But how does the baby know it’s full? The answer is similar to the fable of Goldilocks and the three bears. Goldilocks looked for the porridge, the chair, and the bed that felt just right. The same should be true with your stomach and feeling satisfied. The satisfied stomach isn't a little bit hungry or a little bit full. It feels just right.
Being satisfied is pretty much a nothing feeling. You aren't full, but your stomach hunger pangs have ceased. You have room to take a deep breath. The waistband on your pants doesn't cut into the flesh of your waist. You have enough energy to take a walk or do an activity. You don't feel full, just satisfied.
Answer the following questions:
1. Do you usually go back for seconds at dinner or lunch? | Yes or No | | 2. Do you “supersize” your meal at fast-food restaurants? | Yes or No | | 3. Do you loosen your belt or change to looser clothes at the end of a meal more than once a month? | Yes or No | | 4. Do you eat a dessert at the end of a meal even when you're satisfied and have had plenty of food? | Yes or No | | 5. Do you regularly drink more than one beer or glass of wine with a meal? | Yes or No | | 6. Do you usually eat everything on your plate? | Yes or No | | 7. After dinner, do you usually sit and watch TV or do another sedentary activity? | Yes or No | | 8. Do you eat more than one piece of bread along with everything else on your plate at a main meal? | Yes or No | | 9. Do you binge eat, or eat to satisfy emotional hunger? | Yes or No | | 10. Do you continue to snack or eat throughout the evening? | Yes or No |
If you answered “Yes” to more than one or two of these questions, you probably have a habit of eating until you're full or stuffed.
Two simple rules for eating naturally
Eating naturally is eating based on honouring your body's hunger communications. Take a cue from infants who eat only when they are hungry. You need to remember only two broad rules: 1) only eat when you feel a hunger pang; 2) only eat enough food to get satisfied, not enough to get full.
Virtually any healthy eating plan or diet program you choose will work if you honour these two key body communications. We have lost touch with the primitive instinct for hunger. Hunger motivates “the get up and go get the food” response that was necessary for the primitive hunter. It is vital that we feel the hunger and are not always full. It is also vital that we allow our children to feel hungry so that they eat what’s put in front of them, simply because they are hungry. I never worry about whether my children will eat what I have cooked or not because I know they will be hungry enough to eat anything! My children never say no to my lovely lentil soups or barley risottos. They’re too hungry to argue. We are too entrenched in the habit of wanting to see food in the hand of a child all day long. We feel better because a child is eating. However, that child is learning to snack constantly, mostly on processed snacks and when the main meal comes around, that child has already been satisfied and can easily refuse.
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