Day 14 - The Secret to Overeating

Have you ever come home after a long day at work so famished that you feel like you could eat 10 plates of food? Or maybe by lunch time your mouth is salivating at the thought of any and all consumables in close proximity and the vending machine becomes your savior. Your hunger is so vast that you end up eating through a meal, travel into dessert and still do not feel satisfied until your tummy is distended and too full. This experience is not because you do not have enough will power or that somehow you are deficient in some character trait - it is simply the product of a biochemical process that sets you up for an inevitable meal overdose.

When you eat in this state I call it instinctual hunger sabotage. The common stage of events goes like this: you skip meals, snacks or go long periods of time without food (because you are 'dieting,' too busy or forget). Inside your body something profound and powerful is occurring. Because your brain needs nutrition every two to four hours (depending on your blood sugar regulation) it is prepared to send out a cascade of signals and hormones to get you to provide its energy needs. Red-flag hunger is the result. Your body is in a state of urgent panic and starvation mode sets in. When you finally do eat you make up for all those fuel-less moments by gorging endlessly on large amounts of food. No longer are your gently surveying the foodstuffs you can consume. You are now on high alert and are going to make decisions from a place of urgency and lack.

Did you think that skipping meals or restricting food was not a big deal? Well, it is to the cells inside of you and it does not take much to activate your physiological starvation mode. No one is immune to instinctual hunger sabotage. No one.

Last night we went to a friends house for a Christmas dinner. I ate a good amount of food (the spaghetti squash and marinara was amazing!) around 5pm but by the time we got home at 8:30pm I was low blood sugar and high desire for anything to nourish my body. I ended up having two full plates of food. At first I was wondering why. On closer inspection of my day, though, and nailing down the time-frame details of my diet it all became clear. By the time I got home my body was in the middle of setting off the internal red flag alarm for fuel and every cell got the message.

Some people can eat 3 meals a day and be fine but most need a more frequent influx of nutrients to keep them from dropping too low into instinctual hunger. Here are my tips for keeping the inner out-of-control hunger alarm from going off:

1. Eat breakfast: You may think that skipping breakfast is good for your waistline but it has actually been shown in studies that if you skip breakfast you are 450% more likely to be overweight! You are breaking the fast from the night before and your body needs fuel to be able to approach the day's needs gently without having food cravings and making unwise food decisions on the run. 
2. Eat three meals a day: Giving yourself food at regular intervals boosts your metabolism and establishes a level of trust between you and your cells. Your body will not freak out as much if it knows it can trust you to give it balanced meals throughout the day.
3. Snack: In-between-bites will keep your hunger from skyrocketing to such high levels that you cannot calm your response. 
4. Prepare: Make sure that you prepare for each day by packing a lunch and numerous snacks with you. I keep extra food on hand at work, in my purse and in my car should I ever get stuck late at work or in need of a pick-me-up. This is absolutely key.
5. Hydrate: Our bodies are made up of 75% water. We need water on a regular basis for energy and metabolism. Oddly enough one of the first signs of thirst is not a dry mouth; it is being hungry. Make sure to drink a glass of water before every meal or snack to fulfill your hunger needs. 

In the case of the Christmas party last night, I very well could have brought my own dishes to the party (not just beer!) to know that I had something I would love to eat to nourish myself. I could have restocked my purse with fruit, nuts and dried meats to have on hand if I needed a quick snack in the later evening. I also could have made it a point to drink water more frequently to give my body the energy it needed. I was reminded from last night's experience that no matter how much nutrition information I know, how many man hours I have of awake eating or how many hours of counseling I have under my belt - the instinctual hunger drive can infiltrate my life if I do not take heed to the above. 

Remember that withholding or restricting food is not the key to health. The key to vitality is nourishing yourself to the point that it is expected by every cell in the body. 

Nat