From skwigg's journal:
Things I'll add to a meal if I need to fill it out with more food:
- buttered bread
-a (buttered) potato or sweet potato if I have some already cooked
- a small, rich dessert with plenty of fat in it (see above)
- a handful of nuts
- peanut butter, alone or on fruit/veggies/crackers/bread
- cheese, alone, wrapped in turkey slices and squirted with sriracha, or melted on something like leftover rice
- leftover rice or beans
- half a sandwich
- anything my husband is eating, double victory dance if it involves cold pizza or a chicken wing
Somewhere in spacetime, Diet Me just read that and fainted. LOL Adding food seems really counterintuitive to staying lean, but satisfaction is the key to everything. If I'm not satisfied, I'll feel crazier, obsess about food more, and eat more overall than if I'd just met my needs in the first place. I needed lunch to last 7 hours today and soup wasn't going to cut it. The addition of the peanut butter, banana, chocolate, and ice cream bowl was perfect. I'm about 30 minutes from when I normally eat dinner and just starting to feel the first hints of hunger. If I'd cut myself short at lunch, I'd have spent the whole afternoon debating what, when, and how much to eat. That much thinking about food never ends well. Satisfaction shuts it off like turning off a faucet.
I can trust that I actually needed that much food and that I'm not overeating because:
- I was physically hungry for lunch.
- I felt good before, during, and after I ate.
- I was totally satisfied for hours.
- I was physically hungry again for dinner.
When I'm overeating, I don't have clear hunger signals. My stomach doesn't growl. I may want food but it's disconnected from appetite. It's kind of the same thing with prolonged undereating. I didn't have clear hunger signals because I'd ignored them so long and responded so inconsistently. That's the beauty of eating satisfying meals at regular intervals. It lets you really tune in to how your body feels and how different meal combinations affect it.
Thank you for providing what helped you the most, Skwigg! I love what Georgie said and I find that also to be true for myself. I have ignored hunger AND fullness for YEARS, tried to manipulate it with this diet, that diet, etc. I have no idea what my true hunger even feels like, looks like, etc. However, I am be determined to eat enough so that I can honor that hunger, maybe for the first time in my life.