eating

Do You Still Eat More Even When Your Stomach Is Full And Your Pants Are Tight?

March 20, 2012 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Have you ever had a day when it seems like all you do is eat and eat and eat some more? You eat everything – a bagel for breakfast, a donut for a midmorning snack, and at lunch with friends or coworkers and before you know it the breadbasket is empty. You might follow it up by some coffee and a snack in the afternoon. Maybe it’s a workday and you amble down to the hall to the vending machine or the snack room only to find that it’s someone’s birthday so there’s that delicious birthday cake sitting in the middle of the table. A little nibble of some cheese around six. Uh oh. Dinner plans that night – how can you eat even more?

There Always Seems To Be Room

You get to the restaurant. It’s gotten a great review and you’re with good company, too. How can you not go for it? The food is supposed to be phenomenal. You’re not hungry, but you eat and eat. Appetizer, bread, salad, entrée. Stuffed and double stuffed. Then it’s time for dessert and it sounds so appealing. The chocolate lava cake or the key lime pie is what this restaurant is known for. You really feel like you can’t stuff in another morsel, but guess what – you order one of the spectacular choices and eat it – every last fork full including the crumbs.

Why Do You Continue To Eat?

The signal to stop eating is usually not because your stomach is full (except in some extreme cases). According to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of the book, Mindless Eating, a combination of things like how much you taste, chew, swallow, how much you think about the food you are eating, and how long you’ve been eating all come into play.

Incredibly, the faster most people eat, the more they eat. Eating quickly doesn’t give your brain the chance to get the message that you’re not hungry any more. Research shows that it takes up to 20 minutes for your body and brain to both get the message — the satiation signal — and realize that you’re full. Think how much more you can eat in that time span of 20 minutes – a burger, fries, pie, pizza, ice cream – even though your stomach is really full but your brain may not yet have gotten the message.

Twenty Minutes Or Less

Research has shown that Americans start and finish their meals — and clear the table — in less than 20 minutes. A study published in the journal Appetite found that people eating lunch by themselves in a fast food restaurant finish in 11 minutes. It takes 13 minutes to finish in a workplace cafeteria and 28 minutes at a moderately priced restaurant. Eating with three other people takes about twice as long – which can still end up being a really short chunk of time.

Some Strategies

Slow down when you eat. Give your brain a chance to catch up. How many times have you devoured what you’ve made or bought for lunch in almost no time flat — and then, almost immediately, decided that you’re still hungry? Twenty minutes to half an hour after you’ve ended up eating a whole bunch more — even though your stomach is probably full — your belly feels like it’s going to explode and you can’t, in good conscience — unbutton any more buttons on your pants. You realize that you should have stopped before the seconds.
Eat more slowly, chew more thoroughly, pace your whole eating pattern to a slower beat. Give your brain a chance to synch its signals with the messages generated by putting food in your stomach.
Try getting up from the table and doing something else – and promise yourself if you’re still hungry in 20 minutes you can have more. If you’re in a restaurant, it’s the perfect time to excuse yourself and go to the rest room or claim that you have to make a call.

In most cases, after the 20 or so minutes, your belly and brain are both happy and in synch and you won’t want more to eat. What you save: excess calories and an uncomfortably expanding stomach.

When Should I Eat?

May 5, 2011 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Hunger is a basic survival mechanism. It’s what signals our brains that our bodies need nourishment and energy — and it drives us to eat for fuel. We’re born with this ability – think about babies and how they cry when they need food – and how they stop eating when they’re full.

Those of us who struggle with our weight are sometimes disconnected from the signals that tell us when we’re hungry and when we’re full and satisfied. Some of us don’t even feel hungry because we eat so frequently that we never get to the point where our bodies knock on the door to let us know that they’re hungry.

The Hunger Scale

There is a hunger scale to help identify how hungry you are before, during and after eating. The scale goes from 1 to 10 with 1 being ravenous and 10 being so full that you feel sick.

The Scale:

You’re ravenous and too hungry to give a hoot about what you eat
You’re starving and absolutely must eat immediately because you’re irritable, cranky, and have no energy
You’re hungry and the urge to eat is strong
Your hunger pangs are signaling the first signs of hunger; you’re a little hungry
You’re satisfied – not hungry but not full and you’re not aware of food in your stomach
You’re fully satisfied and are aware of food in your stomach
You’re very full, your stomach feels stretched, and you’re past the point of satisfaction but can still find room for more
You’re uncomfortable because your stomach is too full and you really wish you hadn’t had those last few bites
You’re stuffed, very uncomfortable, and your clothes feel very tight – that belt buckle or snap on your jeans doesn’t stand a chance
You’re beyond full and feel sick, miserable, and you don’t want to move

What Number?

