Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Feeling full

Aparently I have ruined my ability to feel full, ever. Some background: today I am in Chicago for a meeting/conference. I looked at the restaurant options around where I'm staying and realized there is actually a good pizza place right around the corner from where we're staying -- just a quick 1 mile walk. I a) love pizza, b) love to sample the local flavors when I travel and c) didn't want to eat overpriced, bland hotel food so I ended up convincing some of my colleagues to go to the pizza place. It wasn't a hard sell, really.

We went to the place and ordered a large. Now you probably know, but in case you don't Chicago style pizza is deep dish, has about 2 lbs cheese/pizza, and is about 3" thick (that's an exaggeration, but literally it is probably 1.5-2" thick and that is because it is stuffed full of cheese and sausage). I tried to Google it and I think it has about 700-800 calories/slice. One piece should be enough to fill you up, especially if you start with a salad (which I did). However, I ate two pieces (everyone I ate with did too...).

After we ate, everyone was like "OMG I am SOOOO full" and "You're going to have to roll me out of here!" etc. Now, they're all males so I am sure part of it is for show (e.g., "You should have seen the fish I caught. It was THIS BIG!!!"), but I am sure there is an element of truth to it too.

Here's my confession: I didn't feel like that. I didn't even really feel full. That's not to say I felt hungry -- I didn't after the first piece of pizza and could have easily stopped right there. However, I didn't feel uncomfortably full or even really full at all. I could have easily eaten one more piece, maybe even two. I think I lack the regulator to tell me "dude, enough". I am learning about portion sizes and am getting better about following them, but I believe I have overridden the built in "that's enough" feeling that people SHOULD get when eating. I am hoping that if I listen to my body enough, I will be able to retrain it to tell me when it's full. Clearly leaving me to my own devices is not a winning strategy.

1 comment:

  1. I've heard that you should only eat until you are about 80% full, never FULLY saturated...and eat slowly so that your body knows when it hits that "I'm almost good" stage. Because why would you want to feel stuffed and bloated anyhow??? :o)

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