We are talking often a lot about the “whats” and “Hows” of eating. But a question to consider and we always miss out is “How much we eat: Portion sizes”.

There is not perfect formula for accurately determining a healthy quantity of food. How much to eat, like what to eat, is very individual decision. It depends of factors like age, weight, level of physical activity, and last but not least – which particular food you are eating at a given time.

For a competent eater, the decision of how much to eat is guided simply and automatically by that person’s hunger and satiety (satisfaction) signals. In a balanced system when body needs to eat it will send cues and signals that the fuel tank is low and needs to be replenished. True hunger, not imbalanced cravings usually occur when there is no more food digesting in the stomach from the last meal and the body needs food to manufacture its fuel.

The hunger and portion sizes can be very sticky issues to approach with your children, especially when they tend to overeat. We see children eating at every single hour as they eat imbalanced meals. If you are not supporting your family healthy and balanced eating, it is probably a challenging for you to establish a healthy eating routing and portions for your kids.

To help children figure how much is enough, you need a safe and friendly way to communicate with them about food. Educating kids about their body’s way of “talking to them”, can be an effective approach. If you put the emphasis on hearing and understanding the body’s natural signals, rather than on food itself, it might be much easier when talking about how much they eat. Obviously this communication will look different if you are talking to a kindergartener or a tenth-grader. The best place to start is to learn the mechanisms of hunger and satiety and how they occur in your own body.

Hunger cues

Actual physical hunger is a polite sensation at first. It can be a hollow or empty feeling just below your rib cage, right below the solar plexus. It is not behind the belly button as many people think – that’s your intestines or gut. Sometimes your belly will sign for its super, emitting a series of pooh-bear-like growls and grumbles. If these growls are above your belt line, they are signaling hunger. If they are below they are result of digestion or gas. You may not even feel physical sensation in the stomach, but rather an overall sense of being empty. Other people feel a little shaky or lightheaded from the luck of fuel. That is also a sign of hunger.

Hunger sensation is polite at first. You will feel it for only 15 minutes. If you do not respond with food, the hunger “pains” will often subside for 20-45 minutes. And the will rise again. They will increase in intensity each time they arise until you eat something. If you wait too long you will eventually feel a sense of weakness and fatigue and a strong sensation of emptiness. These filling will resolve completely 20 minutes after eating something.

Satisfaction (satiety) cues

How the body tell you when to stop eating. Those signals are a little subtler and most of us have to be very tuned in or we will miss them. At a certain point in the meal, your body will start to send you gentle cues that you are having eaten enough.

The first sign: Slight change in the intensity of flavor of the food. The food will stop tasting as good to you. When you are really hungry, the first bites of whatever you eat taste especially good. That is part of the hunger cuing system. If you pay attention, you will notice that in the middle of the meat, the food no longer tastes as delicious. That is the body sign that you are satisfied. If you overeat, which is easy to do if you are very hungry or you eat very quickly, the final bites of the meat will have the least flavor impact. You can eat to the point where it is hard to taste the food much at all.

Second sign: Feeling a sense of weight or expansion in your stomach. You will feel a gentle pressure below your ribs. This is very comfortable and relaxing sensation, different from I-can’t breath-until-I-am-loosing-my-belt feeling that comes from eating too much.

It takes 20 minutes for your brain to get the satiety signal from your stomach and to produce these pleasant feelings. This is too long time! Some of us can put away a whole cake in 20 minutes. If you eat fast chances are that you are putting too much food in your stomach before your system have the time to indicate that you are satisfied.

Satiety versus fullness

Satiety or feeling satisfied is the measure of a healthy portion at one sitting. Feeling satisfied does not indicate that you are full.

Full is when your stomach is actually filled up and that means that you have had too much food.

You may have noticed that after eating a particularly large meal at a restaurant or a holiday meal, you not only feel uncomfortable, but also drowsy. You may even want to lie down for a nap. Your body borrows your living energy to digest all that food.

A healthy stopping place is about ¾ full, leaving a little bit of room in your stomach. The average stomach is about the size of two closed fists put together. Close your hands loosely then put them together and look. That’s around the most chewed food your stomach can hold at one sitting. For some of you that may seem small but it is not.

