Cornerstone #2: Eating when Hungry

Our bodies are an incredible thing.  They are able to control so many different processes and chemical levels all inside a contained system with no external support.  This type of internal regulation is known as homeostasis, and allows us to do things like always keep a constant temperature, ensure our blood pressure doesn’t get too high, and even keep a proper pH balance within the body.  The body even has its own homeostatic controls for energy balance, and uses these to help control how much energy goes in and out.  Now, I assume most of you are asking yourself that if the body can internally control things like blood pressure and energy balance, why are there so many people with hypertension and obesity?  Well, these homeostatic controls can break down, especially in the perfect storm of the Standard American Diet (SAD). 

This internal control of energy is nice and all, but how can that help us?  Well, I think it leads us to my 2^nd cornerstone for health: Eating only when hungry.  Do you think our hunter-gatherer ancestors stopped at noon to eat lunch just because it was lunch time?  No way!  They ate when they needed to.  Obviously this eating strategy is starting to look like it’s on to something from an evolutionary perspective, but lets take a look at what the current science says about this.

One of the reasons that this is such a powerful eating strategy is that it is almost completely lost in the obese.  They have very little control over their own appetite.  In one study it was found that overweight children consumed 34% more calories in the absence of hunger than their normal weight siblings (1)!  If you’re not hungry, why are you eating?  I think food reward plays a big part in this, and for more information on that I would head over Stephan Guynet’s blog. 

Additionally, when middle school boys and girls were following eating based on an “intuitive eating scale” it was found that higher scores on this scale were inversely related to BMI (2).  The same thing was seen in New Zealand women who filled out a similar intuitive eating survey (3).  What this means is that when people of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds were eating mainly based on hunger signals they were found to have a lower BMI. 

As we can see eating only when hungry is a great way to maintain an optimal weight. It is also a great way to lose weight if you need to, and can be done easily while eating a whole food diet.  Maintaining a healthy weight is one of the most important things someone can do to avoid metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and CVD (4, 5, 6).  I think this eating strategy, along with eating whole foods, is the optimal eating strategy to maintain proper health and well-being.

The next article will address my final cornerstone for health and wellness.  Now that we know when to start eating, and what to eat, we will address when to stop eating, and how that can affect our health!