My wife has been training me to look at food differently for a few years now and she's taken the slow road to doing it, as I'm so dang resistant to changing my eating habits...

Over the past couple of years, she's slowly changed my thinking about how much protein, fat and carbs I should be eating by percentages to total diet, then she chipped away at the junk foods, all forms of processed foods, got me away from buying frozen foods, pre-cut vegetables, drinking sodas, alcohol, coffee, adding artificial sweeteners, etc.. So far, I have to say, my thinking has changed considerably.

Now, she is making me look at my need to feel "full" after a meal, or what I've referred to as "satisfied". She is saying that my last few pounds will never come off because of my preconceived notions on when I'm supposed to stop eating. She says that there is plenty of research to indicate people who eat a restricted calorie diet tend to live longer. She says that I fear this as a matter of inconvenience. She says I take the meaning of the word restriction as starving myself. She says, that when I eat, I should eat to restore my energy and put myself in a state of feeling just a little bit hungry, like I could eat just a little more, but then choose to stop.

She said that I can actually adjust to that feeling of being "a little hungry" and become accustomed to it and it will not have an effect on my metabolism like I think it will. She says it is all mental and I'm wrong in my current thinking...

So, my question in this thread is: Is it good to feel hungry?

Well, I don't think feeling hungry after eating is a good idea. But before your next meal or snack? Yes!

There's a saying about hunger being the best sauce.

But if you push the concept too far the brain has sneaky ways of rebelling.

It sounds like you're saying it is good as long as you don't let yourself be too hungry....

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Just for a sake of measurement, I'm talking about my wife wanting me to stop eating when I'm about 50-100 calories away from feeling satisfied or full... She says it is just as possible to learn to do that as it is to know to stop when we're full and it is a more healthy.

She describes it like this:

We wouldn't wake up in the morning and run all day, because we would wear out our bodies. When we eat till we're full and/or eat as soon as we feel hungry, we're keeping our digestive system running all day and causing long term problems for ourselves. She equates and/or describes our digestive system as resting when we're a little hungry, and it is necessary to let our digestive system rest a bit, just as we rest from physical activity...

I just had lunch... My wife is now telling me there is physical hunger and mental hunger and that from her observation, mine are not in sync and probably never have been, but if I put an effort into distinguishing that subtle difference, I'll understand her meaning completely and will be thankful to have discovered it...
:sigh: (takes a deep breath and wonders how many more hoops there will be to jump through before finally getting it!)

True, that's the way I was before discovering IF. Fasting does teach us to identify true hunger and not eat by the clock like so many people do, and it has other benefits.

I think your wife is on to something.

I have noticed that if I eat a few bites of a meal and get interrupted and come back? The food doesn't look as appealing.

I have also noticed that there are times when I can take 3 healthy bites of something and stop and be full for an hour or so.

I think we as a society are out of synch with our true hunger needs.

I watch my dogs eat the same amount of the same thing every day with the same degree of voracity and I envy them their simplistic approach to food.

The benefits of "calorie restriction" are actually benefits of insulin and blood sugar control.

I think there is a difference between "not full enough" and hungry and that could be skewed. I would experiment. Try it your wife's way. If you find yourself RAVENOUS after a few days or waking up at night hungry, then your wife is wrong.

I guess for me it depends on definition of hungry. A little bit of an empty feeling in the stomach and even stomach growling I can deal with. It's the fatigue and light headedness that makes me run for the refrigerator.

I do like the idea of not being a slave to food and eating by the clock....BUT...I have also noticed that my blood sugar is better controlled when I eat three meals a day and space them out 4-5 hours apart.

A book I read recently recommended that for figuring out the right portion size, eat about 1/2 or 2/3 what you normally would. If you get hungry before about 3-4 hours then it probably wasn't large enough.

Of course, if you were a big eater then it does take some work to get the appetite down. I'd just recommend making sure you're good and hungry before eating. Don't give into hunger the first time it nips at you. Wait. It goes away in a few minutes. Let it come a few more times. Try to push it away a little longer. You'll find your appetite starts to shrink a bit. I need to work at this myself. Sometimes I find that one or two big meals really makes my appetite huge again.

I only had one spare rib for lunch and at 2.5 hours later I'm starting to feel a bit hungry again. Guess I should've had 1.5.

My wife doesn't believe in counting and estimating. Eating is a time for relaxing and not tensing oneself up with measurements and portions, etc...

She says that it is a matter of training myself. I need to be mindful and not mindless when I sit down to eat. Eating slowly and enjoying the food's flavor and texture and the variety of all the different foods in the meal is all I need to do she says.....

I think the same, if I don't eat breakfast my Bs climb and climb, if I eat in the am it is stable. I keep my meals aboout 5-6 hrs apart. I won't eat if my Bs is not 120 or less. I have cut my calories so this is not hard to achieve. I don't often feel hungry feelings.
I don't like to put to much effort into thinking about those rights and wrongs, it would make me think I had a eating disorder and I don't want to feel that way.

Well, I believe that it is good to feel hungry. Hungry doesn't mean "Not Food" but means "Not Full".
It is not good for your health to feel full after taking a meal.

My wife and I have been discussing a description of hunger so as to create an understanding of when is the right time to stop eating and it led to us discussing gratification.

We've concluded that before we can change our way of eating, we need to change the way we think about eating.

Rather than trying to think of a certain level of fullness and when to stop eating while we're consuming the meal, we need to rethink in our concept of; the point at which we should feel gratified.

We live in a country of abundance and excess and it influences us in many ways, including the way we think about food and our eating habits.

Here are some things we have come up with to try and change our concepts:

1. We should not live to eat, but eat to live.
2. We should not focus on deriving pleasure from eating.
3. We should not indulge at any meal.
4. We should not reward ourselves with food.
5. We should not pamper our moods with food.
6. We should not feel deserving of food in excess of needs.
7. We should not sacrifice our food quality due to time restraint.
8. We should not view a craving as something normal and give in to it as though it has to be attended too...
9. We should not starve ourselves to a point of destruction.
10. We should not deprive ourselves from proper nutrition.

This has been the "should nots"... I'll try to post the shoulds at another time, but this is my attempt to explain a mindset that needs to occur before we can actually change the way we eat... If anyone has anything to add, please feel free...

This works much better for me than stopping before I'm "satisfied."

Through IF, I've learned that there are many types of hunger, and there are also many ways to be "full." I can stuff my belly with carbs until I feel sick and can't move, but I'm still not "satisfied." On the other hand, if I manage to get the proportion of fat and protein right, and the protein is of high enough quality (with a good balance of B vitamins, etc), I can be "satisfied" after just an appetizer, with plenty of room in my stomach. People tell me they couldn't do IF because they couldn't fit a day's worth of food in their stomach at once; for me it's no problem at all. On the other hand, I can eat 4-6 hamburgers without filling up my stomach, so maybe it's just big.

They say that eating fat is metabolically identical to fasting, so I'm not sure I buy into the calorie restriction idea. Intermittent fasting may have the same benefits - it certainly gives your digestion a rest.