Can you trust your appetite and/or hunger/fullness cues?

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  • summerkissed
    summerkissed Posts: 730 Member
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    emily7kg wrote: »
    I really think that sugar screws up our natural appetite hormones. Everyone maintained their weight before the advent of modern processed food. Isnt it supposed to be a natural bodily function? As I start logging food and sticking to a set number, the junk foods naturally drop away for me. The chocolate biscuits at 4pm are less appetising knowing it basically means salad with nothing for dinner. I'm not saying that I'm 100 % there, but I'm believing that in time my body will forgive me for all the crap I've put into it, and come back into proper hormonal alignment.

    Sodium is another thing that's stuffed us up! Both salt and sugar are aquired tastes they aren't something we are born wanting! Yes it takes a while but it does happen and all of a sudden things taste extra sweet or salty! Fruit is natures candy lol I'm to the point now that fruit settles a sweet craving (apart from Tuesday when a tub of mm's picked a fight with me lol but I ended up feeling so sick, 6 years ago I could have eaten the lot with no yucky upset tummy)
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
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    Some days I think of it as "riding the wave". Because of my many years monitoring my blood sugar levels, I habitually won't let hunger signals sit too long. Otherwise I'd get chaotic blood sugar numbers. I try and find something to eat pretty soon after hunger strikes, and I work on picking a "good" thing. Something within my calorie allowance and well-balanced for the macros.

    If I wait too long discipline goes out the window.

    Other times, it's not hunger. It's habit or boredom. I work on strategies to deal with that. For me this strikes mostly at night and I've started a habit of carrying around a glass of sparkling water. It's a treat but it's calorie free.
  • 47Jacqueline
    47Jacqueline Posts: 6,993 Member
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    I'm always hungry when I wake up, so I eat breakfast. The rest of the day is a crapshoot depending on my stress level.
  • patrikc333
    patrikc333 Posts: 436 Member
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    impossible to trust. I'm always hungry and nothing fills me up, so will need to log to keep myself under control

    what is a problem for me is that I eat too quickly and I normally eat almost all my daily snacks close to each other, I cannot learn to proper behave
  • youngmomtaz
    youngmomtaz Posts: 1,075 Member
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    I cannot trust my hunger cues. At all! I feel "hungry" when I am bored or upset, I often mistake hunger for thirst. I am working on these so hard! Making sure I am always hydrated helps a lot, and I find that my workouts regulate my appetite really well. For example when pms struck this month I have very few cravings, I also did not feel the urge to kill, nor did I get overwhelmingly tired like I typically do. I wrote myself a memo on my mirror so that I remember how good working out is for my mental health.

    I have been realizing how rare it is for me to actually feel hunger. I am eating 16-1800 cal per day and just don't feel it. I am eating out of habit and to keep my systems energized but I really am wondering if my body is broken from so much garbage over the years.
  • msf74
    msf74 Posts: 3,498 Member
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    No, and I doubt I ever will be able to do so. I will therefore never be an intuitive eater.

    I am however a mindful eater and that works marvelously.
  • patrikc333
    patrikc333 Posts: 436 Member
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    msf74 wrote: »
    No, and I doubt I ever will be able to do so. I will therefore never be an intuitive eater.

    I am however a mindful eater and that works marvelously.

    this is a great post, exactly what I want to say - I'll prob steal it :sunglasses:
  • umayster
    umayster Posts: 651 Member
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    I have fewer and more 'appropriate' eat signals after going to very low carb diet. I still think food when thirsty or tired, but am working on using that reminder to address those first with water or sleep if applicable.
  • hannahadrianna
    hannahadrianna Posts: 8 Member
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    msf74 wrote: »
    No, and I doubt I ever will be able to do so. I will therefore never be an intuitive eater.

    I am however a mindful eater and that works marvelously.

    Love this. Exactly.
  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
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    msf74 wrote: »
    No, and I doubt I ever will be able to do so. I will therefore never be an intuitive eater.

    I am however a mindful eater and that works marvelously.

    Dang!
    Exactly how it is :D
  • mathandcats
    mathandcats Posts: 786 Member
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    arditarose wrote: »
    No. I always want to eat.

    This is me. Even after almost 600 days of logging.
  • ariana_eatsandlifts
    ariana_eatsandlifts Posts: 197 Member
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    For me, no. I'd like to think I could stop counting calories once I reach maintenance, but it would only be a matter of time before I was 200 pounds again.

