Emotional Eating: How Hungry Should You Be?

In a book that I’m reading, Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald, he makes an interesting point about ‘Emotional Eating’.  He has a Hunger Rating Scale, and suggests that you:

Rate your hunger each time you eat as a way to get in touch with your body and learn the difference between real hunger and emotional eating urges.  On a 1 to 10 scale, eat only when your hunger level is 7 or above.

He further makes the point that:

The goal is to eat only when physically hungry and, when eating, to eat only until comfortably satisfied, never stuffed.

He presents the following chart:

10.    All I think about is food (Dad edit: About to _really_ pass out from hunger)
 9.     Ravenous
 8.     Quite hungry
 7.     Ready to eat
 6.     Snack hungry
 5.     Neither hungry nor not hungry
 4.     Satisfied
 3.     Full
 2.     Uncomfortably full
 1.     Painfully stuffed

In thinking about this, during the training season, during the day, I would definitely be eating at 6 or above, and sometimes at 5 in advance of a workout…and often keep eating at a meal past 4 to 3…alright sometimes to 2…okay okay, odd time to 1…sometimes a steak and beautiful wine is just oh so good.

…very interesting thing to keep in mind…I’ve put the chart on a post-it-note on my computer monitor.

You can read more from Matt Fitzgerald at http://competitor.com …type in Matt in the Search box…or buy one of his 17 books including this one

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