Eating According to Your Body Rather Than Counting Cals?

NCchar130

Counting calories is an inconvenience - I would like to not have to do it forever. It's taught me, however, I can't listen to my body, at least not without at least considering the calorie 'consequence' of certain foods. I just ate some potato chips at my desk, a 1 serving bag that contained 240 calories worth of chips. This is next to no food at all, like 1.5 ounces of chips. My stomach is not the least bit full. Had I eaten 240 calories worth of roasted broccoli (one of my favorites), or 240 calories worth of taco soup (another favorite) my stomach would be extremely full. Since they have the same calorie equivalent, my brain should be signaling me that I'm good, but of course it won't, because my stomach isn't full. But since I know from tracking my food what I've just done to my day, I will ignore being hungry again in 30 minutes (and I will be LOL) so I can stay on track.

This is exactly how I got fat. Eating small amounts of high calorie food that didn't fill me up so I'd keep eating...

dmt4641

I've read several books on intuitive eating but my favorite one is Have Your Cake and Skinny Jeans too. I know, dumb title. But I think it was much more user friendly and didn't involve any weird mindfulness exercises or putting your fork down every bite which is just not normal eating.

The best advice I got from that book was to track hunger levels and how you feel after each meal. After everything I eat, I would track whether I was hungry or not hungry when I ate it (I just highlighted it in red if I was NOT hungry) and then I would track how I felt afterwards at different intervals (right afterwards, 2 hours later). I did this for a couple weeks and learned a lot. I found that I ate when I didn't have hunger ate least half the time and I saw that it was mostly at night after dinner. This helped me zone in on when to be more careful not to eat out of boredom. And I found that my nighttime snacking was less when I had a hearty dinner with lots of protein. Secondly, and more importantly, it showed me which foods made me feel full longer and which foods make me feel like crap and get hungry earlier. I discovered that eating something with mostly carbs in the afternoon make me crash an hour later and have headaches and the munchies. And a lunch with protein and veggies make me feel great and not hungry until much later. This in turn made me WANT to eat healthier foods so that I didn't feel like crap.

But with all that said, I have never lost weight on an intuitive eating plan, only maintained or slightly gained. I think if you are truly listening to your body's signals your are more likely to maintain. When you cut calories, you will automatically be hungrier. If you always ate when you had that initial increase in hunger, you wouldn't lose weight.

LoggingForLife

Counting calories is an inconvenience - I would like to not have to do it forever. It's taught me, however, I can't listen to my body, at least not without at least considering the calorie 'consequence' of certain foods. I just ate some potato chips at my desk, a 1 serving bag that contained 240 calories worth of chips. This is next to no food at all, like 1.5 ounces of chips. My stomach is not the least bit full. Had I eaten 240 calories worth of roasted broccoli (one of my favorites), or 240 calories worth of taco soup (another favorite) my stomach would be extremely full. Since they have the same calorie equivalent, my brain should be signaling me that I'm good, but of course it won't, because my stomach isn't full. But since I know from tracking my food what I've just done to my day, I will ignore being hungry again in 30 minutes (and I will be LOL) so I can stay on track.

This is exactly how I got fat. Eating small amounts of high calorie food that didn't fill me up so I'd keep eating...

So it sounds like your body wasn't asking for a bag of chips, but rather some warm soup. If you had eaten the bowl of soup when you were hungry and stopped when the hunger was just gone, right before that full feeling, and ate away from your desk, I think you would have been set for the afternoon. I suspect you ate the chips at your desk because you had work to do and that was the only thing available. That is what mindless eating is. I'm not picking on you but just tossing ideas around!

NCchar130

Counting calories is an inconvenience - I would like to not have to do it forever. It's taught me, however, I can't listen to my body, at least not without at least considering the calorie 'consequence' of certain foods. I just ate some potato chips at my desk, a 1 serving bag that contained 240 calories worth of chips. This is next to no food at all, like 1.5 ounces of chips. My stomach is not the least bit full. Had I eaten 240 calories worth of roasted broccoli (one of my favorites), or 240 calories worth of taco soup (another favorite) my stomach would be extremely full. Since they have the same calorie equivalent, my brain should be signaling me that I'm good, but of course it won't, because my stomach isn't full. But since I know from tracking my food what I've just done to my day, I will ignore being hungry again in 30 minutes (and I will be LOL) so I can stay on track.

This is exactly how I got fat. Eating small amounts of high calorie food that didn't fill me up so I'd keep eating...

So it sounds like your body wasn't asking for a bag of chips, but rather some warm soup. If you had eaten the bowl of soup when you were hungry and stopped when the hunger was just gone, right before that full feeling, and ate away from your desk, I think you would have been set for the afternoon. I suspect you ate the chips at your desk because you had work to do and that was the only thing available. That is what mindless eating is. I'm not picking on you but just tossing ideas around!

I understand your point -what I'm saying though is that listening to hunger signals and eating only until full will not work unless I'm eating properly. I have learned to eat properly by counting calories. Also, sometimes I just want a bag of chips and I'm ok with being a little hungry later, you know? I doubt my body ever 'needs' a bag of chips, there are other foods to eat that are more nutritionally dense. For me the kiss of death for any diet is deciding to stop eating some particular food 'forever.' :flowerforyou:

jkestens63

I count calories and as far as forcing myself to eat "healthy", I believe everything in moderation. I do try new dishes that interest me and those that are low calorie are the ones I gravitate towards. Do whatever works for you!

I did train myself to give up Splenda in my tea because I was using too much artificial sweetener. I also gave up crystal light in favor of plain water. In both cases it was just mind set and just doing it. Now I limit myself to one diet soda and one glass of snapple a day, otherwise it's water all day long

If you like turkey, I have an easy crockpot turkey with cranberry gravy recipe. It's great, get 5 oz of turkey & 1/4 cup gravy, I think for 320 cal.. I froze it in single serving packs with 4oz turkey and that is 280 cal.

Message me if you would like it