Planning, Tracking, and Hunger

"Hunger is NEVER an emergency".

 I first heard that phrase many years ago. At the time, it was the fashion to suggest that many small meals was the "best" way to diet, and that it was important to avoid ever becoming actually hungry, because that would lead to raging hormones that would make a person lose all control. The implication was we are all victims of our biology, and, like the Incredible Hulk, we could not be held accountable for what we did when we were in a berserker mood.  

The context for my first contemplation of hunger as merely a normal expression of impulses (rather than an emergency) was a diet book based on cognitive-behavior therapy approaches, which I read years ago. The idea is to examine thoughts, and change them consciously if they are not serving you well. Clearly, the facts about hunger are that we can live for weeks without food - so for us in America, missing a meal time is not an actual emergency (except for some people with diabetes or other medical conditions). So if we get hungry at an inappropriate or inconvenient time, we can remind ourselves we will survive, and to be patient until it is convenient to eat. It was a liberating thought, and I've used it fairly often to skip snacks or reaching for crap rather than good food.

This approach is very compatible with the coaching group I am currently participating in. The emphasis in my group is to plan and track food, and to be very aware of hunger. We are taught to analyze what we feel in our body, to feel what hunger feels like, what satisfied feels like, and to only eat when we are hungry and to stop when we are full. I'm pretty sure I've got the first notion - what hunger feels like - down pat, but stopping when full is still very difficult for me. One tidbit that caused a lightbulb to go off for me was the notion that how much food it takes to be full does not change based on how hungry I am. A portion is still a portion. 

This came into play for me today. I experimented a while back with "intermittent fasting", a fad that suggests only eating during an eight- or ten-hour window each day has weight loss benefits greater than simply a calorie reduction from less opportunity to eat. I abandoned thinking of this as a useful thing, but overall it has made me more receptive to skipping breakfast. Because I have so much more energy in the morning, and because it often gets oppressively hot in the afternoons, I jump out the door to start my day without having eaten anything first. I have my coffee, and I drink lots of water, but nothing to eat until later.

I was especially conscious of how I was feeling this week, because last week I felt better in every possible way than I have in months. No headaches, no generalized malaise or fatigue, more energy than is my norm. I wish I had taken the time to write about this at the time, because it would be useful to remember better. As my body reverted back this week towards what is sadly my normal baseline, (with a full-blown migraine to mark the transition) I tried to stay tuned in to how my body was behaving.

I got engaged in projects of some sort every morning this week, finally breaking my fast between 11:00 am and 1:30 pm. I found it difficult to stop what I was doing, because my experience has been once I do, I am likely done with productive work for the day. If it's gardening I've been doing, like today, I have to shower as soon as I come inside, to try to ward off the always-present but not always observed poison ivy, which further delays when I finally eat. The day I didn't eat until well after noon was a problem. Hunger had moved from an annoying feeling of stomach growling to a hollow feeling in my chest, and finally a headache. I recognized the headache - not a migraine, but hunger. I eventually ate (very quick salad with just lettuce, meat, and bottled dressing), but for the rest of the day I was feeling the need to "catch up". Let's just say unplanned carbs happened. My coaching group would not allow that - food doesn't just leap into my mouth - at some point, I chose to put it there. My salad, and tylenol, eliminated the headache, but I had strong urges to eat for the rest of the day and I did.

Eating around 11 am, as I did today, seems to work much better for me. I'll be having another meal by 3 or 4 pm, and later I'll have to deal with my evening drive towards sweets- a constant issue, no matter how much I've eaten earlier.

I still think hunger is not an emergency. I don't have to eat. I've got reserves to last me weeks, comes the apocalypse. But my experience this week suggests letting myself get too hungry means I have to exercise a great deal of control to avoid overeating in an over-reaction. It would be more sensible to avoid putting myself into that position in the first place.

(This post was inspired by other's posts about hunger.)