Welcome to Debate Club! Please be aware that this is a space for respectful debate, and that your ideas will be challenged here. Please remember to critique the argument, not the author.
Normal Eating. Agree or Disagree?
distinctlybeautiful
Posts: 1,041 Member
in Debate Club
What is normal eating?
Written in 1983 by Ellyn Satter
Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied.
It is being able to choose food you enjoy and eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should.
Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.
Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.
Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way.
It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.
Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.
Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.
(https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-eat/adult-eating-and-weight/)
Written in 1983 by Ellyn Satter
Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied.
It is being able to choose food you enjoy and eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should.
Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.
Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.
Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way.
It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.
Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.
Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.
(https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-eat/adult-eating-and-weight/)
19
Replies
-
Maybe agree, but what happens when eating a plate of cookies just because they are yummy happens every day? You get fat most likely...11
-
I would have to agree. However factor in physique goals and you're somewhat forced to stray from this pure version of eating if you will. That said there's a goldilocks zone where both circles intersect. For me that's having knowledge of calories & macros but eyeballing your food and using hunger, satiety, fullness and gym performace as your markers. That is If you wish to adopt a more holistic approach to things as apposed to weighing, tracking etc.1
-
This is what I live by, now. I have had a terrible relationship with food, because I had absorbed so much food fear. My eating habits would swing from restricted and virtuous to no limits and feelings of defeat. I eat cookies by the plateful - I still do, but not every day anymore. Losing the fear and getting in more neutral, balanced information, opened up for awareness. Awareness is what stops me from routinely overindulging. Fear couldn't, fear won't. I don't think that MFP's philosophy is in conflict with Satter's. I think they can work hand in hand. MFP lets you keep track of your intake, doesn't judge. You can set any parameters as you wish. MFP just tells you when you reach them. MFP showed me how much food I need; I had to actively change my attitude to "what I want, is enough, but not too much", but it vas easy because I didn't feel like I was nannied, I felt like I was in charge, finally.7
-
I can agree because it is, and always has been, my general approach to eating, without thinking about it.
Cheers, h.1 -
Normal is as normal does. What is normal?7
-
pineapple_jojo wrote: »Normal is as normal does. What is normal?
I think that is kind of the point, normal is what we make of it. Its different for different people and at different times.5 -
Too many people don't know what eating until you're satisfied means, or we have redefined "satisfied" since the piece was written in 1983.6
-
@TavistockToad I think the idea is that when you get to a place where you trust your body, when you get to a place where you eat without placing undue thought/worry on it, when you get to a place without actual or mental restrictions around food, you aren't going to want to eat plates of cookies every day forever. Maybe at first, especially if you have a history of restriction, and this is actually useful in letting yourself truly come to see you're not going to be restricted in the future, but once you get to that sweet spot, it's unlikely to continue that way. Sure, maybe it will for some people, and then it's up to them to determine what's going on. This is coming from someone who has a huge sweet tooth. I eat chocolate multiple times a day - every day. I used to binge. A lot. Now I've given myself full permission to eat without restrictions, and I don't want to eat all the sweets available to me every time they're available because I know they'll be there.
@Magnum_Opus True enough. Goals may shape a person's decisions about food. I think, however, the further away eating gets from the third point and the last two points on the list, the less normal and more controlled it becomes. Sound's like you've found a sweet spot though.
@kommodevaran I think Satter's real end goal is for people to trust their bodies such that they don't need a tracker or arbitrary numbers to dictate how much or what they should or shouldn't eat. If you've been cycling between feeling restrictive and virtuous to feeling out of control and defeated for a long time, it's going to take time to reach that point of trust. I think it's possible for most people to get there though.
@pineapple_jojo In this case, I believe normal means eating without undue preoccupation, eating what you want when you want, and moving through life without constantly thinking about food.
@Packerjohn I believe most people can learn.3 -
Written in 1983, before we had such a large amount of sugar and sodium added to our foods, before so many things on our table were processed the way they are now. Food itself isn't the same as it was in 1983.14
-
@distinctlybeautiful I would love to not be preoccupied with food. I don’t think I’ll ever have a normal relationship with it, sadly!2
-
TravisJHunt wrote: »pineapple_jojo wrote: »Normal is as normal does. What is normal?
I think that is kind of the point, normal is what we make of it. Its different for different people and at different times.
Very true. As humans we crave permanence. Nothing is permanent. Everything is ever changing including our diets so it seems.0 -
pineapple_jojo wrote: »@distinctlybeautiful I would love to not be preoccupied with food. I don’t think I’ll ever have a normal relationship with it, sadly!
