How do people without disordered habits eat?

[Frequency]

It's probably the wrong place to ask but how do normal people eat? Why are the not either fat or hungry all the time?

And, most importantly, how do they deal with cravings? Like, how do they just eat what they fancy, when they fancy without worrying about losing control and gaining weight?

If for example, they really, really wanted a portion of Gregg's brownies with salted caramel dip, would they just order them without considering how they would fit into their daily calorie allowance?

Surely, if they did that, they'd be over their TDEE that day? And if they did that say every couple of weeks, they'd gain weight.

I think i eat fairly healthily and am quite slim, mainly due to upbringing (three meals a day, very few sweet treats, never any fizzy sugary drinks). If I can sense there's a good reason for a cravings- e.g. it's very cold and I want carbs or it's very hot and I want salty crisps or I'm on period and crave chocolate - then I will probably give in and have a bit. But if I can't rationalise it I dismiss it and have a drink instead (coffee, water, homemade smoothie) and the desire goes away. Sometimes I think I want a sugar boost in the afternoon and actually going for a brisk walk in the fresh air perks me up and i realise I don't need it. So it's not that I don't get cravings but I try to manage them.

The book intuitive eating will give you a really helpful overview of what a healthy relationship with food looks like.

I have disordered eating and if there was a treat/cake in the house I would be thinking about it all the time until it was gone.

However in your example, I would never ever bring shops like greggs in to the equation. I just have a rule that I don't go and buy treats like that and it is so deeply ingrained it doesn't even occur to me. I would have brownie as a pudding after a meal out, or recently DD and I made one as a pudding for after a roast on a sunday.

Also, two bowls of cereal is not a good, nutritious breakfast. One way of managing hunger and cravings is to eat proper food with balanced macros. You can't fix disordered eating overnight but you can switch your focuses on to healthy habits

I’ve had disordered eating most of my life (either binge eating or extreme dieting/ orthorexia/ over-exercising).

This year I feel like I’ve finally broken the cycle. Two things helped:

1. switched to 90% wholefoods and cut out gluten, eating 3 meals a day plus one or two small healthy snacks (have gallstones so have to eat regularly or I feel terrible)
2. accepted that if I was eating genuinely properly, healthfully and for wellness, not thinness, then my body would “be” whatever it is meant to be

not easy mental shifts to make, and they were driven by a health need, but as a side effect it’s almost completely cut the “food noise”, and although im eating far more than I was previously (I was terrible for skipping meals then eating EVERYTHING) I’ve lost naturally about a stone since January.

I have realised lately that I eat for a "buzz", not because I'm hungry or really want it. I'm awaiting an ADHD assessment so maybe it has something to do with this.

Knowing this means I can try to do other things that provide the dopamine hit I need instead. Listen to music, jump up and down 20 times, have a coffee or mint tea sweetened with xylitol.

I try not to keep snacks and biscuits in the house, as I will just eat them mindlessly when I need a hit. And I eat lots of protein (meat/eggs) to stay full and iron (spinach etc) for energy.

But if I really wanted something like Greggs brownies and sauce, then I would plan to buy it and enjoy it as a treat, probably with a glass of cold white wine.

That wouldn't be a problem for me. It's the mindless eating without really noticing or enjoying what is going in your mouth that I wanted to put a stop to, not enjoying and savouring a particular treat. I think one is much more harmful than the other.

I don't have disordered eating and have never been overweight.

I think a lot of it is just my genes. One side of my family are all thin-to-moderate weights, even if they eat crap and drink a lot.

I think how the body responds to calories can depend on many other things. Like if you were in a famine situation as a child, if you had antibiotics as a baby, if you were born by C-section, if you were breastfed - a lot of things you can't change.

Upbringing too - did your family snack a lot? Eat a lot of upf? Etc.

But also, I just don't have food noise. If I want a brownie I'll just eat the brownie, think "that's nice" and then not think about it again. I won't crave another sugary thing for ages, I'll naturally want something healthy and savoury later but it's not a conscious decision. Just what I fancy. I think if you mostly eat unprocessed food your body eventually is good at telling you what it needs. I never think about calories or my weight. It just stays the same. I would say I eat what I like, but what I like is generally healthy food.

