I spent last week in Gainesville, Florida and had the great honor of meeting with Karin Kratina, author of Moving Away from Diets, a must read for any helping professional working with people to resolve their obsession with food, body and weight. I didn’t know about Karin’s work when I went to graduate school at the University of Florida in the late 1990s. I’ve always wanted to meet with her, and this trip turned out to be the perfect time.
We talked about all of the people who have influenced our work - Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch, Linda Bacon, Deb Burgard, Glenn Gaesser , Kristin Neff, and Brene Brown to name a few. When we got to Geneen Roth, Karin asked what I thought about Geneen’s recommendation to stop eating when you are at a 5 on the hunger scale. For those of you who are not familiar with our hunger scale (Hilary and I use Karin’s hunger scale), it is a 0 to 10 point scale with 0 being starving and 10 being stuffed. So eating until a 5 means you eat until you are at a neutral place (not hungry, not full). We both stated how surprised we were when we heard about this. Five doesn’t seem to be a very satisfying place to be at the end of a meal and we wondered how long people could really do this. She made the comment that anyone can undereat for a few weeks during the honeymoon phase, but after that, it has to get difficult for most of us.
Ah yes, the honeymoon phase. You might recognize that phase – the one when the diet is off to a great start, life seems grand, and we have renewed faith in our ability to lose the weight. Modern Family recently had a hilarious episode about the various phases Cameron goes through while on a juice fast to lose weight (watch the two minute clip). With any weight loss plan or program, there is the wedding, a honeymoon and then the real work begins – the marriage. And the farther we get from the wedding date (diet start date), the harder it is to keep the marriage (diet) going. People eventually cave and old behaviors and patterns are resumed. Sound familiar?
Karin went on to say that in doing hunger work with clients for over 20 years, she’s found that everyone needs to eat until an 8 sometimes. For her, she’s noticed that she needs to eat until an 8 at least four times a week to feel satisfied and maintain a healthy relationship with food. A colleague of hers says she needs to eat until an 8 on the hunger scale once a day. This was interesting to me because most of our clients think eating until an 8 is something they should rarely, if ever, do. This information might encourage you to get curious about the hunger scale again. Maybe you’ll notice a pattern that seems to work for you too. After all, every body is different!