Why do you feel you are preoccupied with food?
Also don't be so hard on yourself.1 -
How is that preoccupation? Do you feel it's weighing you down? I think one of the deeply rooted problems people have with food - and Satter addresses this too - is that they don't think enough about food. Obsessed but at the same time careless. That is "normal" - usual, but not healthy, and brought on by fear which leads to apathy. I've been there, I know how it feels, and it's not nice. But it can change, given then right impulses at the right moments. I'm preoccupied with food, and I love it. I feel like I have a great relationship with food now.pineapple_jojo wrote: »@distinctlybeautiful I would love to not be preoccupied with food. I don’t think I’ll ever have a normal relationship with it, sadly!3 -
I would agree that this is what normal eating should be. But I'm not sure this way of eating is normal anymore.2
-
"Normal" is subjective and changes. "What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly."
That being said, the above description in the OP is perfectly "normal" for me.2 -
Written in 1983, before we had such a large amount of sugar and sodium added to our foods, before so many things on our table were processed the way they are now. Food itself isn't the same as it was in 1983.
I remember 1983 very well. That's not really true.
Things available in 1983 include fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, "processed foods" (whether you mean frozen meals, which we called TV dinners and which were on average probably less nutritious than the ones available today, frozen veg, frozen fries, pop tarts, koolaid, soda, mac & cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt (less common than now), pasta sauce in a jar, dried pasta, sliced and packaged bread, potato chips, ice cream, packaged cookies, etc.).
Some of these choices were high cal, low nutrition, and had lots of sugar and sodium.
Some were not, but merely made cooking a nutritious meal out of mostly whole foods easier for some (things that I mostly do not use now, but we did when I was a kid in '83: salad dressing, Hamburger Helper, canned vegetables and fruits (we lived in a cold climate and while we ate some frozen veg I think eating canned not frozen was more common then), canned soups, bread, canned tomatoes (we didn't have "pasta" just "lasagna" or "spaghetti"), ground beef, so on. Also, sigh, fish sticks, which I have a weird nostalgia for even though I lived in a place where we got fresh fish a lot and I appreciated that too.
There were fewer low sodium options for things like canned beans and soups than now, and like I said TV dinners were pretty bad compared to many of the options now.
The difference is that the packaged options and cooking helps available now are more interesting and diverse and come in a wider range, which may mean more people use them more often, but if they choose the healthier ones who cares if they are "processed." And if they don't want those, well, there were people who could and did live on canned (high sodium) soup, cookies, and mac & cheese back then too.
I do think there's been a cultural shift where food is more commonly available (and often more appealing -- if someone brings in a variety of interesting sweets from a local bakery or a lunch place that has good desserts I', more likely to be tempted or overeat than if they bring in a bag of Oreos or even a box of girl scout cookies, and that is more common now than then, when the latter would have been the more available option). I also think going out to eat or ordering in is more common, because the options are wider, but again that doesn't mean less healthy -- in 1983, the only options where I lived for take out was Chinese or pizza or fast food (maybe Thai, but I think that was later where I was), and same with delivery (pizza and Chinese). As of 1993 and certainly now (although this is partly living in a big city), the options for delivery or take out are endless, and include lots of much healthier options, but also are more tempting because there are more choices. Same with the prepackaged stuff at supermarkets or the deli options at many supermarkets, probably.
Again, it's not about the foods being different -- it is EASY to eat from whole foods now (easier, in fact, in that much more is available there too), and it was EASY to eat not very nutritious packaged foods then if that's what you wanted to do.
An even more significant cultural shift is that I think it's more acceptable to not cook at all now, probably because so many people don't learn how, live alone for ages (cooking for a family used to be a pressure to cook real meals, i.e., healthfully), maybe by now people grew up not learning what a normal meal is (although I think this varies a lot from subculture to subculture, as I don't see that being the case with my co-workers or neighbors), so on.
Anyway, I would agree that it's easier to overeat now if you don't think about it and lack internal breaks that kick in sufficiently regularly, but NOT because the food is meaningfully different in terms of being inherently less healthful or more caloric.18 -
kommodevaran wrote: »
How is that preoccupation? Do you feel it's weighing you down? I think one of the deeply rooted problems people have with food - and Satter addresses this too - is that they don't think enough about food. Obsessed but at the same time careless. That is "normal" - usual, but not healthy, and brought on by fear which leads to apathy. I've been there, I know how it feels, and it's not nice. But it can change, given then right impulses at the right moments. I'm preoccupied with food, and I love it. I feel like I have a great relationship with food now.pineapple_jojo wrote: »@distinctlybeautiful I would love to not be preoccupied with food. I don’t think I’ll ever have a normal relationship with it, sadly!
