Eating until you're stuffed

Many overweight people overeat.

We all know that feeling you get when you've just eaten Sunday lunch - or any huge meal - when you can't move and have to lie on the sofa for ages to recover.

That feeling is veyr bad for you. Think of the desire to sleep as your body trying to shut down non-essential services and use all its energy sorting out the masses of food in your stomach and intestines.

So why do we persistently overeat?

Before I go on, I will say some people manage to stay fat and eat very little. A week's diet record will show you what you eat and whether you're guilty of overeating in the extreme.

For most people stuffing yourself silly is a pleasure. It means you've enjoyed the meal immensely if you've managed to fill every last inch of your guts with food.

If we come to associate feeling full with being happy after having had a good meal it starts out bodies thinking that that's a good way to eat.

Society trains us to overeat. We eat big portions, we eat all you can eat buffet meals where we see it esential to eat enough to get our moneys worth, we eat the supersize portions.

It isn't.

If you stuff yourself on one of these diets where you can eat as much as you like - then you'll get used to bigger portions and will eat more. This might be ok if you're eating very healthily but as soon as you fall off the wagon (and it happens to the best of us) you will finds yourself eating masses of fatty food, or masses of chocolate in order to get that same feeling of satisfaction you get from feeling full.

If you read many of the diets carefully, and listen to the people selling them to you, you might see mention of portions, or limits, or suggested amounts, but the problem is to sell these diets they have to make it sound attractive and for most people getting their stomachs full to bursting is the way to eat.

How to change your attitude to this binge eating?

Well you can try the Paul McKenna book - I can make you slim. In his revolutionary diet book he simply sates his basic rules. One of these is eat when you're hungry and stop when you're starting to get full.

By doing this - and the first few times you sit down and eat a meal after reading his book - it'll make so much sense to you that you'll be amazed and want to shout about it to the world - you'll find if you listen to the signals your body gives you you will realsie that you're full a lot sooner than normal.

Make yourself a normal plateful of food when you're hungry. Sit down and relax whilst eating. Enjoy each mouthful, put down your knife and fork whilst chewing and chew properly.

If you reduce the speed at which you eat your body will have more time to signal to you that its quite happy and starting to feel full.

You will leave food on your plate.

Get over it! You can start giving yourself smaller portions once you reali that you don't need that much to eat. You may waste a few platefuls of food but the long term understanding you'll gain about what your body needs will make up for this.

Your body is pretty incredible when you start to think about it. It knows when its had enough to eat and will tell you when it wants some more food energy.

By eating smaller amounts - for instance one slice of bread with some meat and salad makes a pretty huge lunch for me now, when previously I would have had two slices of bread with loads of pickles and salad. I'd have stuffed the sandwich full of pickles because according to every other diet pickles are "free" - they're a vegetable and have virtually no calories!

Even salad will fill you up and I think the main idea of the Paul McKenna system is to change your pattern of eating for the better - and this change will last forever. You can reread his book for inspiration from time to time and listen to the cd again, but basically the method involves you learning to listen to your body.

The smaller portions works well I think. You spend more time eating and enjoy every mouthful more. If you start to rush your food you just need to realise and slow it down. Aim to take longer over food and taste the individual tastes within each mouthful. You'll realise how wonderful food can be - and of course you can eat whatever you want!

When I started the Paul McKenna system I put butter on toast for the first time in years. I've always considered butter taboo - yummy but something not to be encouraged to be eating - but it was nice to know that I could have a slice of hot toast with butter as long as I followed his rules about taking time eating it, only eating when I was hungry and stopping before I was stuffed.

I discussed this book with one of my friends, who mentioned she'd got a copy but hadn't bothered reading it yet. I urged her to read it - and she did. She rang me back a few days later to say how amazed she was - the system is simple and easy and she's over the moon about it!

Portion control

If you eat out in restaurants and sandwich bars you'll start to see where a lot of the problems are encouraged.

Its seen as a good sign these days to give big portions, there are lots of "All you can eat" bufets and restaurants and these offer a really good night out for people - eating as much as you want ... but it all goes to training the body to expect big portions and sadly very few restaurants offer really healthy food.

We're offered to upgrade our meals in various fast food places too - and when you think about it, given that we're all very individual isn't it amazing how we can all eat a burger and fries - its not as if women (who have a lower calorific need than men) have a lady's range of burgers to pick from.

Society trains children from an early age what to like - what we shouldn't be teaching them is to stuff themselves silly at every opportunity.

Teach yourself to eat slowly and respect the food you're eating more. You might start to pick different food - so you can enjoy smaller amounts of better quality food.