If you are slim, please tell me how the conversation in your head goes

[whatisheupto]

If you are over the age of 38 and reasonably slim / not overweight, please tell me this:

An hour or two after dinner when you really fancy a bit of toast, do you tell yourself "no" and force yourself to resist the urge? When your brain nags you again, do you give it a firm "no" until and tell it to go away?
When you really want a small bowl of cornflakes before bed, do you just stop yourself and ignore the hunger pangs? Do you tell yourself "come on, you can do this. Think how good you'll feel tomorrow"

Do you tell yourself these things every day? For years? And rarely give in to temptation?

Or do you just never usually fancy a piece of toast or a late bowl of cornflakes? So it's just not a problem for you?

Are slim people better at self control, or are they just experiencing fewer urges?

@NotAnotherUserNumber Hunger levels, metabolic rates etc are not heavily influenced by the factors you mention. For some of those traits there may be a statistically significant correlation, but it is small and lost in the noise when you are dealing with the cultural shifts that have occurred with food consumption and activity levels over the past 30 years.

I don't give food a great deal of thought aside from shopping and cooking a big evening meal. I don't buy any ready made meals, snacks or sugary drinks. I don't eat breakfast. I've always been slim. My mother's family are all very tall thin people, my two boys are very slim. We all eat, and we all eat pretty much what we like, but if we want biscuits or cake we have a long walk to go buy any! If I'm hungry i eat, but it takes effort and sometimes I can't be bothered to make a cake or go and buy something. So my advice would be to take all the food nasties out of your trolley at the supermarket. That includes white bread, cereal bars, biscuits, crisps, crackers, and cereal. In fact everything that combines wheat and sugar......tis very bad for you. And ignore 'low fat' labels it's a crock of.....eat full fat.
The other thing I think must work is to distract yourself from intrusive food thoughts.

I spent about 13 years overweight (from first pregnancy to about a year ago) apprx 2 stone overweight and it was really affecting my health (high cholesterol/ joint pain etc)
Finally lost it by massively increasing my activity levels, have to do something everyday.
In addition I do not eat a huge amount (definately overate before) .
Im never starving but I actively allow myself to get hungry and have learnt to cope fine with the feeling.
Still eat three normal meals per day plus have a takeaway/ odd cake but no snacking and I am almost teetotal.
It does involve saying ‘no’ to myself but im fine with that now.

I'm not slim but have recently lost a lot of weight and have found that having dinner later around 9pm stops me snacking in the evening which was my biggest problem. I'm usually busier in the day so don't have as much time to snack .

Also Banana and peanut butter or apple and Nutella or white chocolate spread is amazing!

Thanks for this thread, it's been a really interesting read. I'm slim-ish, but I definitely have to fight against cravings and resist the urge to spend all evening snacking. Food is such a big part of our culture (Mediterranean background) and it's much more than just fuel, which makes it a bit depressing to be constantly restricting my intake. I've gained around 10lbs since March so I'm now back 'on it', trying to get back to my ideal.

Sorry wrong thread ha!

@MoltoAgitato I think you are talking about an entirely different thing to me. Cultural shifts, food availability etc. are causing a population scale obesity crisis, but this is an entirely separate matter to the factors on an individual level that control things like the ghrelin system and LDL receptor function which mean that different individuals will have different experiences and challenges in maintaining good health.

I actively allow myself to get hungry and have learnt to cope fine with the feeling

There have been some great insights on this thread - I like this in particular.

Yes I agree @SpokeTooSoon . So insightful. It's the psychology that interests me (and it's where I need help!)
I am going to pick out all the phrases like that which have slightly surprised me and read them all again to help me!!

I am slowly learning to be ok with feelings of slight hunger (I am aware of the massive privilege this sentence carries). Until recently they made me panicky and I would imagine I might get dizzy and light headed etc... I'd say its probably not an exaggeration to say I was afraid of feeling hungry. I wonder if that's common?

That's interesting what you say about feeling hungry. What about when you are about to have a meal? I much prefer to sit down to eat feeling a bit hungry - it just isn't as pleasurable to eat if you already feel full. I also wonder how much is to do with the way you are brought up. We never had snacks after dinner when I was a child and it actually never occurred to me that they were a thing until I saw it on MN a few years ago! I never went to bed hungry though. In fact, I don't tend to eat much in the evening anyway - I am much hungrier at lunchtime.

I let myself eat whatever I like. Sometimes, I’ll decide I don’t need something a proper meal, and I’ll just eat a banana or yogurt etc, and I’ll use the saved calories on a chocolate bar if I want one.

I listen to my body. When I'm coming down with a cold or when I'm coming up to my period, I tend to want food more.
On an ordinary day, I listen to hunger feelings rather than regular meal times. If I want chocolate, I will say that 'you can Gimme, if you eat a satsuma first'. It's like any addiction, distraction mainly. If I want something late at night I tend to go for something nutritious rather than empty calories in chocolate.