This rings true for me too.0 -
I think there are things to disagree and agree with in that passage about what normal is.
It was a lot of words to say normal eating is not needing to think about eating so much and just do what feels right for you.
I don't know that the normal described is a starting place for many people these days.
If I were writing about what normal eating is I might say something like:
Normal eating is not cutting a lot of foods out of your diet unless medically required. Normal is not being afraid to eat what those around you eat.
Normal eating can be 1 meal a day, 3 meals or more. Meal timing and size of meals are preference as long as you stick to the right number of calories. Do what works for you.
Normal is not having to eat a particular list of foods to be healthy. You don't have to have a perfect diet to manage your weight. Just need the right calories.
Normal is realizing that different people have different calorie needs and you should figure out your own. Your partner or kids can and should eat differently.
Normal is using tools. If you feel like you need to track what you eat it is a helpful tool. If you feel like you need to be more accurate a food scale is helpful. If you need to look up nutritional information and read labels then do so. If you need to plan or limit your menu most days go ahead. Pay attention and learn while using tools so you can be more flexible someday.
Normal eating is having perspective. A very high calorie meal every once in awhile is not going to do you in. It is not normal to gain or lose 20 lbs of fat in one week. Get to know about water weight fluctuations. They are normal. Look at loss or gain over time. It is not normal to be devastated if your weight goes up 1 lb.
Normal is not assigning a moral value to food. Food is food. It isn't normal to hate yourself or call yourself names because you ate a cheeseburger or some chocolate instead of broccoli. You did not kick a puppy or commit a major crime so don't act like it.
Normal is eating enough to fuel your body. You don't have to starve yourself or eat or drink weird things to lose weight. Set a reasonable goal and lose more slowly. Realize that your body works fine and does not need jumpstarted or detoxified.
These days it is normal to overeat. Eating to satisfaction can be somewhat unreliable so it is okay to stop before you feel full. You might learn to recognize full over time. If you don't that is not the end of the world. You can be okay knowing you have eaten enough even if you could eat more. Type of food may make a difference in how satisfied you feel rather than just amounts.
It is normal to feel sad, angry, bored, etc. Food often accompanies our emotional events. There is a level of medicating with food that is not normal or healthy. If you have a history of always using food when you are bored or upset it is a very good idea to develop and practice different coping tools. It is hard to go through life abusing food, alcohol or drugs and help is out there.
5 -
distinctlybeautiful wrote: »
@Packerjohn I believe most people can learn [to feel satisfied].
Not sure how I feel about this.
MAYBE people can learn but how would they? I really struggle with the "full" signal, but I'm not sure if that's due to nature or nurture.
Part of it may come from being an immigrant, where cleaning one's plate wasn't optional. Did my parents teach me to overeat because in Russia eating everything on your plate wasn't overeating but rather frugal? Or does my body just not send the full signal? How can you tell the difference if you don't know what you're looking for?
I think original post IS "normal eating" but I don't think that it's attainable for everyone. I think that it's normal for people who were raised to pay attention to how they were feeling about food, for whom leaving something on the plate was an option, and who maybe haven't gone without.
But I'm not sure that you can "learn" at an older age. I'd be happy to hear otherwise.3 -
Written in 1983, before we had such a large amount of sugar and sodium added to our foods, before so many things on our table were processed the way they are now. Food itself isn't the same as it was in 1983.
I was 11 in 1983. We would routinely have hot dogs, Rice-a-roni, tater tots, canned sweet baked beans, Banquet frozen dinners, and fish sticks for dinner. I would have Oscar Meyer bologna and a slice of Kraft American cheese on a bun for lunch with a Hostess Cupcake for dessert. I loved to have Aunt Jemma frozen french toast with margarine for breakfast on the weekends. There was plenty of processed foods. And as an afterthought, I was a string bean until I was in my late 20's.
As far as the OP, I would say what is listed there is what "should" be normal, but I don't think it is normal right for a lot of people. For me in particular, that is normal for me when I'm doing well. When emotional/bored eating kicks in, it's a different story! If I gave myself permission to eat what I wanted when I was sad or bored, I would be overweight. But yes, it sounds to me like what I aspire too.
