they come to the dinner table with an actual appetite. Don't push them to eat more than they want, because you are overriding their own internal hunger cue! More on feeding kids later....

Let's learn from the skinny people

I know that it seems like certain skinny people stay that way because of blessed genes; but, if you really spend time observing a naturally skinny person, you will realize a couple of things.

#1 - Naturally skinny people tend to honor their hunger. If they are not hungry, they have no problem saying so and simply don't eat. Also, they tend to stop eating when they are comfortably full, even when there is chocolate cake LEFT ON THE PLATE!

#2 - Naturally skinny people tend to eat what they like and leave the rest. Many of these people have been labeled a "picky eater" by those who know them, as if that's a bad thing. They are guided by what tastes good to them, and as they get older and wiser, they are also guided by what they know is doing their body good.

#3 - Naturally skinny people are RARELY, if ever, perfect eaters. If you meet someone who you think is a naturally skinny person and also eats perfectly, chances are they may be suffering from something called "orthorexia" (a term coined by Dr. Steven Bratman). Orthorexia Nervosa literally means "fixation on righteous eating", and it occurs when healthy eating becomes an obsession - another day, another topic.

Mindful eating

Part of honoring your hunger cues has to do with something called Mindful Eating. More and more in our society, food is added on to other activities - we eat while driving, while at the computer (I'm guilty!), in front of the TV, etc. We don't actually pay attention to what we are eating, whether it tastes good, or how we feel. I love this quote on the website for The Center for Mindful Eating (yes, there actually is such a place):

Awareness of the moment is when change can begin

You simply cannot achieve a good relationship with food (and a healthy weight) if you don't pay attention. This is one of the reasons why some of the European cultures aren't fat (yet!) - food is part of the culture, and they take the time to sit and eat and enjoy.

Just for today, try eating your food at the table, with no other activities involved - just eat and pay attention to the food. Do you like what you are eating? If not, why are you eating it? How does your body feel? Are you getting comfortably full or still wanting more? Just release any judgement about what you are eating and simply pay attention.

How we teach kids to break the hunger scale

Remember that movie Monster's Ball? In it, there was a single mom and her overweight boy - in one scene, the mom discovered that the boy was hiding candy and she got angry at him; this is called hoarding, and it is caused by someone forcing that boy to break his own hunger scale.

When we withhold food from kids, or make comments that they have had enough or remind them that they are eating too much, we take away their power and incentive to listen to their own internal hunger cues. In some cases, children feel so guilty about wanting food and so conflicted about what they "should" be doing and what they want to do, that they start developing some dysfunctional behaviors, such as hoarding food. They are not being bad kids, it's a matter of survival.

Another way we teach kids to break their hunger scale is by encouraging them to graze all the time; I see this at the playground a lot - a child will be running around, having fun, and the mom will be holding out crackers that the child zooms by and takes, never really slowing down. In this situation, the child never gets to the lower parts of the hunger scale, and never really feels hunger pangs. It's no wonder when the child becomes a picky eater!

I'll talk more about feeding kids in this blog, but for now, I need to mention that everything you need to know about feeding kids can be found in books by Ellyn Satter - visit her website http://www.ellynsatter.com/ for loads of information and books.

Breaking the hunger scale

There are a few ways that dieting makes us break the hunger scale (see yesterday's post); one way is that sometimes dieting forces us to deny our own hunger cues, making us go down to a 2 or a 1 on the scale before it's time to eat; then, we eat everything in sight and feel like a failure. Repeat after me - WILLPOWER IS A JOKE! - we are programmed to overeat when our body feels like it's heading into hard times (like a famine, yikes!). It is simply nature's way.


Another way dieting forces us to break the hunger scale is by instilling a fear of the feeling of hunger in us. When you are uncomfortably hungry for a prolonged period of time, your body learns to fear hunger. When we fear hunger, we tend to eat before we feel hunger. This means that we always start "munching" or "grazing" as soon as we are at a 5 or so on the hunger scale - just to keep from slipping into the hunger pangs at a 3 or 4. This adds up to extra calories and pounds on the butt (or wherever you tend to store it).


By the way, people who actually experience real hunger (as in no money or no other resources to obtain food), will react the same way once they have access to food - they will overeat when given the chance, and avoid getting hungry because of the awful memories of feeling hungry.

Hunger Scales

If you've gotten out of touch with your own hunger cues, a great tool to use is a Hunger Scale. There are lots out there - just google it and find one you like. Here's one I found at a blog called Intuitive Eating:

HUNGER - SATISFACTION SCALE (HSS)
10: Stuffed to the point of feeling sick (Thanksgiving full!)
9: Very uncomfortable, tired
8: Uncomfortably full
7: Feel you have eaten just a little bit too much
6: Comfortable, satisfied [stop eating]
5: Just noticing the first signs of hunger [slow down, if eating]
4: Hungry, ready to eat [Eat at this point]
3: Very hungry
2: Extremely hungry, irritable
1: Starving, can't concentrate, dizzy

Try using this scale for a meal or two and see how you like it. Once you get used to eating this way, you will automatically be eating in tune with your own body's hunger and will be getting the right amount of food for you.

Slacker Golden Rule #1

Always honor your hunger!

You know, the vast majority of us were given a key at birth to achieve life-long weight control. It's your hunger cues.

Imagine a small baby. He's hungry - and he's going to let you know about it. Ignore him, and he gets louder and more frantic. Feed him, and he happily eats until... he's not hungry anymore. Then, when you try to feed him, he turns his head or spits out the nipple. Having trouble imagining a baby? Here - use mine:

Now, imagine that baby growing up and always eating this way - when he's hungry, he eats; when he's full, he stops; when he's not hungry, he simply does not eat. Do you think he would develop a weight problem?

We are taught in so many ways not to honor our hunger - we're taught to clean our plates, taught to eat because the clock says it's time, taught to deprive our hunger when we go on a diet, and on and on. Just for today, pay close attention to your hunger. How well are you honoring it?