If you’re at number 5 or above you’re not physically hungry and something else is triggering your eating.
If you’re at number 4 you can wait to eat or eat a little bit.
If you’re at a 2 or 3 it’s a good time to heat – have you noticed that food tastes pretty good when you’re hungry?
If you’re at number 1 you need to eat — but pay attention to what you’re doing. When you’re starving you don’t care too much about what or how much you eat – and usually shovel food in as quickly as possible – which can result in overeating (pigging out) and ending up at a 7 and up.
Gauge your hunger. If you’re only a little hungry, only eat a little. Preventive eating – or eating because you might be hungry in a little while – can cause you to pack in a lot of calories.

Why Do You Still Eat More . . . Even When You’re Stuffed?

July 6, 2010 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

You’ve been eating all day. Eating everything – a bagel for breakfast, a chesse Danish for a midmorning snack, lunch with some friends. This is followed by a latte in the afternoon – and why not a cute cupcake to go with – or perhaps it’s a workday and you amble down to the hall to the vending machine or the snack room. Oh, and it’s someone’s birthday so there’s that delicious birthday cake sitting in the middle of the table. A little nibble of some cheese around six. Uh oh. Dinner plans that night – how can you eat more?

Somehow There Always Seems To Be Room

Into the restaurant. A darn good one. Good company, too. How can you not go for it? The food is supposed to be phenomenal. You’re not hungry, but you eat, and eat. Appetizer, entrée, bread, salad, and then it’s time for dessert. But dessert sounds appealing. And the chocolate whatchamacallit is what this restaurant is known for. You order it and eat it – every last fork full.

What Gives (certainly not your waistband)?

Amazingly, the signal to stop eating is usually not because your stomach is full (except in some extreme cases), but, according to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of the book, Mindless Eating, a combination of things like how much you taste, chew, swallow, how much you think about the food you are eating, and how long you’ve been eating.

Incredibly, the faster most people eat, the more they eat. Eating quickly doesn’t give your brain the chance to get the message that you’re not hungry any more. Research shows that it takes up to 20 minutes for your body and brain to get the message — a satiation signal — and realize that you’re full. Think how much you can eat in that time span of 20 minutes – a burger, fries, pie, pizza, ice cream. This calorie fest is all in added time — the time after your stomach is full but your brain hasn’t gotten the message yet.

Twenty Minutes Or Less

Research has shown that Americans start and finish their meals — and clear the table — in less than 20 minutes. A study published in the journal Appetite, found that people eating lunch by themselves in a fast food restaurant finish in 11 minutes, they finish in13 minutes in a workplace cafeteria, and in 28 minutes at a moderately priced restaurant. Eating with three other people takes about twice as long – which ends up still being a really short chunk of time.

SocialDieter Tip:

Slow down when you eat. Give your brain a chance to catch up. How many times have you devoured what you’ve made or bought for lunch and then, almost immediately, decided that you’re still hungry? So, you eat a whole bunch more – once again in a short period of time. Then, about half an hour later, as your belly feels like it’s going to explode and you can’t unbutton any more buttons on your pants – you realize that you should have stopped before the seconds. With slower eating (and maybe as some research suggerst, more chewing) and better pacing, your brain has a chance to synch its signals with the messages generated by putting food in your stomach. You can even make yourself get up from the table and do something else – and promise yourself if you’re still hungry in 20 minutes you can have more. If you’re in a restaurant, it’s the perfect time to excuse yourself and go to the rest room. In most cases, after the 20 or so minutes, your belly and brain are both happy and you won’t want more to eat. Calories and uncomfortably expanding stomach saved!

What Should I Eat?

April 30, 2010 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

What Do I Want To Eat?

What Do I Want To Eat? That’s a question we all ask ourselves. Including me. A lot. Standing in front of the fridge with the door open. Staring at the shelves in the pantry. In front of the deli case. Trying to decipher a menu. With no clear idea, the danger zone looms setting up the perfect scenario for being easily swayed by all kinds of food that, perhaps, is not really the best for you.

What Should I Eat?

Then there’s the other question — one I get asked all the time as a weight management coach: “What SHOULD I eat?”

What’s the answer?

