In chapter two of the book Health at Every Size Linda Bacon takes on the topic of WHY we eat. Her conclusion- Most of us don't eat because we feel hungry. Instead, we eat because...
- it's TIME to eat;
- there is still food on the plate and people in Africa are starving;
- there is just a little left in the bowl and it shouldn't go to waste
- something bad happened
- something good happened
- feelings of sadness, guilt, boredom, frustration, loneliness or anger
On page 32, Dr. Bacon makes this radical statement:
As you read in the first chapter, denying your hunger doesn't lead to weight loss or better health. And eating when you're hungry won't make you fat. In fact, the opposite is true: eating when you're hungry helps maintain your setpoint and keep you at the weight that's right for you and denying your hunger leads to compensatory mechanisms that trigger fat storage and weight gain. (Emphasis mine)
I know that for many of us this is going to be hard to accept. I know that it was for me. Before I started Sacred and Fit, I did not regularly follow my own body signals to eat or stop eating. For the most part, I would follow my thinking. My MIND is what led my eating. For instance, sometimes, I would skip breakfast then conclude that meant I could eat a larger lunch and dinner. I would see a commercial or see someone eating something good then I would want it. I ate ice cream when I was upset. Chips when I was bored. Chocolate when I was upset, bored, sad or happy. It wasn't until I became much more conscious of my thinking that I began to realize that I hardly ever let myself feel hunger.
On page 34 Dr Bacon continues:
If you don't trust and respond to hunger, after a while the self-regulatory setpoint mechanisms that controls your fat stores breaks down. You weaken your innate ability to hear you hunger and fullness signals. When this happens, you start to gain weight. No ideas you (or anyone else) may have about how to maintain a healthy and appropriate weight can be as effective as listening to your body. Losing weight is not about finding the perfect proportions of carbohydrates, protein and fat or tricking yourself into feeling satisfied. Rather, maintaining the right weight for you is about respecting your hunger and trusting your body to guide you in doing what's best. And that's hard if you're regularly eating for reasons other than hunger....(Emphasis mine)
In the end of the chapter there is a test to determine if you eat because of messages that come from your body or if you eat primarily from messages that come from your mind's interpretations of external stimuli. When eating is driven by external cues that your mind is interpreting as a signal to eat, the term used in the research field is "restrained eater." Those who follow their internal signals are "unrestrained eaters."
The short survey is 27 items. A few examples are:
- Without really trying, I naturally select the right types and amounts of food to be healthy
- I generally count calories before deciding if something is OK to eat
- One of my main reasons for exercising is to manage my weight
- I seldom eat unless I notice that I am physically hungry
- I am hopeful that I will someday find a new diet that will actually work for me
- The health and strength of my body is more important than how much I weigh
It is important to determine if you are a restrained eater or an unrestrained eater. Particularly because if you are a restrained eater then the attempts to control your food intake through willpower is an attempt to fight your own mind with your own mind. On one hand your mind is interpreting signals to eat from external sources, commercials, billboards, bad day. GO! On the other hand you are telling yourself that you shouldn't or that's fattening NO GO! So, while ignoring the body's internal signals the mind of a restrained eater is constantly battling...eat or don't eat; eat a little or eat a lot; eat this or eat that. In our society it is virtually impossible to ignore external cues to eat so the battle is easily lost. Restrained eaters will eventually overeat.
We are getting closer to Chapter 9 where Dr. Bacon explains how to become an unrestrained eater, how to move your body because you love to do it and what to eat in order to find your natural set point but before that, we are on to Chapter 3, what keeps a restrained eater restrained.
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