Day One Hundred and Twenty Seven!!!

So the other day I was talking to someone who said that they were concerned enough about their weight gain that they went to a dietician. The dietician said that one of the goals needed to be added to their daily routine was to eat within one hour within waking up. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, blah, blah, blah. 


So, I think this was very interesting, because my friend had no interest in eating in the morning. Sure she was over weight, but in the morning her body was telling her “not hungry! Do not need to eat! Do not eat!” I don’t know if you have heard, but there is this movement called ‘healthy at every size’ (HAES) and based upon this movement, you need to be able to listen to your body because your body has a built in weight regulation mechanism. The movement says, ‘let your body do the regulating for you’ and the author, Linda Bacon promises that you will have better results. She suggests that your body aims for your set point weight, acting like a biological force which pulls you to get back to your natural comfortable range, and she suggests that if you keep jiggling with the thermostat (so to speak of your fat thermometer) you are wrestling this natural set point away from your bodies innate weight mechanism, which in turn changes the set point. The goal becomes the protection against future diets, and she suggests that you just need to declare a truce, and pay attention to when it is that you are full and your body wil naturally just adjust accordingly, and make up for those occasional celebration overindulgences and therefore never have to deliberately deny yourself.


So my question is, which is it?


She suggests listening to your digestive system, your regulatory actions of digestion are governed by your autonomic nervous system, without any conscious thought, in order to maintain balance throughout your body.  


I just find this very interesting because, if there are so many people saying that they get up in the morning and don't feel like they need to eat, is that not their regulatory system speaking to them? For myself, I wonder, why would the dietician say that you have to work against your regulatory system, and force yourself into eating, when the reality is you are overeating at night. 


This suggests to me that her idea is, if you eat in the morning some how this is going to change your need to eat at night. But the truth is, the need to eat at night is not based on hunger, it’s based on emotion. So, that means that adding additional calories or carbohydrates in the morning isn’t going to really effect how hungry you are in the evening because, in the evening you aren’t actually eating out of hunger.


My suggestion is to listen to your body, and if your body is telling you that you are not hungry then you are not hungry. Adding carbohydrates or calories at that time isn’t going to do anything other than add calories and carbohydrate intake for the total amount of your day. The question actually really is, based on how you are feeling later on in the day when you feel the need to over eat, ‘why?’. 


The need to eat is actually really to do with that moment in time because, at that moment you are emotionally lacking, and trying to fill the emptiness with something. The question is, how come you are feeling empty? After you have already eaten? The focus of the Emotionally Focussed Eating Program is on that emotional component.