Quote:
Originally Posted by daveshookme
I've been trying to implement a lot of this over the past month and it really helps a ton. Portion sizes particularly. You really don't need a third, or usually even a second, slice of pizza. I've been a fast water my whole life. I've focused on slowing down eating, and I find I'm actually full halfway before I used to be full. It helps.
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i love research so i apologize for bringing up another study, but this one was pretty interesting. the subjects were men and women (who were not overwight), who were fed a standard breakfast and asked to report their hunger level. an hour later they were shown their favorite food, and then asked again to rate their hunger level. on a separate occasion, they were shown a food that they did not like and were asked to rate their hunger level. it turned out that when they were presented with the appealing food, there was a spike in gherlin (a hunger hormone), and they reported to have an appetite. but they had no appetite and no gherlin spike when they were presented with the unappetizing food.
it just goes to show that often, when you think you're hungry, you really aren't. being able to differentiate between real hunger and head hunger is a helpful skill for anyone, but particularly people that want to lose weight.
and about the pizza example, that is completely true. i think a major reason why a lot of people overeat is because they are eating what they intended to eat. we predict how much food we will need to eat during work, so we bring that amount and habitually eat that amount. there are also the social factors- we are trained how much to eat by restaurants serving us, packaged food portions, etc. whether a bag of pretzels has 15 pretzels or 35 pretzels, we are most likely going to finish the entire bag. (this is also a cultural thing- americans tend to eat everything on their plate, while the french tend to just stop when they are full).
so a helpful trick might be to intend on eating smaller portions. but if you can figure out how to eat only when you are actually hungry, and not just out of habit (because its 3pm and that's when you normally have a snack, or because it's sunday ngiht football so that's when you normally get a bag of chips out, or because mcdonalds gave you fries with yout sandwich).... i think that is the key to long term success. and like you said, slowing down would definitely help bring awareness to how full you feel.
of course, with many things, easier said than done.
and sorry for the long post