Put Your Hunger on the Scale
By Anne Cuthbert
Lately, I find myself saying to people, “Your weight isn’t about what you eat, it is about how much you eat.” It is easy to find people talking about not eating certain “bad” foods to help them lose weight but rarely do people talk about how much to eat.
What I find in my work with clients is that they have no idea when they are hungry or when they are full. If you’re an emotional eater, you may be eating too much and/or eating when you aren’t hungry. Eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full will teach you a lot about your body and your emotions.
The Hunger Scale
Imagine a scale from 1-10. If you are at a 1 on the scale, you are so hungry you feel you might be starving. If you are at a 10, you are so full you feel you can barely move. Rate your current hunger on this 1-10 scale. Where do you fall? What physical sensations are you aware of that tell you this?
The goal is to eat when you are at about a 2 or 3 on the scale and to stop at a 6 or 7. Certainly, you don’t want to be too hungry before you eat, or you are likely to eat too much and too fast, without even tasting it (see February’s newsletter).
As you eat, notice your body’s sensations. Perhaps the moment you start to feel a pang of fullness, stop eating. You are now at about a 7 on the scale and have eaten what your body needs.
After some practice, you will learn how much food your body needs and can respond to your body’s signals rather than emotional signals. It may take several days or weeks of paying attention to this to learn to listen to your body and to learn what is the right amount for you.