Edited to add: Just realized this post makes it sound like we ate like complete crap when I was a kid, lol! We ate whole foods too3 -
some points I think I would agree with, but a few of the ideas strike me as idealistic and not based in reality, honestly, for many reasons.
"Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied."
Research has shown that people eat what is put in front of them, pretty much - we SUCK at controlling how much we eat in a free-for-all environment, for a variety of reasons. (https://lifehacker.com/why-we-eat-whatevers-in-front-of-us-473869866)
And companies do better if we buy more of what they make, so they go out of their way to try to encourage overeating (like super sizing something, for example). So the idea of us being able to choose food we enjoy and truly get enough of it, and that won't be a bad thing? That doesn't wash these days; when many companies are working against you having an average portion of something, you can't just go by 'feel' anymore.
"Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food."
When this was written, the person was an adult who was just coming into the 80's, which means most of her eating life before then was the 60's and 70's, most likely. Home cooked and fresh food was much more the norm, after a push back against canned food and war rationing from the 50's. I don't know that this would still apply today, with what food choices we have available.
"Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating."
This is where I have a big issue...because no. This is actually pretty much against everything our bodies have developed to do, IMHO. We are built to survive in this world, which before we were all civilized and such, meant we have periods of plenty, and periods of freaking famine. We are built to be able to eat a lot, and put on fat, so that we survive when we have little to no food. And our bodies can adapt well when there is little to no food, too.
But most of us prefer not to starve ourselves for a few months out of the year, and most of us don't HAVE to, which means all we've got going biologically is that great ability to eat a lot and put on fat. It takes deliberate effort not to do that, for many of us, whether that's food choices, or portion size decisions for our plates, or paying attention to when we feel full because we are eating slow enough to catch it, to whatever.
Assuming that we can trust our bodies to just keep us in good health 'naturally' is one of those things that so rarely works in the real world because we don't live in the same environment our bodies biologically developed in. Aside from the feast-famine model, there's other things we run into as well.
I mean, it used to be that you'd die if you didn't move around enough, because you have to get food and survive. But many of us are very sedentary now and have to go out of our way to move around just to keep our muscles and bodies healthy. We don't just 'naturally' move the right amount to be healthy. And IMHO, we don't just 'naturally' eat the right amount, or the right foods, to be healthy either. The only way that would work is if the human body worked in a way that it ALWAYS naturally pushed you to do what is most healthy for you, in any environment and in any situation. Which I think is just not possible, based on almost any research of the human body that exists.
I mean, we ARE a flexible species that can adapt, but not THAT flexible. The more our environment differs from that of the environment where certain behaviors and responses developed, the more we can't just assume our bodies will be responding in a way that is healthy for us.5 -
distinctlybeautiful wrote: »
@Packerjohn I believe most people can learn [to feel satisfied].
Not sure how I feel about this.
MAYBE people can learn but how would they? I really struggle with the "full" signal, but I'm not sure if that's due to nature or nurture.
I don't eat to a signal, never have. I eat what seems to me an appropriate amount of food and am generally satisfied with that, so it was about training my eyes to understand what an appropriate amount of food was.
Going back to 1983 (or earlier, as I was already 13 in 1983), I also was supposed to finish my vegetables and at least eat a significant amount of my protein course (which was invariably meat at dinner time). We'd sometimes have food available to scoop up more if you wanted, but often not, often the food my mom cooked would just be portioned out. Also, at that point I think my idea of what I wanted and how much I really needed wasn't yet distorted.
Now I do have the habit (if I like the food) of eating everything on my plate. I recall (before weight loss) making pasta and eyeballing badly and making more than even I wanted, but it seemed like the amount less would be too little for a meal the next day and my body wasn't yelling "no more" and it tasted good so I'd finish it, and then something think "ugh, I ate too much," although the more I did that the less I felt like it was excessive.
So part of normal eating for me now (whether cooking at home and dishing up or in a restaurant) is to decide in advance what a sensible amount to eat would be, and eat that. And when I first started I went by calories and portion size and sometimes thought "that's too little," but it never was, I always felt satisfied when the meal was over (especially if I waited a bit).
