Listening to hunger cues

It should be so easy... to eat only when you feel hungry and stop once you're satiated. This idea of listening to one's body, one's own hunger cues, and using them to guide the amount of food we consume, is not a new one. Babies eat this way. Toddlers eat this way. My own son eats this way.

If you're like me, somewhere along this life you became fearful of hunger, and do your very best to avoid it. This makes dieting very hard, because even the slightest growl of my stomach would send me anxiously to the kitchen. To keep that feeling of hunger away, I would stuff myself at meal times and graze in between.

Combine this habit with the feeling of happiness and comfort I get when I eat, make me an emotional eater. Many emotional eaters are also binge eaters -- stuffing themselves with enormous amounts of food eaten at a furious pace -- but I have rarely ever truly binged.

I am unable, however, to leave food on my plate at meal times unless the food is not to my taste. And I will go back for seconds even after reaching fullness if the food is particularly tasty.

The following are what I have been doing to rewire my brain and become more intuitive when it comes to food.

1. I wait until I feel hungry to make myself breakfast, and because many times I don't feel hungry in the morning, my first meal ends up being around lunch time. 
2. I make myself small portions, for example I will make one egg on one piece of toast instead of a two-egg sandwich because I have found that this is usually enough to curb my hunger without the need for doubled calories.
3.  I try to drink water with my meals, and slow down my eating. 
4. I try to focus on my food instead of mindlessly multi-tasking. I keep most irresistible (to me) snacks out of the house altogether. 
5. To avoid taking unneeded seconds I have been making only enough dinner for one plate per person. 
6. I drink tea after dinner to up my water intake and avoid snacking.

These are a few habits I have found to work. I have not tied myself down and forced myself to do them - they are organic ways I have noted that keep me more in tuned with my body's cues.

This hasn't been easy. And last night, after a day spent listening to a book about ending emotional eating, I ate too much cookie dough and cookies despite a complete lack of hunger. This was after I saw a sold 192 on the scale that morning - one whole pound down in one week! I could not weigh myself this morning because the batteries are low, but once more are purchased I will update.

The process is more important than the end point, because the only true end point in life is death. Morbid, but true. I hope that day is a long, LONG way off, so I will continue to improve my health as best I can. More later.