Eating to satisfaction and not to complete fullness, acts also as natural weight control. If you are eating often with imbalanced food (sandwiches, sweets and juices, not enough veggies and fruits) it will be difficult and challenging for you to feel your own sensations of hunger and satiety. You may rarely if ever feel actual hunger. This most likely because you eat based on other cues – cravings, habits, visual images of available food, etc. – rather than actual physical hunger.

If you use the actual size and sensations of your stomach as a guide, you will not overeat. This is easier said than done, but with a little practice, it is a real possibility for most of us.

The importance of chewing

You need to learn to eat slowly enough to hear the signals of your body before you are done with your meal. Most people chew one bite between 4-7 times depending on what the food is. Most of the time that is not enough chewing.

The chewing is a crucial part in the digesting process, especially for carbohydrates and place a vital role in hunger/satiety system. We are giving the body real challenge every time when we do not chew enough. The task of digestion is to break the food into small enough pieces that the nutrients can be easily absorbed. If you do not chew your grains, veggies and beans, chances are that they will travel through your digestive system and pass out fairly intact. It is much harder for the body to extract the phytonutrients from a whole piece of food than from a mash of tiny particles mixed with saliva.

Chewing and carbohydrates

Carbohydrates provide critical fuel and nutrients to your body. Chewing them is crucial for their digestion. Saliva contains the most important digestive enzymes for breaking down carbohydrates. They convert carbs into sugar right into your mouth. Next time you are having rice or a cracker, chew one bite until it is almost water and notice how sweet it becomes – right in your mouth. Chewing your carbs through will reduce sweet cravings because your body will be receiving a deeper level of sweetness from the healthy complex carbohydrates you are already eating.

If you do not chew your carbohydrates and mix them with saliva, they are not going to digest well and:

1. Your body will have a harder time realizing that it has eaten them. So your brain will not send you that peaceful sense of satiety.
2. Your body will have to work twice as hard to break down that food. You will not absorb all the available nutrients.
3. The large pieces will ferment in your digestive tract, causing bad breath, gas and bloating.
4. You will be more likely to become constipated.

Carbs provide Fiber. Insoluble fiber is the tough, indigestible part of plants. You must break down those fibers first with your teeth. Some of the best nutrients in plants are inside the hulls of the plant. You need to crush the tough cellulose walls to get to the nourishing centers. It is less important digestively (and much harder) to chew your proteins so thoroughly, because the acids for breaking down proteins are released inside the stomach and further down the digestive tract, not in the mouth. It is also a lot less pleasant to chew let’s say an egg 20 times, than a brown rice. Again this is by design, to encourage you to chew your carbs.

Practical natural portion control

Here are some of the ways to boost the internal satiety cues through natural control of portions instead of relying on restrictions and willpower.

1. Serve meals already plated rather than having platters of food on the table for family members to serve themselves. This will help offset any visual cues from the amount of food on the platter, as well as provide a better model for portion sizes than those seen in restaurants.
2. Take a moment before meals for everyone to settle down a bit before they begin to eat. This can be as simple as lighting a candle and asking everyone to remain quite for a moment. Or you might encourage take 2 or 3 deep relaxing breaths together before eating. Or you might have a ritual of mealtime grace: a thank you and acknowledgement of the food and its source.
3. Encourage everyone to actually look at the food they are about to eat and take its wonderful aromas. You may want to skip this step if your 7 year old son is already squirming in his chair because his chicken is touching “that green stuff” on his plate. So use your discretion with this exercise.
4. Remind family members from time to time to taste and chew their food. You could even have a contest to see who can chew one bite the longest before swallowing.
5. Encourage your kids to take breaks between bites and put their forks down and to check in periodically with their stomachs to see if they can feel themselves becoming satisfied.
6. Generally slow down the pace of the meal in any way you can. Don’t rush yourself as you are eating. Spend a moment or two after you have eaten your last bite. Just sitting in your chair before you hop up for dessert or to clean the kitchen. Your own relaxed attitude will go a long way toward creating an environment of peace and relaxation at your family table.
7. Talk to your kids about hunger and satisfaction cues. Help them become familiar with their own.
8. Try to minimize any extra stimulation at mealtime. For example: Turn off the radio or the TV. Do not allow talking on the phone or other frequent interruptions during the meals. This will go a long way toward slowing and calming people’s energy at mealtime.
9. One wonderful ritual to try, if your kids are old enough, is to occasionally have a meal in complete silence. This may be difficult or feel awkward at first, but it can have tremendous benefits in becoming more present to the act of eating. You might think it is impossible with children. Try it!

