Re: true physical hunger vs. 'satisfied' sensations: Slow Food Tenets

January 22, 2010

Hi Jeanne:

In my post on the LHIE board about 'Slow Food Tenets', I described 3 suggestions

that helped me finally resolve my difficulties with overeating at meals. Maybe I

should have posted those 'tenets' here, because my post didn't elicit any

response on the other board. Anyway, what really helped me to stop eating when I

feel comfortably full was committing to:

1) ONLY EAT WHEN I'M SITTING AT A TABLE. (I don't feel as satisfied if

I eat out of a container standing at the kitchen counter! Also premail snacks

while preparing food, decrease my hunger for the meal I really wanted to eat.)

(4) SAVOR WHAT I'M EATING. (When I eat quickly without focussing on the textures

and flavors of the food, I miss the food's flavor. What we consider taste is

really smell. Taste only includes sweet, salty, sour, bitter. However, slow

chewing releases foods' odors to the

nose, which can detect subtle differences between flavors. To me savoring also

means putting my utensil or food down between bites, thoroughly chewing each

bite without drinking, rather than washing down unchewed bites, not taking

another bite until I finish the first bite and not talking while I'm chewing, as

well as chewing each bite until it's almost liquid. By the time I do all that, I

get really bored with eating and am glad to stop eating when I feel full.)

(3) I DON'T EAT WHEN I AM NOT HUNGRY. (When I eat when not hungry, I

don't have a clear 'no longer hungry' stopping point, and often eat more than

necessary.)

Best of all, I don't have after meal indigestion when I really savor each bite

of the meal.

I'll post the rest of the 'slow food tenets' here if you're interested.

SUE

>

> Hi,

>

> The signals of physical hunger have been far easier to recognize than the

sensations of comfortable fullness. It has been both challenging and

frustrating to determine what " comfortable fullness " feels like for my body, but

I try to eat only until the food no longer tastes good and/or when I hear that

inner voice telling me " enough. "

>

> Jeanne

>

Recommended Posts