Maybe it’s a rare deviance from their normal eating pattern . Like at Christmas but you do t eat like that most of the time. I enjoy wine but I limit it to the weekend and just a few. Last night DH and I fancied had a few drinks at the pub while watching the rugby. We then got fish and chips from the chippy but we shared a portion( and he had a saveloy too!!) and it was enough for me. I guess it’s what you’re used to. Have you watched THE GLUCOSE GODDESS ? Interesting how your body reacts to glucose spikes causing a crash a couple of hours later so you eat more sugar. Try focussing on protein and whole foods.

Routine and few cravings for much. I eat non processed mostly just because I don't like McD, KFC, ready meals or takeaways, or chips/crisps etc. either. Partial to a nice dessert and cake though. Make my own high fibre wholemeal bread, Use full fat everything and don't have many carbs. Make my own cakes occasionally (like banana bread, muffins etc.) use real butter and Stevia sweetener in the recipes instead of full sugar. Works well, I don't know the difference! I don't take sugar on porridge, cereal (rarely eat that anyway) tea or coffee. I don't drink alcohol. That probably saves me a ton in money and around my belly!

I won't be hungry, I hate that feeling, but I am satisfied after each meal, and don't snack or eat between meals. Just like the French ooh la la!

I think for some people food is merely fuel, (that's kinda me) and for others it is pure pleasure. I do like food, but can take or leave it. Is that disordered too?

I agree with what lots of other people are saying on here about blood sugar and UPF. I would ditch the protein bars, Options, flavoured yoghurt and chocolate they probably all have sugar in. I would try and get used to eating less sugar, you will probably stop enjoying it.

In case it's useful, my food for the day looks a bit like this:

B: Kefir with a little fruit (eg. a kiwi, half a pear), some nuts/seeds (one or two from pecans, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds). Occasionally a boiled egg and an orange, or porridge with nuts/needs instead. I also have a decaf skimmed milk latte.

L: A big salad, which usually consists of a whole cucumber, a tomato, 1/2 an avocado, sauerkraut and some protein like a little soft goats cheese, Gouda or Emmental, an egg, tinned sardines, smoked mackerel. I might add some olives, olive oil, peanuts, nuts from the above. I WFH mainly but when I go to the office I bring this with me.

S: Nuts, might include a Brazil nut or two and some pistachios and/or above mentioned ones. Some fruit (eg 1/2 an apple). A square or two of 95% chocolate. Sometimes I mix the nuts and fruit in a bowl with kefir or Greek yoghurt and add a tsp cacao powder which makes a really nice 'chocolate pudding').

D: Here are some examples: A big tray bake of leeks, peppers, courgettes and garlic with haddock fillets. Baked salmon with homemade tahini and miso sauce (mix tahini and miso with hot water), with purple sprouting brocolli and cauliflower. Homemade green chicken curry with loads of vegetables in the sauce. Chilli made with steak mince and kidney beans poured over carrots, brocolli and cauliflower. Sausage and butter bean casserole with a big pile of veg. Lentil and vegetable stew with a big pile of veg.

I don't generally eat pasta/rice/potatoes/bread with dinner although DH snd DS have them (wholegrain types) with the same above meals. But I have a huge pile of veg.

I don't usually eat anything after dinner, but if I really wanted something I would have something similar to my afternoon snack.

I don't even know what TDEE means. I eat what I want. I am overweight but I'm okay with it. There are worse things in life. My dear MIL wasted so much of her 40s worrying about her weight and doing Weightwatchers etc when she wasn't even obese. She died from cancer in her 50s.

I enjoy food, I enjoy my life, you only get one.

Having said all of that I never ever get food delivered, that's just not part of my life. I shop and always have a kitchen full, including snacks that I eat when I want. Maybe it's because you don't have anything nice in the house that you get cravings for overpriced high calorie stuff. If I had a craving for chocolate I'd eat some of the chocolate I have in the house, no big deal.

