Shrinking your stomach

goldthistime
goldthistime Posts: 3,213 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Happened upon this 2009 NY Times article that presented a study that suggested reducing your calories and eating frequent meals shrinks your stomach, and another study that suggested normal weight binge eaters have greater stomach capacities than non binging obese people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22real.html?_r=0

Assuming that stomach capacity has some correlation to abdomen protrusion/girth, this is of personal interest to me.

Replies

  • robininfl
    robininfl Posts: 1,137 Member
    Competitive eaters are pretty skinny, I don't think stomach capacity has an effect on abdomen size. Think about it, when you are pregnant your belly is huge because the womb is filled to capacity. Its capacity is baby, placenta, all that stuff-sized. But for the rest of your life it's just hanging out there at its normal little size. Someone who can have a bigger baby doesn't have a bigger belly when she isn't pregnant.
  • usmcmp
    usmcmp Posts: 21,219 Member
    I am a binge eater and my abs do a really good job of keeping my stomach from not sticking out far. I think posture and not keeping a tight core are far more to blame than volume eating.
  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,213 Member
    Interesting viewpoints ladies, thanks for posting. You are probably right in thinking that stomach capacity has little effect on abdomen protrusion. I still may try to space out my eating a little more (I tend to eat in a smallish window of time). But uscmp, your comment about posture in particular was something I needed to be reminded of. Thanks.
  • MommyL2015
    MommyL2015 Posts: 1,411 Member
    You can't shrink your stomach. You can get used to smaller portions in a sitting, but you're just retraining your brain, not physically shrinking your stomach. As you eat, your stomach stretches. If you're used to eating a lot, you can stretch it a lot, but once it's empty, it will go back down to it's regular size.
  • goldthistime
    goldthistime Posts: 3,213 Member
    MommyL2015 wrote: »
    You can't shrink your stomach. You can get used to smaller portions in a sitting, but you're just retraining your brain, not physically shrinking your stomach. As you eat, your stomach stretches. If you're used to eating a lot, you can stretch it a lot, but once it's empty, it will go back down to it's regular size.

    Are you arguing that the research is flawed? They measured capacity using a balloon inserted into the stomach that they filled with water, then measured maximum capacity two different ways, using measured pressure and maximum water that could be tolerated. Using pressure, there was a decrease in capacity of 36% on average. Using maximum water tolerated, there was a decrease of 27%.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/8561056/

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