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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Lose weight and avoid overeating using one simple tool to measure hunger – The Mirror

Food not only gives us the energy to get through our days, but also a comfort to many of us. However, it can be hard to resist food and stop eating when we're full for various reasons

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There's a lot of pleasure that comes with indulging in your favourite snack or settling in for a hearty, warm meal. But stopping when you're full is a problem that many of us face.

Satisfying hunger is always a good thing, but many of us struggle to gauge when we've had enough, leading us to overeat and even gain weight sometimes.

Are you prone to eating too much? Worry not, there's an easy fix. Experts have revealed a simple self-help tool, which you can use to assess how hungry you really are, enabling you to stop yourself before you're too stuffed and lose weight too.

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Experts at weight loss and fitness app MyFitnessPal have revealed a simple tool that can help us understand what our hunger cues really mean.

All you need to do is visualise a hunger scale, which measures your appetite on a scale of zero to 10, with zero indicating feeling empty and 10 feeling stuffed.

Using this scale is thought to lessen your chances of emotional eating - for pleasure, comfort or due to boredom as many tend to do - by measuring how you hungry you are before you eat.

Gentle hunger is felt at level four and slight satisfaction as six. Nutritionist Kristina LaRue explained that between these levels is the normal range to eat.

She added that if you rate yourself overly hungry at 0 to 2, then you should pay extra attention to how fast you are eating. What you need to do in this case is purposely slow down so you don't pass levels of satisfaction without realising it.

It's good to get in the practice measuring your hunger halfway through your meal. LaRue explained: "If you are stuffed and still have food on your plate, dont throw in the towel and continue eating to oblivion. Instead, push your plate away, ask for a to-go box, freeze leftovers or compost it."

After you finish your meal, measure your hunger again. What you should be feeling is a comfortable satisfaction at the end, which means you have chosen the right portion size.

If you're satisfied and don't feel physically hungry, yet feel tempted to eat, experts advise that you need to take a moment to ask yourself what you really need. You might eating in reaction to your emotions.

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Though the idea of the scale is to keep you from overeating, diet guru Kristina LaRue assures that if you're overdone it there is no need to beat yourself up or feel guilty as it's something that can happen to everyone - but there are ways to start breaking the habit of overeating.

Instead, she recommends that we question why we continued to eat past the point of fullness.

"Were you overly hungry when you started? Did the food just taste too good, so you didnt want to stop? Or maybe you didnt want to 'waste' it?"

She added that before you can use the hunger scale, you need to be able to identify what true hunger is, especially if you're in the habit of yo-yo dieting.

A great way to do this is to eat balanced meals from a variety of food groups, making sure to eat every four or so hours (depending on your rating on the hunger scale).

She explained: "This helps your body get back in tune with a rhythmic eating pattern and allows normal peaks and valleys in satiety. Until your meter has been recalibrated, its tough to really get a clue on hunger and fullness."

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Lose weight and avoid overeating using one simple tool to measure hunger - The Mirror

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Home » Lose Weight Safely » Lose weight and avoid overeating using one simple tool to measure hunger – The Mirror