I agree about it being a habit thing. I'm not slim and I also have disordered eating. But some things I've never got into the habit of doing. Rarely have takeaways, because there are none near me that I like really. And I have never ordered online. I think it's a slippery slope, getting into that habit and won't start.

IF I want a takeaway, I make myself go out to get it. And laziness usually wins over the food desire and I won't have it.

I don't buy what I know I'll binge eat. I mean, sometimes I do, but on average I don't. I'll put just 1 or 2 things I like in the trolley in the supermarket. Because I know what'll happen if I buy too much. If I've got to buy for others, I buy them stuff they like and I don't.

Some foods will trigger more eating. Marmite for example. I love it. But if it's in the house, I'll constantly be on the toast, butter and Marmite. So I avoid that by not buying the Marmite.

IF I have the craving like the one the OP is discussing, I'll usually just eat whatever it is. The upshot of that though, is that it'll make me feel sick (too sweet, too much) and then I'll not want it again for a while.

The answer is that they are in tune with their appetite so they naturally eat what they need to stay healthy without gaining weight. They aren’t ’going without’ and they aren’t thinking about how much calories or fat is their food. They don’t think of food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’’, they just think of it as food. They don’t have cravings they need to ignore. Food is not a source of stress for them

This is me now, but for the first two decades of my adult life I had very disordered eating. I binge ate, had an excessive sweet tooth, had unbearable cravings for food, sometimes ate things like cake, ice cream and chocolate for my main meal at dinner, once I started eating sweet things, could not stop till I was painfully full and bloated, would make myself throw up. Food was a constant source of stress and near constantly on my mind. I was never hungry as I always ate pre-emptivy. I associated food withevery emotion, happy -eat. Sad, eat. Bored, Eat.

I eventually realised I had to change or I would be like this forever. I decided I needed to get back in touch with my appetite and needed to train myself to eat normally to do so. So I looked at how ‘normal’ people ate. . I bought myself a smaller plate ( side plate) to stop myself overeating at every meal. I set myself set meal times and if I needed to snack inbetween, it would one snack of nuts and fruit. I decided before the meal that I would stop when finished. It was not a diet, my goal was not to lose weight and no food was off limits if it were part of my meal. . I realised there would be times I would ‘break’ the rules and that that failure was part of the process and not a reason to quit the process. I knew it would take a long time to reset myself and to keep going till I had. Cravings were the hardest. And I dealt with those by telling myself over and over that it was just a feeling and nothing bad was happening to me by having this feeling. That I could just feel it. Nothing bad would happen if I didn’t give in to it.

It took a year, but it worked. For over two decades now I have an easy, relaxed attitude to food and eat what I want, when I want. I eat when I am hungry and stop when I am satiated. I did lose weight, but that was a by product and not a goal.

I am really so glad I put in that year of hard effort. It’s transformed my life.

I have no idea what TDEE means either. Most people without disordered eating don't calorie count or obsess about these things. Today for example I am going out with my student daughter for pizza at lunch, so will probably have something a bit healthier in the evening.

Because really wanting something isn’t the same as deciding - choosing to get it

there are lots of things I really want - many I couldn’t afford - but others i deny myself because I know long term it wouldn’t make me happy - if I was fat, if the food left me unsatisfied, if the clothes I liked to buy never reallly got worn , if the money became tight ( there is a lot of that in my thinking !)

And in answer to the brownies question, I genuinely no longer want to eat stuff like that. I love cake, but only proper cakey cake, not overly sweet stuff like that. I don’t like it. It has no taste, only cloying sweetness. I used to eat and binge on that stuff daily, but genuinely no longer like it.

You can change your tastebuds. I wasn’t expecting rthat as an outcome of my year of resetting my eating, but it did happen.

But to challenge other posters - yes I do think about food most of the time ; yes I am aware of the calories in stuff , it’s not “natural” and “in tune with my body”

the only natural thing is I like exercise ( except the 5 minutes before starting anything )

Before I hit menopause I very rarely never thought about the calorie content of anything. I was never taught it and no one around me talked about it when I was growing up. However I was taught ‘everything in moderation’ or at least I absorbed it.