Portion sizes for a whole-life nutritious living habits

While work on getting attuned to your internal cuing system, you will want to regulate your portion sizes EXTERNALLY, using the hand guide.

Balanced serving sizes rules:

1. The size of two closed fists is roughly the size of the stomach.
2. A palm-size portion of protein
3. A fist-size portion of sweet vegetables, grains legumes or fruit
4. A cupped hands-size portions of high-fiber, high water content veggies, especially the green salads)

The hands and the belly grow at the same time, the guides work for people at all ages.

REMEMBER: This is not a hard-and-fast rule, but rather guideline to give you a place to begin. Try not to get into food restrictions with your kids – that can lead to further problems down the road. Honor their hungers, and help them learn to differentiate between the mouth hunger and cravings and the “belly hunger” of a body that needs fueling. Help them feel inside when they need more food after a big day on the football field or less on a lazy, hot summer day.

A sense of play-fullness and learning around this issue, will take you a lot further than will pushing and restrictive “diet” mentality.

If your children eat junk-food and are chronic over-eaters, you might find these recommendations challenging.

You may just want to focus on upgrading their quality for a while. It is your responsibility to offer them healthy choices. But it is ultimately their responsibility to choose what and how much to eat of offered by you food.

If over time, you feel that your kids are eating a good balance of nutrients and yet their overeating is not naturally calming down, you better consult with a nutritionist or even a psychologist who specializes in childhood overweight.

There could be some other significant elements involved in their behaviors such as sugar addiction, food sensitiveness or emotional issues.

REMEMBER: You goal is to help your children get into a better relationship with their body and its internal cues. What you do not want is for them to get into a bad relationship with food and eating at a young age.

RESUME:

Internal Hunger Cues:

• Hollow feeling near solar plexus
• Stomach “glowing” above the belt line
• Light shakiness or mild lightheadedness
• An overall sense of emptiness or hunger

Internal Satiety (Satisfaction) Cues

• Gentle pressure or weight near solar plexus
• Reduction of food’s taste appeal as the meal goes on
• Sense of peacefulness or relaxation
• Overall sense of being gently energized

Techniques for Portion control

• Chewing: Slow down and chew each mouthful of food, especially carbohydrates.
• Eating awareness: Notice the colors and aromas of your food before you eat it. Pay attention to the food’s flavors and textures and savor them as you eat.

FOR YOU

• Don’t become portion police. That’s not helpful in creating lasting change. Offer initial plate portions. Use your Lunchbox as a guide. Let your child decide how much he eats.
• Put emphasis on the QUALITY and NUTRIENT BALANCE in the foods you offer rather than on the quantities consumed.
• Focus more on how everyone is eating rather than on how much.

FOR YOUR KIDS

You are in charge of which foods you OFFER at meal and snack times. BUT as much as you can, let your children be in charge of which of those foods they choose to eat. This will allow them to connect to their own hungers and cravings.

In you don’t want your children to eat a particular food, DON”T KEEP IT IN THE HOUSE.

Describe the list of possible activities under Practical, Natural Portion Control to your child and let her choose one or two practices for the family to try.

Fitting in the food

By the time a food reaches our stomach, it has hopefully been well chewed, so it takes up less space than it did on the plate. Consider a lettuce salad. If you whipped that up in a blender, it would only take up about 20% of its original size. Right!? That’s what happens when you chew some foods well. (Steak on the other hand doesn’t diminish all that much by being chewed)