I don't really think normal eating = just eat until the body says "no more." I think normal eating can involve judging and dishing out portions. I would say that feeling guilty about eating more one day or not feeling free to eat more if extra hungry or less if less hungry would be probably too rigid, at least for me, but I don't think it means the appetite (as perceived) is the only thing that determines how much food is appropriate. Heck, sometimes I decide how much of a particular food item to have based on what I have left in my refrigerator (only 3 oz of fish, oh well, that's what I will have!), and certainly based on how much I decide to cook. So if I don't cook way more than I need (or I designate everything else to other uses, like someone else's plate or leftovers), that's what I eat, and that feels normal to me.1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »So part of normal eating for me now (whether cooking at home and dishing up or in a restaurant) is to decide in advance what a sensible amount to eat would be, and eat that. And when I first started I went by calories and portion size and sometimes thought "that's too little," but it never was, I always felt satisfied when the meal was over (especially if I waited a bit).
This rings true for me, and I really appreciate your insight. But does it jive with the original post? This is almost MENTALLY deciding that you've had enough rather than waiting for a PHYSICAL signal to tell you that you're full. Does that mean that it's not "normal" eating if you have to set a hard limit rather than waiting for a sort of a soft stop at "satiated"?0 -
distinctlybeautiful wrote: »What is normal eating?
Written in 1983 by Ellyn Satter
Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied.
It is being able to choose food you enjoy and eat it and truly get enough of it – not just stop eating because you think you should.
Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food.
Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good.
Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way.
It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.
Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more.
Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.
In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.
(https://www.ellynsatterinstitute.org/how-to-eat/adult-eating-and-weight/)
This is pretty much how I go about things for the most part...3 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »So part of normal eating for me now (whether cooking at home and dishing up or in a restaurant) is to decide in advance what a sensible amount to eat would be, and eat that. And when I first started I went by calories and portion size and sometimes thought "that's too little," but it never was, I always felt satisfied when the meal was over (especially if I waited a bit).
This rings true for me, and I really appreciate your insight. But does it jive with the original post? This is almost MENTALLY deciding that you've had enough rather than waiting for a PHYSICAL signal to tell you that you're full. Does that mean that it's not "normal" eating if you have to set a hard limit rather than waiting for a sort of a soft stop at "satiated"?
I'm not sure, but it's more consistent with what I think of as how eating works vs. eating from an unlimited amount until your body tells you you are finished, and I doubt that's really what she meant either (although if so we just disagree). I think "being satisfied" is a mental thing as much as a physical one, and often those signals kick in late so knowing from past experience what IS enough, what will be satisfying is something. I also think that often we are satisfied with what is available -- I've had the experience of being given a meal that seemed way too small but finding it satisfying (not necessarily in connection with me having choice or dieting or anything, either). And I think with really tasty foods we mostly eat for that reason and not appetite (dessert) it's common and reasonable and, well, perfectly normal, to realize that appetite might not kick in as a stop so to decide a tiny bit of whatever is what you want (based on mental processes).
I thought of myself as someone who could eat whatever I wanted and not gain until my late 20s (and didn't grow up dieting or feeling like I was restrictive), and I didn't think much about food, but looking back, I think there were other things going on. One was being reasonably active, but another was having to think about food to be able to eat, the opportunities to eat being more restricted (in a natural sort of way). One was that I mostly ate foods that I enjoyed a lot but didn't tend to overeat (in part because I had a sense of how much I thought made sense). Not really sure. I'd eat sweets sometimes, but not in great amounts, a little something as a snack OR after dinner. More at some times of year (like now) than others, I am sure.1 -
Yeah, no. My husband and I were talking yesterday about how we ate last year before my diabetes diagnosis and the things I miss most. We used to have oven fresh chocolate cookies almost every day, plus fresh baked biscuits with every meal. The sweet spot on cookies was between two (enough) and three (plenty.)
Each of those cookies has about 45g net carbs, which is about the maximum amount I can have before my blood glucose levels spike to the point that they are actually doing damage. Except testing shows that refined flour and sugar spike me worse than other foods, so 30g is about my maximum. I'm just guessing and not about to try it, but I suspect one whole cookie would put me at about 150, two cookies would put me at over 180 and three, over 200. And that's eating just cookies, not cookies as a dessert following a high carb meal including biscuits. My safe amount of cookies to eat is about half a cookie.
Half a cookie is not normal eating. It sucks. It is not satisfying, it's sad. But eating to my impulses and stopping when I felt satisfied gave me a deadly disease.
