The size of our stomachs
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I don't believe at all that everyone's stomach is the size of their fist. I have tiny, childlike, could-easily-get-out-of-handcuffs hands that are totally disproportional to my body. Most people my size have bigger hands so according to your theory they have bigger stomachs and can eat more, even though they are the same size as me in all other respects?
Nope.0 -
biggsterjackster wrote: »Ha, you can't post anything anymore without people asking for scientific evidence. So annoying. Eat healthy, eat when you are hungry, stop eating when you feel full. It's easy to understand. People just want to play stupid here.
Close.
You can post things that make sense and not be called into question.
When you start making completely ridiculous and outlandish claims that fly in the face of both common sense and the sum of all scientific knowledge, then yeah, you're going to be asked to substantiate it.
That's why this board is a lot better than many similar boards.0 -
Don't make claims that purport to be science if you don't want to support said claims with science. It's easy to understand.biggsterjackster wrote: »Ha, you can't post anything anymore without people asking for scientific evidence. So annoying. Eat healthy, eat when you are hungry, stop eating when you feel full. It's easy to understand. People just want to play stupid here.
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PeachyCarol wrote: »But, but, but... lettuce.
I eat salad out of a mixing bowl. I had 260 grams of various lettuces yesterday, and they took up a lot more space than my closed fist. With dressing, the whole salad was just over 100 calories. I'm not worried.
Very true about lettuce. I can keep packing it in with no seeming end in sight.
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Your heart is also roughly the size of your first. Does that mean overeating is a sign that I love food?0
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I heard that a man's hand, when open, is the same length as his...... never mind.0
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I heard that a man's hand, when open, is the same length as his...... never mind.
Gloves?
The brain is about the size of both your fists put together, so you can think about twice as much food!SarcasmIsMyLoveLanguage wrote: »
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lemurcat12 wrote: »flippy1234 wrote: »OK, I will clarify. Eating healthy meals, Protein a vegetable, etc....eat only when you are truly hungry and keep it to the size of your fist. We all tend to eat too fast and overeat.
My fists are small. I just ate a giant peach that was at least the size of my fist, and now I'm eating two eggs and a lot of vegetables in the form of an omelet that's larger than my fist (I think -- the shapes are different so it's hard to compare). There are a perfectly reasonable number of calories, though. Am I going to gain weight?
How much bigger than your fist was that omelet?
It was flatter than my fist, so really hard to compare.
It's like trying to log a cup of omelet, oh my!
Clearly the database needs to add "one fist" as a serving size to everything. True, one might wonder "whose fist?" but here in America we are comfortable with measuring things in feet, so I think it could work!0 -
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Came in here, read OP, did not read all comments, outcome...
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Y'know, if thinking about stomach size is motivating and helpful for you, that's great. Once you clarified your assumptions (healthy, well-balanced meals, etc.), I can see where you're coming from, in a very approximate, more-metaphorical-than-scientific kind of way. The part about stopping when full, and savoring food - sure, good stuff to think about.
But for me, this stomach-sized way of looking at it leaves out too much about the biochemical side, which seems to have a lot to do with perceived hunger and satiation. And it leaves out other important aspects of eating, as well (social, habitual, etc., etc.). Everybody's mental model is different; everyone needs to find his/her own workable one.0 -
flippy1234 wrote: »I learned something recently. My stomach is about the size of my loosely closed fist. All of our stomachs are about that size of each of our loosely closed fists. If we eat less than the size of our stomachs at each meal, we will lose weight. If we eat more than the size of our stomachs, we will gain weight. Our bodies know what our "right" weight should be. Eat only when you are truly hungry. Eat no more than the size of your stomach. Eat slowly and stop when you feel full. No matter how good the food is. Taste your food. I mean really taste it. Eat what you love as long as it fits in that loosely closed fist. A revelation.
I'm confused by your post. How can the size of your stomach have to do with anything? This sounds like if you overeat on green bell peppers you will automatically gain weight just because you overate. Surely, this is not what you mean.
Weight management is dependent on calories in/calories out. If you eat more calories than you burn you will gain weight, if you eat less calories than you burn you will lose weight, and if you eat about the same amount you will maintain.
I was just about to say the same thing. If I eat 5 fist-sized portions of lettuce at each meal (and only that) I will still lose weight. I'll also either be completely miserable or just turn into a rabbit. Or an iguana.
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Caloric density is what matters, not volume of food.
If you eat a fist-sized portion of celery, you will consume roughly 16 calories. If you eat a fist-sized portion of ice cream, you will consume about 400 calories. And if we consider that Ice Cream is quite a bit of air and that when melted in your stomach you can eat roughly twice as much, it could be 800 calories in a cup of melted ice cream.
Eating by volume is not a very reliable way to gauge caloric intake. If you don't have a food scale I suppose it might do for some things but the best way is to weigh food and know it's caloric density per unit mass.
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I seem to remember hearing of a study to find correlations, and the best predictor they could come up with was length of arm, I think from shoulder to end of forearm. The recommendation was that anyone really interested in sizing up a fellow over to shake hands but while keeping a distance to force a full length arm extension.I heard that a man's hand, when open, is the same length as his...... never mind.0 -
I seem to remember hearing of a study to find correlations, and the best predictor they could come up with was length of arm, I think from shoulder to end of forearm. The recommendation was that anyone really interested in sizing up a fellow over to shake hands but while keeping a distance to force a full length arm extension.I heard that a man's hand, when open, is the same length as his...... never mind.
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I seem to remember hearing of a study to find correlations, and the best predictor they could come up with was length of arm, I think from shoulder to end of forearm. The recommendation was that anyone really interested in sizing up a fellow over to shake hands but while keeping a distance to force a full length arm extension.I heard that a man's hand, when open, is the same length as his...... never mind.
And this gent agrees with that assessment
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This guy's not so happy about it.
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Oooh a jar of Nutella is aproximate fist sized....go me.0
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Wat. Did you hear this from Dr. Oz? What's wrong with just counting calories?0
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Google images is an ocean of .gifs and memes, and... see that little folded paper icon above where you type? right click on the .gif you life (or meme) and copy the image location, then paste it into the space provided when you click that folded paper icon. Hit enter. Then post your reply.0
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Stats like that tend to be a gross generalization. So, yeah, "roughly" the size of your fist mostly means it not the size of a pea or a beachball. It's somewhere in between, varying greatly among the population. Also, only eating portions the size of your fist isn't an effective measurement because the calories vary wildly depending on what you're actually eating.0
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There's a new "magic bullet" for weight loss every day in the MFP forums. They're all either too simple (like this one) or too complicated. The most successful people on here don't give two poos about magic bullets and just eat the right number of calories to reach their goal. Maybe it's through a specific diet, maybe it's just not inhaling entire cans of cheeze whiz, but it all boils down to eating less, more, or the same number of calories as you burn. Stomach size/fist size has nothing to do with it.0
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Alatariel75 wrote: »I think this is one of those things that is oversimplified to the point of uselessness.
Yes, I agree. The whole "only eat when you are truly hungry" doesn't register for me. It sounds good, but in reality it just doesn't cut it.
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biggsterjackster wrote: »Ha, you can't post anything anymore without people asking for scientific evidence. So annoying. Eat healthy, eat when you are hungry, stop eating when you feel full. It's easy to understand. People just want to play stupid here.
I basically read this as... "you can't post anything more without people asking for proof...jeeze whatever happened to the honor system people. Don't you know anything you read on the internet HAS to be true?"0
This discussion has been closed.
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