    I've been calorie counting off and on for over four years, and I am still occasionally surprised by how fast food can add up if I don't pre-log.
  • dutchandkiwi
    dutchandkiwi Posts: 1,389 Member
    edited November 2015
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    emily7kg wrote: »
    Everyone maintained their weight before the advent of modern processed food.
    Seriously not true for everyone before the advent of modern processed food.
    Roman history is full of references to leaders, senators and other elite that grew lazy and fat.
    Rubenesque refer to the (very) full figured women in the paintings from Rubens 1577-1640. . Henry VIII was rather fat in his later years. The clergy and their excesses in food and other things gave rise to church uprisings. History is full of references to gluttony. Even in the early medieval times (Tomas Aquinas)
    Yes it was specifically the elite in history, the ones with access to a lot of food and no physical labour, that grew big in their old age, not everyone.

    No food factory in sight then, and no processed food. But it does mean that it is not just processed foods that are to blame. Processed foods do not help as a fair few are calorie dense, but the abundance of, cheap calorie dense food and lack of physical activiy are IMO the core of the issue. Ultimtaely no matter what it is about CICO, history does too prove this.

    As for trusting my cues. No I still don't. I am still unlearning decades of bad habits. It is getting better, but I still do not trust them. fully.
  • gillexplores
    gillexplores Posts: 151 Member
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    Technically, we should be able to trust our hunger and fullness cues.

    However, if we think about humans purely as animals (which we are); evolutionarily speaking, it makes sense to eat as much as we can when food is available (which, in North America, we are fortunate enough that it is, for most of us). This is an adaptation that we have to build fat stores for times of food scarcity. Humans require large amounts of energy to sustain such large brains and, as such, require diets of higher quality (high fat) foods. "Contemporary foraging societies derive between 28% and 58% of their daily energy intake from dietary fat." ( ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53561/ ) This is compared to our closest living non-human relatives (chimps), who get only about 6% from fat. Therefore, in light of this, the human preference for foods that are rich in fat/energy makes total sense. As babies, we have very high body fat percentages (compared to other mammals) and our bodies will hold on to that fat (even if it means stunting our linear growth) in order to develop our brains properly.

    ^This was all just a really long explanation to say that humans have a natural tendency developed over millions of years to hold on to fat. The only reason that obesity is a problem today is that food is readily available and we don't have to scavenge and hunt for our food. So, while some people are able to eat normal amounts, it makes sense that for some humans, the sense of satiety is not strong. We're just well evolved, haha

    TL;DR, Homo sapiens (modern humans) like high fat foods because they are nutrient dense and naturally want to gain weight for times of food scarcity.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
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    emily7kg wrote: »
    Everyone maintained their weight before the advent of modern processed food.

    Not everyone. Many people maintained weight because most of the world's population was at a bare subsistence level - people couldn't overeat because they couldn't afford that much food. Obesity has always existed, but it used to be mainly among the wealthy, since they could actually afford enough food to have a regular calorie surplus.
  • RebelDiamond
    RebelDiamond Posts: 188 Member
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    I've been on MFP on and off for 5 years and I still don't trust my hunger cues...
    I'm generally super accurate with my logging (I weigh everything I can weigh). So if I'm hungry at the end of the day, I know I can either go a little over or suck it up and go to bed (it's my choice in the end).
    However, I definitely have learnt the difference between being hungry and wanting to eat something.
  • rankinsect
    rankinsect Posts: 2,238 Member
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    I definitely don't and won't trust my hunger cues anymore. Thankfully planning ahead and pre-logging is easy and habitual now, so I will have no challenge keeping it up my whole life.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
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    Francl27 wrote: »
    Nope. You could eat 1500 calories of bread or candy and still be hungry. Hunger cues are not related to what your diet consists of, so you just can't trust them.

    @Francl27 did you mean to use the pronoun "I" instead of "you". :)

  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,372 Member
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    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    Francl27 wrote: »
    Nope. You could eat 1500 calories of bread or candy and still be hungry. Hunger cues are not related to what your diet consists of, so you just can't trust them.

    @Francl27 did you mean to use the pronoun "I" instead of "you". :)

    Just making the assumption that most people won't be able to feel full after eating 1500 calories of bread or candy. Or at least not full enough not to be hungry later and end up overeating because of it.

    So no, I meant a generic 'you', although yeah for sure I would be starving if all I ate in a day was bread and candy.
  • livelovebbg
    livelovebbg Posts: 45 Member
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    I know when I'm hungry vs. when I want to eat because I'm bored/stressed out. That's not to say I've perfected resisting the urge to grab something just because I feel like eating, but there are definitely times when I think twice and opt to wait until my next planned meal.

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