It's Not Willpower You're Missing

You get home from work or school, grab the chips, and while standing, begin to inhale them. One after the next, straight from the bag, barely tasting them. You overeat the snack in spite of the knowledge of what’s an “appropriate” amount to eat. And you don’t even enjoy them. You know better, I certainly know better, and yet we all do it. “Why can’t I control my eating?” you may wonder.  “Why don’t I have the willpower to stay motivated and eat well?” I know I shouldn’t be eating this way! And yet you continue.

The biggest trigger for this scenario? Excessive hunger. For any number of reasons you may under eat during the day.  Perhaps you skipped a snack because you were too busy or thought you could get by without it, maybe save some calories.


You may not even be aware of your hunger because of the volume of beverages you drink--water, coffee, diet soda, which may mask your hunger. Or you are stuck in the mindset that it’s best to deny your body what it needs. Maybe you are busy meeting everyone else’s needs except for your own.You fail to listen to your hunger, your body’s signal that you need fuel, from food. 

And then you’re ravenous. You’re looking for a quick fix to revive yourself, to get your blood sugar back up.  Impulsive, rapid food intake. No thoughts. Just grab the food. And eat.

Been there?  I’m sure.  We all have. It doesn’t matter how smart you are, or how much nutrition information you have.  It’s too late once you reach this point. We can’t begin to approach eating mindfully, with intent, when we have reached this state. But the tendency I see is to continue the cycle by denying hunger the following day.  Maybe you want to make up for the overeating from the day before. Or you just don’t trust that listening to your body could really work. So you under eat the next day—maybe intentionally, maybe not, and fall into the same trap.  Don’t you see that clinging to the idea that tomorrow you can have more willpower fails you?

If you want to have the willpower to be in control of your eating, you have to honor your body.  And that requires you to listen to, and respect your hunger. 

Allow yourself to eat when you are hungry—but don’t wait until your hunger has gone too far. This also allows you to not eat when you are not hungry -- the over eating that occurs because of emotional triggers, or to self soothe, or simply out of boredom or routine.


Please share your insights about your own experiences working through this issue! Thanks!

Do Dogs And Toddlers Calorie Count?

This is my dog.

And this is a toddler.

Both adorable, no?

Now what, you may be thinking, does this have to do with your blog “Drop It And Eat”? Well, the way I see it, we can learn a lot from observing both dogs and toddlers regarding eating.  So I’ll start with dogs.

When my dog, Mica, rises, he typically makes it clear when he is hungry and needs to eat. He strolls over to his feeling place, looks down at his bowl and glances back up at us, if we are present. If we are not observing him (which is unusual), he gives a whimper, translated as “please feed me—I’m hungry”. And so we do, and the whimpering ceases. We fill his bowl with dog chow, and he proceeds to eat. And then he stops. He doesn’t clean his plate, so to speak.  There is typically food which remains late into the day, when he will graze again, presumably because he is hungry. We never remove his food or deny him nourishment when he gives us the cues that it’s feeding time. And he also gets plenty of exercise. He is and has always been a normal weight for his breed (he’s a whippet), has had no liposuction and has never, to my knowledge, counted his calories. And he frequently is found eating after 8 PM.

There are quite a few similarities between Mica and toddlers I have observed. They make it clear when they need to eat, as well as when they’ve had enough. You know, tossing food off the high chair, playing with the items they have no interest in. We’ve all seen it. And when we look at the growth curves of most young children, it’s clear that they know best. They tend to follow a percentile curve that’s right for them, (those weight charts doctors plot to measure how well kids are gaining and growing), suggesting normal weight gain each year.  It’s generally when we mess with things that this self-regulation fails. When we set inappropriate rules, reward with food (finish your chicken and then you can have the cookies!) or withhold food. But for the most part, when they are offered a balanced diet and have their signals respected they gain appropriately.

So what can we learn from canines and toddlers? We can take a few lessons from their dietary self-regulation and lack of rules driving their eating. And if you weren’t a healthy toddler whose cues were appropriately listened to (or a healthy canine), it’s not too late to start learning to tune in.

Don't Eat After 8 PM. Or Was It 7?

There is no diet rule I have heard stated, and believed, as frequently and as strongly as this one – the time after which you should not, under any conditions, eat. People cling to it like a religion, with such conviction. And the scientific basis for this guideline? None. That’s right. And it’s not because it hasn’t been studied, because it has. Each time the conclusion is the same – it is not about the hour you eat, but about how much you consume relative to your body’s need. Yeah, but what about what Oprah says? She and her trainer say you should not eat after 8:00 PM, never mind hunger, or working late. But doesn’t it turn to fat at night? I’m not burning any calories so it must go right to my thighs, right?

Your body burns calories, its fuel, 24/7. As long as you are breathing, you are burning calories. As long as your heart is beating, calories are used. True, you are not using as many as when you are running or walking or moving. But you still require fuel. Yet you are not eating every moment of the night (even if you struggle with nighttime binge eating, there are stretches of time when you do not take in food). So where are these calories coming from which are keeping you alive? For the most part, we draw from a starch called glycogen, stored in our liver and our muscles. Between meals and when we sleep, we rely on this reserve to maintain our blood sugar and keep us going. Yes, even while we are sleeping we are using calories.

Now let’s look at how much sense this “Don’t eat after 8:00” rule makes. At 7:57 it’s okay to eat, but at 8:01 it turns to fat? And if you worked until late, maybe got stuck in a commute, and arrived home after 8:00 PM, have you missed your opportunity to eat? Why should your body no longer need the nourishment? What are we thinking?

So where did this thinking come from? I can only imagine that it was a well-intentioned attempt to help people limit their food intake. To have a cut off so people wouldn’t continue to eat when they didn’t need to. And I would agree, that if you just had dinner at 7:50 PM, and you are looking to eat again at 8:05, you should reconsider, but not because it is after 8:00! You should delay eating to give your body a chance to assess its need.  

If you are in the habit of eating at night not out of hunger, but for the many other reasons we all reach for food, you should look closely at this pattern. What’s driving this eating? What are you looking for this food to do? Is it your way of relaxing? Or simply something you associate with watching television? And does it work? No doubt, there is a temporary benefit. If that eating didn’t meet a need, you wouldn’t continue to do it. So is there an issue with eating at night? Only if you are eating in a mindless, disconnected way. And when you are eating without regard to hunger. But if you are hungry, please eat, regardless of the hour.  And enjoy every bite.

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