Everyday Systems: nosdiet: message 2183 of 3212

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Hi sunshine,

I think there are a few reasons why "hunger and
fullness" diets don't work.

1. The pseudo-scientific reason: 

Hunger wasn't designed to deal with the problem of
superabundant food. That doesn't happen in nature.
Hunger was designed to give you a little taste of
death to motivate you to risk your life and kill
something before you starved. It's not a great tool to
rely on for this novel problem of excess.

You may have heard the theory that allergies are the
overreactions of an immune system that evolved to
fight legions of parasites and pathogens and now has
nothing to do so gets set off at the drop of a pin.
It's like having a huge standing army with no enemy:
there's bound to be trouble. Hunger, I think, is the
same way. Hunger wasn't designed for small scale
stuff, meal micromanagement. It was designed for life
or death stuff. Most of us don't *really* know what
hunger is. We just know the trouble it causes when
it's unemployed.

2. The pseudo-psychological reason: 

"Eat when you're hungry" is simple, but it's not
clear. Hunger, in the limited capacity we experience
it, is mushy. You're not simple hungry or not,
usually. You're prompted to eat for some other reason,
and think, "I could eat."

People nowadays don't eat because they're hungry, nor
do they (usually) go to be because they're tired. They
go to bed because it's 10 o'clock and they know they
have to get up at six to go to work, get the kids
ready for school etc. They may also be tired, but if
they're not, their not going to say "cool, I think
I'll stay up and watch spectreman reruns until 4 AM."
It's habit. Unlike eating, most people don't have a
choice about developing good sleeping habits. They'd
get fired if they didn't. That's how it should be with
eating (the routine, not the fired part, though I'm
sure it would be a great incentive if it could be
arranged, the true Hollywood diet). But it's not, and
it's not because of "hunger." It's because eating is a
more complicated activity than sleeping. It has all
kinds of psychological associations. It's a reward.
You do it because you are bored. You do it because you
are depressed. You do it because you need a
distraction. If you've got one of these motives
"hunger" will always provide justification and backup.
Routine is the only way to banish these sneaky back
room dealers. 

3. The pithy metaphor: letting hunger lead is like
letting the horse lead the rider. You're not going to
get to where you want to go.

Reinhard

--- sunshine_11892 <sunshine_11892@...> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> Hi everyone!
> 
> I usually am a lurker, but have decided to come out
> of lurk-dome to 
> ask a question that has been bothering me for some
> time about hunger 
> and fullness approaches to eating. BTW, I have had
> success using the 
> No-S plan, and am convinced it is the most sane
> approach to eating 
> out there!
> 
> There are some plans that advocate no calorie
> counting, portion 
> control, etc., but instead say to rely solely on
> your own hunger and 
> fullness signals to gauge how much you should eat. 
> It sounds 
> logical. Most of these plans state that we are born
> with the innate 
> ability to know when and how much we should eat
> (usually using the 
> newborn's demand feeding schedule as an example of
> this approach). 
> It does sound more doable than most diets,
> especially the ones that 
> require you to keep a journal of each and every
> thing you put in your 
> mouth.
> 
> So why do they work for me at first, then seem to
> stop working? In 
> the past, I would excitedly embrace these plans due
> to the "freedom" 
> aspect they offered--"Forget counting calories, fat,
> carbs, proteins--
> listen to your body! It knows best!" And for a
> while, they worked. 
> But then, I would find that I would start to gain
> weight when 
> the "hunger" would come more often and the
> "fullness" took longer to 
> attain. Once again, something that in theory
> sounded so simple was 
> no longer simple after all.
> 
> Any of you out there have similar experiences with
> hunger/fullness 
> diets? What are your opinions/insights about them? 
> I would also 
> like to hear Reinhardt's take on why these
> approaches don't always 
> work for people.
> 
> Thanks in advance! : )
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

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