I was flicking through for something interesting to watch and I landed on food unwrapped. They weren’t talking about anything new in particular, but they were discussing eating and how the human body on average, takes about 20 minutes to register what it’s just eaten with the brain and how a lot of people eat too much because they don’t give enough time for their body to register the food they ate.
I like to call this mindless eating…
Please don’t think I’m calling you a mindless eater. This is something I do a lot because of my rather large appetite.
It’s taken me some time to practice and get used to it as I still get this wrong a lot of the time too. I blame this on my love and passion to eat lots of good quality food.
So let’s break this down and think about why we end up over eating and how you can stop it or reduce it from happening too often
This will be a good exercise for you to practice because in the end if you eat too much good or bad food, it will still make you gain fat.
A lot of us leave too long of a gap in between meals. For most it could be skipping breaky and eating nothing till lunch or eating breakfast and not eating till dinner because you are too busy. Both these will leave you in a ravenous state so you end up eating mindlessly till your satisfy your hunger demons.
This will also inevitably lead you to make poorer food choices and make you eat more of them too. So thus when your body has had time to register you’ve got a full belly, you have eaten FAR too much and end up feeling like a stretched stuffed turkey.
1. Be more prepared. Have food read for when you start to feel hungry. If you work hard and are normally too busy, make yourself a smoothie you can drink while you are passing your office desk.
2. Drink plenty of water through out the day. You’d be surprised how often I hear people tell me they haven’t drunk any water. This will also lead your body to tell you it’s hungry when it might not be.
3. Stay in tune with what your body’s feeling. Consciously think about how hungry you really are. Think about when you last ate, what you ate, how much you ate. If you are craving something but you just ate an hour or two ago, remember no amount of food can ever satisfy cravings for company, excitement, love, rest or fulfilment.
4. Then comes the mindful eating. You’ve got to accept your hunger and control your primal instinct to hunt down and eat food. When you’ve found your prey, A.K.A your healthy dinner or lunch, eat it slowly and don’t inhale it in 2-3 minutes. Chew every mouthful at least 25 times before you swallow. This as a result will slow down your eating, give your body time to register what you’ve eaten and enough to think “I’m full I’ve had enough for dinner”. Then give the rest of the food to your dog… If you have one.
Give these a try and hopefully it will help you manage your hunger a lot better.
Jango
Speak Your Mind