Enough: portion (and mind) control.

August 23, 2013 O M

“Eight parts of a full stomach sustain the man; the other two sustain the doctor”

- Japanese proverb

Having begun our practice of mindful eating with learning to slow down, we must now be alert for the signal to stop.

Not stuffed, replete, chockas or even full. Just the simple acknowledgement, that’s enough.

As with our stress response, the body will always seek an equilibrium - homeostasis. Any interruption to this balance is met with a corresponding shift to get things back in balance again. With our body weight, there are internal challenges in maintaining homeostasis. As stored nutrients are used the body looks to replace them.

- “eat”

So we eat, and then we get a,

- “that’ll do, thanks”

At least in theory.

When we honour these prompts we go a long way to achieving optimal health - the body, when in shape, knows what it needs, but for most of us, as with our stress response, these signals are well out of whack.

Or, we simply aren’t listening.

If we eat for reasons other than hunger, the distraction and pleasure are temporary; consequently we have to eat more to feel better, feeding not ourselves, but this vicious cycle. If we do not eat when we are hungry, our body eventually turns up the volume - upping our appetite signals and smothering our fullness signals - the perfect storm for binge eating, triggered by, you guessed it, dieting.

Developing an awareness of our internal cues gives us one of the best tools to maintain our health and a healthy body weight. When not in tune with these cues, our health and weight suffer. These cues can guide our decisions to begin and end eating, instead of following a regimented dietary plan - or paying no attention at all.

The first recalibration of hunger and satiety cues is achieved by eating slowly.

For those still finding it difficult to slow down and the health benefits v risks equation isn't striking enough of a chord, perhaps consider that eating fast is the first order of business for those looking to add stacks of weight .You may want to question whether you really should be adopting the number one strategy of a sumo wrestler at every meal.

Probably not.

So, if we can assume you are already eating slowly, (if not this remains your priority) this will in turn help control food quantity.

The reasons for over, or under-consumption of food are many and include,

Social pressures such as wanting to fit in at events, or pressure (for women especially) to be thin
Stress
Self-imposed food restriction in order to feel ‘in control’
An excessive focus on ‘health’
A desire for comfort - self-nurture, or, paradoxically;
Self-loathing
Restriction/ elimination of certain foods
Feeling ‘out of control’
Disrupted biological rhythms - shift work, lack of sleep
Food availability

With all of these external considerations our internal cues - you know, the ones that just say 'hungry now' - barely get a look in. Our eating starts, and stops under all these different stimuli, but rarely that which seems most obvious,

Am I (still) hungry?

The importance of eating just enough is highlighted by many cultural traditions all across the globe.

In India, the Ayurvedic tradition advises eating until 75% full.

In China that we should eat until 70% full

The Prophet Muhammad described a full belly as one containing 1/3 food, 1/3 liquid and 1/3 air, and both The Koran and Bible advise that excess eating is a sin.

When finished eating in France the declaration is that “I have no more hunger”

There is a German expression to “tie off the sack before it gets completely full”

Finally, we have the Japanese practice of Hara hachi bu - eating until 80% full, and said to one of the major contributing factors in making Okinawa one of the world's blue zones - an area of extended longevity.

But these admonishments are all from a time past, and a sign that our problem is not just with us, but with where we are.

Or, more accurately, when.

As with our stress response, the health problems of modern society can at least in part be linked to the fact that we do not listen to what our bodies are telling us.

Obviously our hunger and fullness cues served an evolutionary purpose, but our ability to eat when not hungry must also have had a purpose. Perhaps a survival mechanism hangover from days past - another helping of woolly mammoth to help tide us over when we couldn’t be sure where our next meal was coming from.

But this is badly misplaced in a world in which food is always right under our noses. As we learn from an article in the New York Times - The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.

Consider that unlike bright shiny berries - their danger signalled through a bitter taste - we are now baited with bright shiny packaging filled with foodstuffs that aside from not providing any nourishment, serve only as a delivery vehicle for various combinations of sugar, fat and salt.

Laboratory formulations designed to override our bodily cues of hunger and fullness, and create ‘craveability.’

It's Orwellian that these words, this invented language even exists.

Craveability

Vanishing caloric density - Food that melts down quickly so your brain thinks there’s no calories in it - "you can just keep eating it forever"

The bliss point.

This engineering extends even to discovering the perfect desired pressure required to snap a chip (4psi). Every conceivable fish-hook has been thought of. Foodstuffs designed and engineered to addict.

Your environment is saturated with advertising, much of it adapted from tobacco companies play-books, to redirect your health concerns. Food company sponsorship of schools and hospitals. Sponsorship of obesity studies!
All of it further noise and stimulus, increasing stress while offering comfort. All, quite purposely and very successfully, disrupting our natural impulses and responses.

Where once our biology served to keep us alive in an inhospitable environment, our environment is now more hostile then ever. It's using our biology to kill us.

But most damning of all, if there is one thing worse than having the wool pulled over your eyes, it's being fully informed and still doing nothing about it. Eyes wide open, we can’t pretend we don’t know. When confronted with the fact that food companies deliberately aim to profit at the expense of our wellbeing, we do nothing. Even this doesn’t summon a taste bitter enough to inspire action.

These companies rely on this fact - the apathy of the masses, and this is reflected nowhere more obviously than in the headline of the article above.

We are all aware it is the propensity of the media to try and stir even the most mundane into a furore. Yet when we do actually have a story of substance - with worryingly evident implications for all of us; a story shining a light on a moral vacuum; what do we get?

A benign headline with an absurdly positive spin - the extraordinary science.

"Gosh, this science that is killing us is just extraordinary!”

It's not good enough for these companies to argue for 'personal responsibility,' when they have labs dedicated to systematically dismantling every single one of our biological defences. When they deliberately circumvent all the warning signals from which this personal responsibility might stem.

We need to realise what we are up against.

We must learn to say, enough.

References:

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-slow-eating

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-appetite-2

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/eat-slower-eat-less

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671920/how-junk-food-is-engineered-to-be-hopelessly-addicting