First of all, the body's natural impulses didn't evolve to deal with this much abundance, and second, they were waylaid by a lifetime of eating giant portions served by my mother. My natural impulse is to eat until I'm full, which means eating what I have eaten my entire life - about three times the portion I need to eat to stay at a healthy weight while exercising moderately every day. Add in Netflix and video games, and my natural impulse is to enjoy myself doing the things I like to do, not to work out, or run, which are things I hate to do. Very few animals in the wild torture themselves every day to stay fit. But actually exercising hard every day, to the point of sweating, is why my doctor uses me as a success story for his other diabetic patients.
I think I'll keep up my abnormal eating, and let the author and other people like her deal with foot amputations and the like. Yes, the universe is extremely unfair that we can't all eat whatever we want whenever we want it and stay healthy. Calling the universe unfair and writing articles about how it "should" be is childlike.5 -
I was shocked to find out what one medium sized of my home made butter bisquits added up to in calories when I did the math. I marvel at how we ate when I was a child and we weren't even close to overweight. I still can't figure it out. I don't have a memory of us being very out of the ordinarily active. We did walk to school and for groceries, but I still do errands on foot and I can't fit in those bisquits very often, at least not like it used to be, or the cookies and deserts! I do sometimes wonder if food itself has changed, I know it sounds wierd, but still.1
-
I was shocked to find out what one medium sized of my home made butter bisquits added up to in calories when I did the math. I marvel at how we ate when I was a child and we weren't even close to overweight. I still can't figure it out. I don't have a memory of us being very out of the ordinarily active. We did walk to school and for groceries, but I still do errands on foot and I can't fit in those bisquits very often, at least not like it used to be, or the cookies and deserts! I do sometimes wonder if food itself has changed, I know it sounds wierd, but still.
I'm in my 40's, so I grew up in the late 70's - 80's. We would play outside all day (with my mom and then my dad when he got home from work). There was no online shopping so we were often walking around the grocery store or the mall or up and down main street window shopping. We'd go over to other family's houses to socialize and even the adults would play badminton or some other game in the yard. We weren't an unusually active family, and we hardly ever just sat around. As I said in my earlier post, we ate plenty of processed/convenience foods when I was a kid, and I was skinny until my late 20's (when I got an office job, started stress eating, and discovered the world wide web).
I think it's easy to forget how much more manual every day life used to be, even just 30 years ago. Not sure if that is the case for you, but I think it was for many. I'm not saying the food for sure is not an issue, but I think there are all sorts of variables we tend to gloss over in how rapidly the way we subconsciously live our day to day lives has changed (and continues to!)4 -
I don't think "normal eating" as described above, is normal anymore. Sadly, I think more people have a dysfunctional relationship to food these days. Think about how often you get together with friends or a go to a party and hear people talking about their latest diets, how they're vegan, or avoiding this, that and everything else...I actually think people who are normal eaters in the way ellyn satter described are very rare these days. I wish I was a kid again and never knew about diets! JK kinda....3
-
I think that mentally deciding that you've had enough is a perfectly good way to practice normal eating. To be full is to have given yourself enough of what you need. But when you're fed up, you're getting bored and uncomfortable. I was also overfed as a child, and even though I hated and still dislike the feeling of being stuffed, that was normal for me, and that idea lingers. But my rational mind tells me that less than that, is appropriate for me. I have to have boundaries in order to not eat too much. (I'm fine with that. People tend to think boundaries are horrible. Being a victim of one's every whim, is horrible.) Planning regular meals, and portioning out in advance, are good boundaries. I feel happy and satisfied when I cut off at a reasonable point, somewhere I feel that I've had enough, but not too much, could have eaten more, but don't feel deprived. When I eat until I don't want anymore, I know that I've eaten too much.lemurcat12 wrote: »So part of normal eating for me now (whether cooking at home and dishing up or in a restaurant) is to decide in advance what a sensible amount to eat would be, and eat that. And when I first started I went by calories and portion size and sometimes thought "that's too little," but it never was, I always felt satisfied when the meal was over (especially if I waited a bit).
This rings true for me, and I really appreciate your insight. But does it jive with the original post? This is almost MENTALLY deciding that you've had enough rather than waiting for a PHYSICAL signal to tell you that you're full. Does that mean that it's not "normal" eating if you have to set a hard limit rather than waiting for a sort of a soft stop at "satiated"?3
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 393.4K Introduce Yourself
- 43.8K Getting Started
- 260.2K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.9K Food and Nutrition
- 47.4K Recipes
- 232.5K Fitness and Exercise
- 424 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.5K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 153K Motivation and Support
- 8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.7K MyFitnessPal Information
- 24 News and Announcements
- 1.1K Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.6K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions