4 Ways Changing Your Eating Behavior Can Help You Reduce How Much You Eat

Have you ever found yourself ravaging on your food after a long day of meetings? I mean, you had a good breakfast before heading off to work, but the boss gave you such a big pile of work you had to skip lunch and all you focus on is that pile of papers you need to clear. 6pm came and as you left office, your stomach woke up.

Yup. You just went from normal to hungry in less than 3 seconds. As your hunger escalated, so did your desperation for food. Next thing you know, you ordered FIVE plates of different dishes and finished all of them. What is happening?!

Here’s a few of factors that might have caused that phenomenon:

You didn’t eat early enough

Our body has a “timeline” for eating. It’s just the body’s way to keep us alive. Typically, a proper meal will keep us full for about 3 to 4 hours, and potentially longer if the meal was bigger or richer in protein. When we miss a meal or delay too long before we eat our next meal, our body becomes very hungry.

Solution: If you’re very busy and can’t make time to eat a full meal, grabbing a small snack might help to delay the hunger

You ordered way too much food

In line with what we just spoke about, when your body is SUPER hungry, all it wants to do is to eat. In comes in the menu, and the stomach who has now sent it’s hunger signals to the brain starts looking at every.single.picture on the menu.

“Ohhhh yeah this is nice”
“Right right. Send me a plate of that”
“Can you feel it in your mouth? The saliva that’s rushing out like a flood?”
“I’M HUNGRY. GIMME THAT GIMME THAT”

So you begin to try to please the stomach and order everything that sounds nice. Next thing you know, 5 plates of food are on the table. Om nom nom!

Knowing how the body works when you are hungry helps you to practice one thing: Mindfulness. By understanding that the body will cause you to order more food, you now know that you just need to be mindful that the body has a tendency to order more food when you are hungry, and therefore always start by ordering one plate of food. After all, if you intend to get more, the food shop won’t say no to making more money from you!

Solution: Stay mindful and know that the body will tend to want more food when it feels hungry, and therefore cause you to order more. Start by ordering one plate of food and get more when you are still hungry after finishing that plate.  

You ate too quickly

When you are hungry, the body wants to feel full as soon as possible. This means that on a subconscious level, it wouldn’t stop until it feels the stomach balloons up and you start feeling a mini mountain. Because of that, not only will the body ask you for more food, it will also finish your food fast. Sounds relatable, doesn’t it?

Research has shown that eating too quickly can cause you to increase how much you eat by 10-13% compared to when you are eating normally, and it doesn’t help when you have a lot of food in front of you.

Solution: Eat slowly and mindfully! You will then bite your food into smaller sizes, increasing the surface area for digestion while giving the body time to know that it’s being fed.

The texture of food you ordered is too soft

Food like porridge, noodles and white rice are easy to swallow compared to baked sweet potatoes, oatmeal and brown rice. When the texture of your food is too soft, the tendency to increase in eating speed increases, therefore causing you to eat fast.

Solution: Look for food options that are harder to swallow. Fruits, vegetables, complex carbohydrates, beans, and meat are good options in general.