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.