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a specific one. I can’t tell you, or my clients, what to eat. That’s your personal decision. What I can and do say is that deprivation doesn’t work. Certainly not for long lasting and healthy weight loss and maintenance. Restriction and deprivation mean a pendulum swing – restriction on one end and indulgence on the other. How many times have you foregone a food that you love only to gorge on it when you hit an emotional low and toss resolve out the window. Constant dieting doesn’t work either. It messes with your metabolism, and because dieting, by its very nature, means deprivation. A healthy lifestyle is an essential component of long-term weight management.

What can you do to get out of the dieting cycle and manage your weight?

There’s no way around it: the formula is energy taken in (calories) should equal energy output (physical movement and metabolism). If you eat more calories than you use up, you gain weight. To maintain your weight, your energy (calorie) intake and caloric expenditure (activity and metabolism) have to be in balance. An imbalance means you either gain weight or lose weight.

Don’t throw in the towel just yet. There are ways to help figure out how to eat good and tasty food and not pack on the pounds. Each of us has food that we feel we can’t live without and food memories that are associated with tradition, culture, and nurturing. It’s hard to separate food for sustenance from any of these emotionally charged food behaviors. And why should you? Doing so certainly sounds like a set-up for discomfort and what may be taken as either lack of willpower or failure.

Some Questions To Ask Yourself

No eating strategy will work if you are not happy and physically and mentally satisfied (satisfaction can mean both feeling comfortably satiated and intellectually satisfied that you are eating well).

Armed with knowledge about what is healthy food and what is not, and what your body needs in terms of a ballpark number of calories and nutrients, here are a bunch of questions you can use to mentally evaluate your food choices – before you make them. It sounds like a big deal, but it’s really not – you probably ask yourself some of these already. It’s a workable system of “foodie checks and balances.”

Foodie Checks and Balances

There are a series of questions you can ask yourself when you’re contemplating your food choices. By doing this you gain valuable information to use to make you feel good and to control your weight.

What is my tried and true meal that can be my fallback or my go to meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? What type of food did I grow up with? Did that type of eating give me energy, strength, and clarity? There’s something to be said about eating the way our ancestors did (even if its only one or two generations ago).

How do I feel when I eat this food? If you feel like garbage after eating red meat or drinking a glass of milk, stay away from those foods. Just because someone else eats them doesn’t mean you have to. A journal comes in handy so you can jot down what you eat and how you feel and look at the associations.

Is it delicious? Why waste your calories on something that doesn’t taste good? Ditto for something with little or no nutritional value. There are two sides to this coin. Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean that it has to taste bad. There are many ways to prepare foods. Try a different preparation. The other side of the coin is that maybe you’ll never like a certain food. Who cares if it’s a nutritional superstar. There are plenty of them. Why eat what you don’t like. This is not force feeding. There are lots of delicious and healthy foods to go around. Choose something else. Don’t waste your nutritional budget on something that you don’t like.

Is it good for me? Is it healthy? Not “Is it good for my family, my spouse, or my friend.” As above – don’t waste your calories on something that doesn’t do anything for you. Some foods may be delicious (to you) but be downright unhealthy. Give up on the empty and unhealthy calories. What’s the point of eating stuff that does either nothing for you, or that may be bad for you?

If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now? Ever eat a big bowl of pasta at lunch and then need to prop your head up on a book to try to stay awake (or more likely, grab a monster cup of coffee). Ever stop at a gas station on a long road trip to grab a candy bar – only to find yourself nodding off a while later? Dangerous. I once had pasta for dinner right before a movie and fell asleep during the trailer only to wake up when prodded by my husband and son when the movie credits were rolling. Pasta makes me sleepy, so does candy. What about you? Food certainly can have an effect on your levels of awareness and clarity. Learn to identify the relationship between certain foods and how your body physically and emotionally reacts to them. Some make you sleepy, some make you crabby, some make you alert, and some give you energy. Which foods do what for you?

Is this the right portion size for me? Portion control is essential for weight management. Learn to eyeball portion sizes and commit to a personal “no seconds” policy.

Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . . (you supply the answer – some typical ones are: everyone else is eating it, or my kids love it, or Grandma made it, or it’s the specialty of the restaurant, or “I had a tough day, I deserve it”).

Create a habit of asking yourself these checks and balances questions when you’re faced with food choices:

How do I feel when I eat this food?

Is it delicious?

Is it good for me?

Is it healthy?

If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now?

Is this the right portion size for me?

Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . .?

Have A Game Plan

SocialDieter Tip: Having a game plan ready before you eat will help you stay out of harms way but also allow you to eat portion appropriate healthy and delicious meals.

The choice is yours. What are some of the questions you ask yourself before eating?