Don't just reach for the snacks because they are there.
Do you find yourself eating when you are not really hungry? You are not alone.
I have a gut instinct that I'll have raided the fridge by the end of this article — even if I'm not really hungry. How do I know? Because talking about food always gets me salivating, as does watching colleagues pick at doughnuts in meetings, or those seductive ice-cream commercials. My stomach might not be rumbling, but the desire to eat can be just as overwhelming as any hunger pang.
So why do things other than hunger — including our lifestyle, environment, hormones and emotions — make us consume more kilojoules than we need.
Food, food everywhere
"It's a tough environment to be living in when it comes to managing your food intake and eating well," says Dr Rick Kausman, author of If Not Dieting, Then What? is now in its eighth reprint. "Food is everywhere, available 24-7 and expertly marketed to make us eat as much as possible."
Even when we're not hungry, the sight and smell of food draws us in. A biscuit from the tin at work here, a handful of M&Ms from the lolly jar there, nibbling while cooking dinner. Mindless eating is so common, it has become a subconscious habit. Don't believe me? Try writing down everything you eat over the next few days and see how "visible" those little extras appear on paper.
We're not saying to stop all non-hungry eating. There's a place, without lashings of guilt on the side, for a piece of grandma's birthday cake, a celebratory glass of wine after the completion of a big project at work, a gelato after a hot day at the beach, but constantly "medicating" yourself with food because you're bored, anxious, frustrated or depressed is a definite no-no.
Feeding emotional hunger
Keep eating girl, but you are never going to satisfy an emotional need with food. "If you're filling yourself up with food to compensate for other things in your life, it's time to take a step back," says Dr Kausman. "Food may work as a quick fix, but the more effective long-term solution is to take a step back and work out what's going on in your life that makes you do this.
Are you using food to cover feelings you don't want to deal with? Are you lonely? If, for example, you recognise that you feel lonely, you can work on widening your responses to feeling this way. And sometimes it is appropriate just to sit with the feelings you have. It's alright to feel sad. You don't have to do anything about the feeling at all."
Constantly got your head in the ice-cream tub? Don't beat yourself up. Dr Kausman recommends this empowering approach. "Before you eat, ask yourself: 'I can have it if I want it, but do I really feel like it?" or 'I can have it if I want it, but will I really enjoy it?' And then wait up to 15 minutes to see if your position has changed. Just by allowing yourself to have it at another time can help you substantially decrease your non-hungry eating."
The dieting dilemma
Always dieting? Skipping meals? Well, guess what? At some point you're going to overeat to compensate, so don't complain that you're always hungry. It's that old feast and famine mentality. For some women, even the decision to go on a diet can trigger a food fest. "Every diet you go on takes you further away from recognising when you're truly hungry, full or satisfied, and ultimately damages your relationship with food and leaves you in a worse place," says Dr Kausman.
There's also a chemical reason why denying legitimate hunger is self-defeating. If you constantly under-eat, your body reduces the production of leptin, a hormone made by fat cells. When the amount of body fat decreases, the leptin level decreases. Our body, being the clever organism it is, registers the change and works to increase our levels of leptin again. Our brain responds by increasing our hunger and slowing down our metabolism.
Hunger management
Ultimately, the solution to managing your hunger day to day is to develop an eating routine that satisfies you. "While every woman is different, you shouldn't go more than four hours without having something to eat, otherwise you'll find it harder to control the amount of food you're eating," says dietician Tania Ferraretto. "Some women find eating three meals a day is enough, while others prefer to eat six to eight smaller meals a day.
"Either way is okay," she continues, as long as you're eating because you're hungry and not just out of habit. "Don't snack at 4pm if you're still full from lunch, but don't force yourself to wait until dinnertime if you're starving."
Dr Kausman agrees. "The most undervalued skill when it comes to managing our hunger is learning to eat without guilt. We're eating quickly for a whole lot of reasons and, when we do, it's easy to eat more than what we should. There's a power that comes from learning to slow down and really taste food, and accepting that it's okay to overeat occasionally. If you learn to listen to your body, it will regulate itself."
By Patricia Flokis
