March 19, 2008
Family Meals Focus #24
Interpreting the news and research about feeding and eating

FMF #21 introduced the concept of the Satter Eating Competence Model (ecSatter). This newsletter addresses one of the four components of ecSatter: internal regulation. It is excerpted from the second edition of Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family.

From the perspective of ecSatter, a person with effective food regulation attitudes and behaviors is confident of getting enough to eat and trusts the body's internal signals of hunger, appetite and satiety to guide how much to eat. ecSatter doesn't say how much to eat, but instead, encourages you to eat as much as you are hungry for.¹ Our research shows that people who have high overall eating competence scores, and particularly those who have high scores with respect to food regulation, have lower BMIs, are more physically active, and, most importantly, express greater satisfaction with their weight.²

Eat as much as you want? It just gets curiouser and curiouser! Are we to throw caution to the wind and let every meal be Thanksgiving dinner? Won't we just eat ourselves sick? Or at least gain a lot of weight?

The notion that eating as much as we want creates nutritional mayhem leaves out an essential part of the equation: the body's wisdom. Your body knows how much you need to eat. Essential to eating's rich reward is having enough to eat. Being hungry and eager to eat can feel positive and exciting on the one hand or negative and distressing on the other. The difference lies in whether or not you are confident that your hunger and appetite will be satisfied, that you can look forward to getting enough to eat of food that you find rewarding. The irony, in this land of plenty, is that most of us fear hunger, not because we lack the financial resources to provide for ourselves, but because we obligate ourselves to undereat. At any one time roughly three-quarters of both men and women are dieting to lose weight or maintain weight loss.³

As a result, most of us are potential overeaters. However, we don't set out to gorge ourselves. Contrary to the fears of the food cops, both internal and external, we don't have a slothful inclination toward overindulgence. Rather, we overeat because we are restrained eaters,we chronically restrict ourselves. We restrict ourselves until we can't stand it anymore, then we overeat.

Setting aside food restriction is like nutritional judo,going with the natural drive to eat as much as you want rather than fighting against it. After people learn to trust and honor their true and legitimate needs, they find that rather than periodically cutting loose and eating a great deal of high-calorie food, they eat moderately and consistently of all food, all the time, and find it genuinely satisfying. Foods that are no longer forbidden become ordinary foods that can be consumed in ordinary ways. Large portion sizes become less appealing in the context of regular and reliable meals and snacks featuring adequate amounts of rewarding food.

Check yourself. You are being restrained when you feel deprived. You are disinhibiting when you sneak off to eat. The solution? Trust your body to help you find the middle ground between the two extremes. Feed yourself reliably and well, and eat as much as you are hungry for. Your eating will fall into place when you learn to trust yourself, to be reliable about feeding yourself, to accept that taking pleasure in eating is natural, and to acknowledge that eating enough is essential.

References

1. Satter EM. Eating Competence: definition and evidence for the Satter Eating Competence Model. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2007;39 (suppl):S142-S153.

2. Lohse B, Satter E, Horacek T, Gebreselassie T, Oakland MJ. Measuring Eating Competence: psychometric properties and validity of the ecSatter Inventory. J Nutr Educ Behav . 2007;39 (suppl):S154-S166.

3. Serdula MK, Mokdad AH, Williamson DF, Galuska DA, Mendlein JM, Heath GW. Prevalence of attempting weight loss and strategies for controlling weight. JAMA. 1999;282:1353-1358.

Copyright © 2008 by Ellyn Satter. Published at www.EllynSatter.com.