Hunger and Cravings
Learning to manage hunger is a very important to staying on a weight loss plan. Hunger is a natural by-product of limiting your food intake, and it's important to learn the signs of true hunger - emotional versus physical and to control your responses to those feelings.
Nearly everyone eats for reasons other than just being hungry. Some people have learned to eat by the clockĀ, and eat on a schedule whether they are hungry or not. Others eat in response to mood - boredom, anger, depression, even happiness. Still others eat to avoid doing something else, to fill a need (safety, love, acceptance), or just to be social. These triggers are types of psychological hunger, and they can be powerful cues to eat, and to overeat.
When you are trying to lose weight (or trying to maintain), your calorie (and food) intake will be less than when you were in a weight gain mode. The caloric deficit can make you hungry throughout the day, but with some planning, it can be easier to manage. Besides weight loss or maintenance, your SB diet plan is designed for optimal life long eating, so the plan is low in fat and saturated fat. With hunger, fat provides a feeling of fullness so when you eat a lower fat diet, the food gets digested faster, and you can get hungry more quickly than if you were eating a lot of fatty foods. So to avoid getting too hungry:
Be sure to have some foods that contain protein or fat at every meal or major snack. Examples of low fat protein foods are low fat cottage cheese, low fat cheese, low fat yogurt, skim milk, fish, poultry without the skin, and eggs (avoid too many yolks). Include a little fat throughout the day as well. For example, instead of just air-popped popcorn have a few nuts or seeds as a snack. Having an apple is great but even better is having an apple WITH peanut butter since the fat will help make you feel full (where the apple alone won't). These foods will keep you satisfied longer, and instead of eating more fat-free foods to fill up, you will feel satisfied with less.
Another great reason to eat more vegetables is that they provide fiber and have a high water content, so they are filling without a lot of calories. Include vegetables as a snack and eat them throughout the day, not just at lunch or dinner. Adding some kind of fat to the veggies (cheese, peanut butter, hummus, salad dressing) will help make you feel full.
Something that is nice about a lower fat diet is that it allows for a pretty fair quantity of food. Low fat foods are bulky, not dense, so the quantity of food can be very satisfying, and this can really help with hunger.
If you are going to be in a situation that usually causes you to overeat, then eat before you get to that point. For many people, the time right after work is a difficult time to control overeating, especially if you have to cook dinner and you're hungry when you get home! Instead, eat a piece of fruit or have some lowfat yogurt on the way home. It takes about fifteen minutes to raise blood sugar, so wait and see if that satisfies you before eating any more. Chances are this preventiveĀ eating will help you control your need to eat more than you intended to. This same practice can also work before you go out to dinner, or to a party where there is a lot of temptation to eat too much.
Often, people eat when they are too hungry and continue to eat well beyond a comfortable feeling of fullness. This pattern repeated over time leads to weight gain. Instead, learn to know your comfort zone for hunger. There is a scale used by nutritionists:
Satiety 10 = Stuffed to the point of feeling sick
9 = Very uncomfortably full, need to loosen your belt
8 = Uncomfortably full, feel stuffed
7 = Very full, feel as if you have overeaten
6 = Comfortably full, satisfied
Neutral 5 = Comfortable, neither hungry nor full
4 = Beginning signals of hunger
3 = Hungry, ready to eat
2 = Very hungry, unable to concentrate
Hungry 1 = Starving, dizzy, irritable
If you wait to eat until you are starvingĀ, irritable, or unable to concentrate, you will be likely to eat beyond a comfortable feeling of fullness just to get rid of those bad physical feelings. The goal is to start eating when you have early signals of hunger (level 4) and to stop eating when you are comfortably full (level 6).
If you recognize that you often wait too long to eat, or you often eat beyond a comfortable level, it might help to keep a journal of your own feelings of hunger, using this scale. Take a look at what and how much you eat when you are too hungry versus the times you eat when hunger is just beginning. See if you can move your eating schedule to accommodate your true need for food.
When you are craving foods, it is important to determine whether the craving is physical or emotional. Once you have discovered why you want to eat, you can take action. Binging or emotional cravings can happen due to stress. Use some kind of stress reduction such as taking a hot bath, taking a walk, relaxation exercises, or yoga. Drink a glass of water before giving in to a craving. Sometimes when you think you're hungry, you're really just thirsty. If you are not only truly hungry but overly hungry, eat something healthy, such as carrot sticks or an apple, instead of the junk food you may be craving. That may fill you up enough to subside any unhealthy food cravings. Use the ten-minute rule. When you crave something, wait for ten minutes for the craving to subside (ie find something to distract you during this time - don't just sit there!). Another option is to satisfy your craving with a very small portion of what you are craving. Use the 3 bite rule. Completely avoiding certain foods can make them irresistible and make you crave them even more. The result is that you usually will give in to the craving, overindulge, and then feel guilty for letting it happen.
If you are truly physically hungry, eat (in moderation, of course). Keep in mind that you are hungrier on some days than others. So when you're really, truly hungry, it's fine to eat more. Remember that one meal does not define healthy eating habits. What you eat over the course of a day, or actually over several days, does. Healthy eating is flexible.
Many things can trigger our desire to eat. The smell of food, seeing our favorite food, a commercial, or just knowing that there are sweets lurking in the house. The habit of eating while watching television can make television an eating trigger. Recognizing what triggers eating or cravings is the first step in learning to control them.
Keeping a food diary can help you identify your eating triggers. This can help you notice when you eat and what you are doing or thinking when you have a craving. If you find that sitting in front of the television is a major trigger for cravings, plan to do something: take up knitting, write letters, etc. Do something that will keep your hands busy and keep your mind off the desire to eat. If boredom is a trigger, make a list of alternate activities, such as surfing the web, taking a walk, or taking up a new hobby. When you get bored and want to eat, check out your list instead.
The key to controlling cravings and triggers is to learn to recognize them and then to set up an action plan to help you deal with them. Cravings are a very normal part of our lives, and it is important to deal with them in a sensible manner.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. Agatha Christie
Kierae - happily maintaining since 1/2009
Co-leads:South Beach Diet/Smart Carbing/GLBTQ Spark Network www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/Kier
| current weight: 146.0