Intresting topic, something me an husband discuss a lot. He is like that, he will have cravings for something like it is some reward.
I treat food more like a fuel, something I need to do to survive to have energy. If I see something I like for example pick and mix - great, I'll have some there and then and that's that. But I don't look for it all the time. Then I eat when I'm hungry so if lunch time is at 12 and I'm not hungry I just eat later meaning thay sometimes I don't eat dinner if my lunch was late. Where as husband is fixated on meal times, I'm pretty sure he sometimes eats just for sake of it.

I eat three meals, occasionally snack but that’s usually fruit or an occasional cereal bar. I feel full after a meal and rarely get ravenously hungry.

I used to yo-yo diet and my relationship with food was very unhealthy. I would starve myself and then binge. I saw food as “good” or “bad”. It took years to reset, best thing I did was read Fat is a Feminist Issue and start intuitive eating (but it wasn’t called that at the time). Basically, only eat when hungry (and hunger builds slowly so a sudden urge to eat will pass), stop when full, eat when you want and what you want. It is scary, some put on weight as you eat all the foods you have forbidden. But, you do get that out of your system and end up with a more balanced diet, and lose weight. We have a natural set-point for our weight, don’t fight it. I have also read Ultra Processed People and now those brownies you speak of are not food to me. I haven’t had chocolate for weeks. Still eat cake, mostly homemade and really not fussed about crisps.

I craved food when I wouldn’t let myself have it and highly processed carbs are designed to be addictive. Your body wants more food as, basically, the brownies have no nutritional value.

I do think I am lucky, sense I have the right balance of appetite hormones, but I did develop a skewed eating pattern all the same. My biggest regret is ever starting that diet when I was 16, a diet I never needed to do. If only my mum had have told me I don’t need to diet (at 9 stone) instead of encouraging me. I would have saved 20 years of torture.

Good luck.

Having a family means you tend to eat at regular mealtimes. If I lived alone I probably wouldn’t eat a full evening meal. I’d probably have an egg on toast or some hummus with veg sticks.

You can train yourself to be like this too OP. I did. It was hard work and took a year, but it worked.

www.glucosegoddess.com/en-gb/pages/science-episode-the-10-glucose-goddess-hacks

Well ok I don't really go out of my way to eat, I just don't make extra effort that way. So if I'm out and decide to go to Gregg's, I'd buy the brownie and eat it and then when home have dinner so I suppose it's just all spread out.

I don't have disordered eating but I've certainly tried various methods of losing weight over the past few decades (I'm 53). I was never at all obsessive or driven about it though, and have never caloroe counted. Apart from when I was at my heaviest (between my two pregnancies and after my second dc), I've only been mildly overweight.

I have given up my sporadic attempts at dieting, because clearly they don't work long-term. Since I decided to stop bothering with trying to lose weight, I have gradually stopped thinking about whether I 'should' or 'shouldn't' eat things. I haven't put on weight as a result. If anything, I'd say I'm a little bit slimmer. I don't eat gluten or lactose now though, due to intolerances, which makes me eat fewer things like biscuits, cakes etc because gf ones are often horrible!

You are presuming that there are 2 separate groups…1 with disordered eating ,1 without. It doesn’t work like that . I have never counted calories because I never consistently overeat enough to put on excess weight. cravings are pretty normal, it’s what actions we take around them and how much that craving takes over our lives. So for eg.When I used to have wine at home. I would get the craving to have a drink every night as I was using that alcohol to manage stress…..as soon as I realised that wasn’t a habit that was bringing me health and happiness I made the decision to not buy wine and to basically give up drinking apart from occasional times when out , and use other methods to de-stress .My wish to not be dependant on alcohol to deal with stress was bigger than my wish to keep drinking every day. My capacity to do that is going to be on a different level to someone who is an alcoholic who has to make a higher level of commitment to abstain. Sugar and unhealthy food is no different…if you have an addiction you have to abstain to a certain extent because once you start your body just craves more….sugar addiction is a very real thing. So if you can not order those brownies and choose something else instead you have a better hope of breaking that cycle.