I don't add salt to anything as it makes things too tasty so you want more.

I try to walk at least if I'm not focused enough to do an actual work-out.

I think I worry about being hungry too OP, I have no idea why - I had all I needed as a child

I get really grumpy and irritated and find it hard to concentrate if I'm hungry.

@totallyyesno I agree I like to be hungry before a meal. It's not that I am some sort of snacking maniac.... my point of the thread is to find out what happens at those moments that most of us get (so it seems from this thread) at some point during the day, whether at a meal time or in between.

Growing up we were not allowed snacks. I was always in awe of friends who had a 'biscuit cupboard' or crisps they were allowed to help themselves to!

@NotAnotherUserNumber we are talking about the same thing. An individual propensity to weight gain due to genetic factors is tiny compared to other cultural factors. Yes, one set of effects (genetic component) is unique to each individual and cultural effects work on a population level, but for a given individual there is absolutely no point worrying about your variance from the norm of ghrelin levels when your lifestyle means you do less than 1000 steps a day and your office environment surrounds you with cakes from your colleagues, a vending machine full of junk food and lunch options with 700 calories each.

The more I eat the more insistent the urges are

They are nothing to do with hunger

Very true.

2020times I sometimes wonder if it is to do with childhood. I do remember often feeling hungry but being told 'no'. Don't get me wrong I had a lovely childhood but there was a lot of guilt attached around food from my mum... so, not eating too much, not having treats, a big fuss made if we did get a treat. (I was a very slim and quite tall child and teen btw).

I do 16:8 now and don't eat after dinner. If I'm hungry I go to bed hungry. It's not nice but you won't do yourself any harm.

@MoltoAgitato. I guess we will just disagree on this. As this thread shows, I am not the only person who feels hungry and restricts their food intake to maintain their low weight and then there is also those who have said that they eat whenever they want and don’t feel hungry. This is nothing to do with environments and junk food. Clearly some people have hunger that exceeds their energetic need and others don’t.

Likewise, things like my familial hypercholesterolaemia are not affected by environment, but are purely genetic and have specifically identified and measurable genetic anomalies.

I am rubbish about self discipline.

For me a lot of it is about building your life in a way that means I don’t have those daily moments of self denial

So for example I have dinner late. There is no time to get hungry before bed. I have a cup of tea or hot water after dinner which helps ensure I am not hungry.

I don’t generally buy biscuits and crisps. So they are not there to be resisted. Although when I am pre menstrual anything goes.

I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t feel particularly hungry then (perhaps due to late dinner) so it’s not a big struggle.

I’m bad at doing formal exercise, so that’s never going to be a way to stay slim for me. But, I hate driving, so I do a lot of walking.

Basically pick forms of food intake restriction and/or exercise that fit with your natural preferences. That way you won’t be fighting your urges so much.

Also being broke helps😂 when I was a poor student it was easier as I had to plan meals out and stick to a budget. There literally wasn’t any money left over for random takeaways, Costa visits or extra snacks unless I wanted to rinse off my credit card

Basically pick forms of food intake restriction and/or exercise that fit with your natural preferences. That way you won’t be fighting your urges so much.

The poster who said this sums up my thoughts. I know that I have a really sweet tooth and will really want to eat something sweet at least once a day. So I’ve decided that I will have eg a chocolate bar or slice of cake around 4pm each day. Then after dinner if I find myself thinking ‘hmm I fancy cake’ it’s (usually) possible to tell myself yes I can have cake, I just have to wait til tomorrow afternoon.

But I think everyone has to decide what is acceptable to them. For example the posters who go to bed with a rumbling tummy, never eat sugar/wheat/whatever and maintain a size 6/8 - fair enough if it works for you but for me personally, life is too short to live like that. However, feeling a bit hungry now and then and training myself to think ‘I’ve just had two biscuits, I’d like another two, but I won’t’ is achievable for me, allows me to maintain a size 10-12, and not feel deprived.

I typically eat 3x a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I only eat as much as my body wants, I very rarely overeat. I don’t eat out of boredom or being stressed. I don’t eat snacks between meals because I don’t get hungry that often, plus I eat enough in one go to keep me going till the next meal. I drink about 1 and a half litres of fluid a day, mainly water plus 1-2 cups of plain tea (I hate sugary milky tea). I eat plenty of carbs, with every single meal, potato, rice, bread, pasta, the works. I eat healthy food, loads of veg and fruit, nuts, seeds etc. I eat full-fat, can’t stand half-fat or fat free products. I eat meat, just love it. I don’t really have a sweet tooth but because I am physically active on a daily basis I try to have something sweet after lunch.
Btw fast metabolism doesn’t mean that you burn calories fast but it’s about how often you get hungry. So people with fast metabolism typically eat about every 2 and a half hours, hence eating about 5x a day and can get fat, while the ones with slow metabolism like me eat only 3x a day.