The FastDay Forum

I think there's something in this - I'm certainly getting better at listening to my body since I've been fasting.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/ ... eroception

Here's a link to a scientific paper on short-term fasting and improved body awareness - perhaps those more scientifically savvy could precis for us?

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 1111002389

Thanks for the link, very interesting. I loved the comment from the woman who eats ice cream (as well as EVERYTHING else!) with chopsticks, she must be good fun to out to dinner with

Ballerina x

Is this a woman thing ?

Whenever I hear that awful phrase I just thing "Oh FFS !"

"Oh FFS !".......Is this a man thing? Hee Hee

Ballerina x

Another term for this is 'mindful eating' which I think is a bit more involved than 'listening to your body' as you are making conscious choices before eating an item rather than seeing the effect it has afterwards.

I find that planning meals for the day - or even the next few days, not only helps me choose a wide variety of nutrient dense food hence leading to a more balanced food intake over a period of days but, works out cheaper.

Having said all that, when it comes to eating - I just enjoy my food!

I was amused to see the scientific study was on a group of women

Presumably the men just walked out.

"Presumably the men just walked out"...................

Ballerina x

I would never lose weight if I listened to MY body. It could work though if I listened to somebody else's body. I have a very thin friend in mind, her body's instruction would definitely help me lose weight. Or lose my mind. Or both!

Hmm.., I suspect you'd have to practice fairly selective listening. If I listened to this body there would be more drinks and seriously fattening food habits.

Slightly taken aback by the FFS response. Do men not indulge in emotional eating and drinking then? Find that hard to believe!

All I know from personal experience is that I've often eaten (usually thoroughly unhealthy food) because I was bored or stressed or depressed rather than because I was hungry, and a lot of my weight gain has been due to that. Fasting has helped me to be much more aware of what and when I eat - listen to my body, in other words.

Perhaps mindful eating would be a more acceptable term and provoke a less dismissive reaction?

It's the "listening to your body" bit that I struggle with. Which channel or frequency is that on ? Does my body have a different brain to the one I'm using to listen to it ? Does it have its own opinions ?

So my reaction is from a history of listening to the trite use of the phrase in answer to questions like "how much should I eat" or the like. I apologise if I caused any offence.

Sure men eat and drink under a variety of stimuli, or none at all.

The referenced paper suggests that the subjects felt more hungry at the same time as they felt more negative and their perception of their own heart rate increased. During fasting they were hungrier, more aware, more negative and had faster heart beat with higher blood volume.

" the final sample comprised 22 healthy female students of the University of Tuebingen with an age range of 21–31 years (M = 24.4; SD = 2.8) and a body mass index (BMI) ranging from 20 to 24 (M = 22.43, SD = 2.07) "

The way I see it, the body doesn't have a mind of its own but it has demands of its own. Our body can tell us when something is wrong with it, and it can ask for certain foods if it's lacking of certain nutrients.
Doctors say that what we crave can often be an indicator of what we lack of, so if our body asks for something specific and several times, it is worth checking it out.
Hunger and thirst are like pain. They are signals.

Technically the gut IS a mind of its own, often called our "second brain" (loads of neurons in our gut doing...something).

I read the journal abstract and looked at the graphs and thought, OK, so our heartrate goes up when we are hungry and you say thin people notice this more, but that is a heck of a long way from saying that our perception of our heartrate is what regulates our hunger or causes us to want to eat. If that were true, wouldn't a brisk walk make me feel hungry? Hunger is a a complex BASIC survival function (as in, we DIE if we don't fail to feel it regularly enough to keep motivated to eat). I am no expert, but I know there are cells in the top of our stomach that sense when food passes into our stomach, there are cells that tell when our stomach is distended (full) -- both signal to our brain our "fullness" and whether our gut is ready for more via hormones. I suspect the rest of our gut is also monitoring the quality of nutrient extracted to help determine whether it is worthwhile to keep extracting or "move it out" (after all simple worms do so and they are ALL gut with no central brain!)

Our blood glucose level is constantly monitored, ghrelin/leptin are hormones that directly control hunger/satiation, our bodies operate on 6 different fuel sources...so someone suggesting that obesity is caused because some folks are just not as in tuned to their heartbeat and internal senses? Not really buying it. Or maybe I'm not understanding it.

I think mindful eating is important, mainly because what should be an automatic function (eat whenever you get a chance) has been replaced in our world when we have plenty of food available at all times (kind of unnatural as animals, so we have to regulate ourselves).

Thanks, PhilT, appreciate that.

I have a feeling we've been talking at cross-purposes, possibly because I've gone off at a tangent. The scientific paper made my eyes glaze over (hence the request for a precis). I did read the article (the first link) and thought, I don't know about being able to count heart-beats but I'm interested in the 'sensitivity to gastric signals' bit.

Years of eating for reasons other than hunger had made me lose awareness of genuine hunger. I would over-ride a feeling of fullness and eat anyway, for emotional reasons. Fasting has just made me more aware of the hungry/full signals my body sends me and more aware of other reasons that trigger the desire to eat.

I don't particularly care what we call it, but I do think the concept of being more aware could help a lot of people struggling to lose weight. I haven't been a thin person since about the age of 9, but I have a feeling that people who maintain a healthy weight on a long term basis perhaps have more of this awareness and less of an emotional relationship with food.

I'll stop before I go further off course, galloping merrily on an out-of-control hobby horse!

Hi PhilT,

I just loved your responses, so masculine, but there is nothing wrong with that, on the contrary, it was lovely to see that men are still different to women even though we have been brainwashed (well, not me and obviously not the lovely PhilT either!)into believing that we are all the same. Vive La Difference!!!

ballerina x