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Happy Wednesday! Today’s WIAW has to do with the Intuitive Eating Challenge that I’m doing with Jamie and several other participants. Our challenge on Tuesday was to stop eating when we’re full. Sounds simple, right? Well for most of us in the challenge this is totally foreign. I mean, I make my bowl of oat bran and I eat my whole bowl. I don’t think: “Geez (yes, geez) I think I’m full now so I’ll stop eating and toss the rest out.”
Anyone with me here? I mean yea, if you’re at a restaurant and your meal is huge, of course you stop eating when you’re full. But for me to make myself a normal portioned meal but not eat it all is just unheard of. Many of us discussed this in our facebook group and a common theme was a fear of being hungry later. I know personally I used to have my set meals and snacks at set times. If I got hungry in between, then too bad. So a lot of my finishing my plate mentality came from a fear of being hungry before I should. If I ate my whole meal then I shouldn’t get hungry.
Now I realize that’s just silly. Eating intuitively means eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. If I’m hungry an hour later or 2 hours later, then I eat, and again, stop when I’m full. So yesterday I took this challenge to heart and tried to really slow down and recognize when I was full.
Also, be sure to check out all the other What I Ate Wednesday’s participants today on Peas and Crayons!
I didn’t take a picture but I was starving right when I got up so I ate half a banana with just a bit of almond butter on top. After that I headed right off on a run, which ended me at the gym. After what happened on Monday I just wanted to run outside. I only lasted a mile and a half and my knee bothered me the whole time, but it felt so good to be out there.
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After the gym I stopped at Trader Joe’s and then headed home, ready for breakfast! I made my Chocolate Protein Oat Bran (can we say, obsessed?) with PB2 and strawberries. I ate about 2/3 of the oat bran, 3 strawberries and all the PB2 and realized I was full. This happens every morning, but every morning I finish it anyway for fear of being really hungry before I can eat lunch. I stopped. Ahhhh that was hard.
After breakfast I putzed around online, showered and then headed to a chiropractor appointment. I kept considering eating something else but I wasn’t hungry so I held off. After my appointment I knew it was time for lunch, so I headed downtown to school, grabbed a salad from I Dream of Falafel and ate it at school. Before I ate though, I was STARVING. Like stomach growling, felt light headed starving. I realized I should have just eaten at the restaurant instead of walking all the way to school, or eaten near my chiropractor’s office!
Again, didn’t finish it all. It’s not a highly caloric salad (mostly veggies and falafel with a bit of tahini), but it’s filling. I left the last falafel. Again, I’d normally eat it because I know the salad doesn’t keep me full for long.
About 1.5-2 hours later I was definitely hungry so I had this KIND Bar while doing some school work:
A littler after that (less than 2 hours) I was hungry again so I dug into the chopped peppers and banana I brought, along with a Café Au Lait from Starbucks. I realized at this point in the day how difficult this was for me. I felt like I was just eating little snacks, afraid of getting to full and ruining my experiment, but not really sure if I was hungry. It was confusing.
That evening I had to go to a Chicago Public Schools meeting downtown for one of my classes so I wasn’t able to get home until much later than usual. When I got home I was SO HUNGRY. Like my stomach had been growling for about an hour and a half hungry. I wanted something super fast, so I heated up my leftover oat bran (which I’d just tossed in the fridge that morning), along with some Fage yogurt mixed with stevia and vanilla, strawberries, and PB2.
I ended up having the whole plate on the left x2 and a spoonful of almond butter as well. I think being that hungry for so long got my primal instincts of eat and eat fast going! I definitely ate past feeling full, but understandable at that point.
Are you a member of the clean plate club?
Do you ever over-eat in fear of being hungry later?
What are your favorite foods to throw together when you’re really hungry?
