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Written by Patrick Caron Free Online Library
I think that we have all already heard two sentences that go like this, “Finish eating what is on your plate, there are poor people who do not have anything to eat” and “Don’t eat before diner, you are going to spoil your appetite.” Obviously, our parents did not try to hurt us in any way. However, this “finish your plate attitude” may be one of the psychological causes of obesity and possibly of some other eating disorders. Our bodies are wonderful machines that know exactly when it is time to eat, and when it is time to stop eating.
Nevertheless, the simple fact of eating when we feel full and not eating when we are hungry will program the subconscious mind into patterns that are not natural, therefore not healthy. Your body knows what it needs and not responding to its hunger or satiety will confuse it.
This programming can help explain why so many people can’t stop eating, even though they know they have eaten enough. Experts now know that some people just can’t stop eating potato chips until they have completely eaten the whole bag. These people have stopped listening to their bodies and rely on something else to tell them that they should stop.
The problem is that we have been programmed by our parent to eat everything that is on our plate, even if we were not hungry enough to eat it all. This has completely upset our natural system of “hunger control”, and has told our nervous system to eat all the food that we have in front of us, even if we are not hungry.
There is only one way to reverse this process: paying attention to how you feel when you are eating. At some point you should know when your stomach is full, even though there still may be some food left on the plate. It is so easy to store food in a Tuperware these days that there is no excuse for force-feeding ourselves.
The opposite situation also causes some problems. When we were young and that our mother would tell us to wait another hour before eating something in order no to spoil our appetite, we completely upset once again our nervous “hunger system.” And to make it worse, when it was time to eat and that our stomach was full even though that was still food on our plate, our parents would tell us to eat it all. These two situations (waiting for a while before eating and then eating too much) put together may totally change the way our brain analyses hunger and how we deal with it.
In order to reverse the “not eating until it’s diner time” pattern, you may have to eat during the afternoon if you feel hungry. It is important not to let yourself starve. Preparing a little snack will easily give you the perfect tool to make sure that your body will receive food when it needs it.
In conclusion: you are hungry = you eat. Your stomach is full = stop eating.
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