Recognising Hunger/Full

kommodevaran wrote: »

There is more than one way to Rome.

1. Look up "the hunger scale" (Google it). Read about mindful and intuitive eating. Practice some of the exercises.
2. Plan and schedule meals at regular intervals, and sit down and eat at those times.
3. You don't have to "feel" hungry and full. You just have to eat what your body needs every day. MFP helps you do that, by setting calorie/nutrition goals and logging intake.

This is good advice.

My hunger/full cues are completely messed up - I think a few wires got crossed somewhere along the lines and as a result mis-communicate. If I followed those, I'd be back at 115kg before the year's over. I have to relearn how to interpret that communication and learn exactly what it means in the context of my body. One year in, I still get it wrong (did a test run over Christmas... not very conclusive yet).

Meal planning (and sticking to the plan/schedule) is helping a lot. It takes the guessing out of eating and even if it feels silly sometimes, I'll sit down in the evening and sketch out the meals for the next day, taking into account what I have in the fridge/pantry, where I'll be when I'm planing to eat and whether I need to stop at the grocery store on the way home.

Oddly enough, being somewhat rigid with my planning/scheduling also means I can be more flexible when I eat out (about once a week) as I can allocate the necessary calories for that and not worry about my nutrition in general for that one meal. If I want chocolate cake for that meal... then I'll have chocolate cake (happens sometimes, one of the places we go to tends to have sinfully good desserts that are totally worth the splurge).

I've heard of people with this condition. It can be dangerous because they forget to eat and can end up starving themselves. If you aren't forgetting to eat then my guess is that you probably do experience hunger but you may not have associated the sensation with the word "hunger." It could also be that you eat so much that you simply haven't experienced it in a while. I find that fasting once in a while helps remind me what real hunger is.

Decide that the next thing you're going to eat is an apple.

Wait until that sounds delicious. Congratulations! You're hungry!

kommodevaran wrote: »

There is more than one way to Rome.

1. Look up "the hunger scale" (Google it). Read about mindful and intuitive eating. Practice some of the exercises.
2. Plan and schedule meals at regular intervals, and sit down and eat at those times.
3. You don't have to "feel" hungry and full. You just have to eat what your body needs every day. MFP helps you do that, by setting calorie/nutrition goals and logging intake.

I agree with this.

My hunger signals are messed up from years of emotional eating.

When I first started on MFP, I employed the strategy of prelogging my day, and having that plan in place along with learning to eat slowly and mindfully was instrumental in getting past the need to feel stuffed to shut of my eating.

I also employed the thinking of "this is what my body needs in that first year.

As time has gone on, I've added more of a schedule to my eating and no longer prelog, but I have a loose idea in my head of what I'm going to eat and a general idea of the calories involved.

kommodevaran wrote: »

I forgot to mention - if you are eating at maintenance or slightly under, and splitting your daily intake into two or more meals per day, you will never experience any hunger or fullness beyond slightly feeling the one or the other. Healthy hungry and full aren't very far apart. The feelings are very subtle, and "hunger" (a joke, really, a tasteless joke when you consider what hunger is) can be confused with appetite or cravings and ignored for hours without any problems. This is actually a bit important, because we aren't supposed to spend hours obsessing over "is it time to eat now, or now, am I hungry, or just a bit peckish, or". I'm guilty of this myself, so I don't feel too bad criticizing this habit, lol.

I also agree that appetite will tend to be more in line with actual needs when you eat properly, when you get in enough of good, varied, nutritious and fresh food every day.

Also? Sleep. If you're not getting enough sleep it will mess up your hunger signals.

annacole94 wrote: »

Decide that the next thing you're going to eat is an apple.

Wait until that sounds delicious. Congratulations! You're hungry!

Ha! My mother repeatedly said "If you're not hungry enough to eat a banana, you're not hungry!"

That was really just to get us to stop snacking on chips and cookies after school. I still don't like bananas all that much...