When you were a baby you ate whenever you were hungry and stopped when you felt satisfied. However as you age, your mind and body become exposed to numerous fad diets, ads, the habit of rewarding yourself with food, and using food as an outlet. This causes you to unfortunately lose the satisfying feeling and overeat.

What’s very important to implement into your lifestyle is to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re satisfied.

So how can you relearn how to eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full? Follow the 5 tips below and you’ll be enjoying your food a lot more with the added bonus of losing a few pounds in the process.

Slow Down

Honestly, this isn’t rocket science over here. Anybody can start eating a bit more slowly…even you. If you’ve been reading my newsletters for the past year you might remember some other eating tips I recommended such as "sip water between bites" or "chew your food before swallowing".

These tips are all aimed to slowing you down when you eat. What’s interesting is that it takes 12 or more minutes for food satisfaction signals to reach the brain of a thin person, but 20 or more minutes for an obese person. By eating slowly, this ensures that these important messages have time to reach your brain so you feel satisfied and not stuffed like a turkey.

Awareness

Take your eating to a whole new level. Instead of just eating while you work or drive sit down and enjoy your meal with no distractions. When you do eat while you work, or drive this distracts you and most importantly your body will tend not to register the food (calories) and you’ll begin to over eat.

Try and find a quiet place with no distractions to enjoy your food. I enjoy eating my meals outside, it’s peaceful and there isn’t anything to distract me from my meal.

It’s all about the first bites

Believe it or not, food enjoyment comes from the first few bites. After the first few bites your taste buds start to lose their sensitivity to the chemicals in your meal that make it taste good. Nourishing your taste buds by really savoring those first few bites can help you stop eating.

Change it up

Instead of using those enormous plates and filling them up right to the edge. Switch to smaller plates. This will help you pay more attention to the presentation of the meal and increase your awareness of the food in front of you. The way it works is that your brain looks at the plate and analysis the portion to see if it’s enough. It takes some time, but in the end it’s a lot more beneficial to have a smaller plate.

Smaller plate = Smaller portion.

Go for the satisfying foods instead

You know the foods that are not so satisfying but still pack on the calories? You want to stay away from them. Keep in mind that the higher the fiber, protein, and/or water content of a food, the more likely it is to be satisfying in your stomach without going crazy on calories.

Here’s a quick list of some satisfying foods.

Turkey Sandwich on whole wheat

Oatmeal

Bean Burrito

Grilled cheese on whole wheat

Veggie omelet