Are you ever amazed when you watch a young child make his or her way through a meal?
Regardless of the kind of eater they are or what’s on their plate, they know when enough’s enough. They have no trouble stopping when they feel satisfied and indicating with words or actions that they’re done.
As my five-year old son would say, “I’m F-U-L-L.” He’s currently in the spelling everything out loud phase of life.
Young kids don’t seem to be influenced by the deliciousness of what’s in front of them, the fear that they might miss out if they don’t eat it RIGHT NOW, nor are they worried about wasting food and its implication to the family grocery bill or how it’s a privilege to have more food than we need when there are so many children in the world that go without.
Until we teach them, that is.
Children are generally in tune with the amount of food their bodies need. They seem to “manage” their bodyweight relatively well. Prior to a growth spurt, their appetite naturally increases, and then levels off as their body slips back into a period of homeostasis. They naturally eat more when they’re highly active and less when they aren’t.
It seems so simple. When you think of this, are you wistfully saying to yourself, “I wish I had that control”.
Here’s the thing. You were a child once and you inherently knew how to eat like one. You ate when you were hungry. You stopped when you were satisfied. It was relatively simple.
Until you were socialized to finish the food on your plate out of respect for “the starving children in [INSERT THE COUNTRY THAT YOUR MOM USED TO REFERENCE]”.
Or you were rewarded with that bowl of ice cream only after you ate everything on your plate—which taught you that stuffing yourself meant being rewarded with stuffing yourself even more.
I have total respect for our collective parents, because they only did what they thought was right at the time. And getting us to finish what was on our plate was noble.
But things are different now and we’re becoming more aware of the consequences of learned behaviour around food choices and amounts. We have a better understanding that eating according to external rules has disrupted our ability to be in tune with what our body actually needs. Many of us struggle to self-regulate our food intake according to our energy requirements.
But what if you could get back to eating like a child? How might that change everything?
It would mean being able to guide your food decisions based on internal cues INSTEAD of using external things like calorie counts, macro targets, or rigid meal plans.
It would connect you to your true nutrition needs in a way that is naturally aligned to your unique body, activity levels, and metabolism.
And if weight loss is on your mind, eating like a child can help with that too. You CAN retrain your brain to stop eating just before you’re F-U-L-L. This tends to result in natural weight loss over time.
While tracking calories and macros does have its place for certain types of data driven people who require precise accountability, that rigidity is not for everyone. And it’s also not a long-term strategy. As one of my clients always says, “I don’t want to be in my 70s and still tracking my food”.
Not only that, when our food volume is driven by numbers, formulas, and cues that are outside of our body, these systems further disrupt the connection between food and how it makes us feel.
But you can get back to a place where you eat mindfully, where you’re totally aware of how you experience food.
You can learn to align your intake with how you want to feel.
You can learn to self-regulate again.
I absolutely love the idea of being more in tune with what my body needs. In fact, I’ve been using these techniques for several months now. The thing I’ve noticed is that while I used to need to feel that stretch reflex activated in my stomach to tell me I’d had enough, I now understand that it’s not something I want to feel.
I don’t want to feel full. I much prefer stopping my meal when I still feel light yet satisfied. I’ve learned to trust that will not mean that I’ll be starving within 30 minutes. Nor do I fear the sensation of hunger. I’ve taken back control—I have the power, not the food.
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