Large Meals Encourage Snacking?
Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 11:49 am
I'm reading Real Food Has Curves by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. In it they encourage readers to keep a food journal -- not daily, but once or twice a month just to give you an idea of what you're eating and see trends, etc.
They give an example and showed it to a nutritionist friend. This is what their lunch consisted of: 1 1/2 cups carrot-ginger soup with cooked wheatberries, 3-4 ounces smoked pork loin, 1/2-3/4 cup sauerkraut, and 1/2 medium potato and a noncaloric beverage.
They give an example and showed it to a nutritionist friend. This is what their lunch consisted of: 1 1/2 cups carrot-ginger soup with cooked wheatberries, 3-4 ounces smoked pork loin, 1/2-3/4 cup sauerkraut, and 1/2 medium potato and a noncaloric beverage.
Later they sayMost of her comments were saved for our lunch -- which she found too large. "Are you working in the fields?" she asked. In fact, she said that our lunch's heft accounted for snacking in the afternoon. "A big lunch is ultimately energy-draining -- it takes a lot of energy to digest that food; so unless you plan for a siesta, your energy levels will likely fade. I sense that was happening as you both tried self-medicating (Mark with banana bread, Bruce with snacks and later coffee). Self-medicating with snacks, of course, doesn't really solve the problem.
That kind of explains why I'm hungry after eating a substantial breakfast -- and the Mediterranean habit of a siesta after the large noon meal (well, along with the fact that much of the year it's too hot to do anything in the afternoon!). I also nap nearly every day after lunch.Watch the random eating. Notice when it's happening. Then go back to the meal before. Was it too large and so led to snacking? Or was it too small, just a salad without any variety of textures and flavors -- and thus nothing really satisfying in it? Hunger can be the response to both overeating and undereating.