The Benefits and Challenges of Eating Regularly.

Benefits:

1. No more hangry

First, I’m very rarely starving, and I mean like hangry. This used to happen to me a lot, I would not eat a snack in between meals and by the time I get to my next meal I’m a hungry tornado of negative feelings. I would be irritable and unpleasant to be around. One reason why I think this was happening is because I was basing my meal or snack times on the people around me. I would think, no one else is saying they're hungry or looking for a snack so maybe I should just wait until lunch. This was a bad idea because regardless of how the people around me were thinking or feeling, I needed food and I was ignoring that need. This meant that by the time I got to my next meal I was so hungry I would eat way more than I needed and be uncomfortably full afterwards.

2. Uncomfortably full

I rarely eat to an uncomfortable fullness now that I’ve been eating regularly because I’m not going to meals or snacks starving but instead I’m at a comfortable level of hungry. This allows you to rationally judge how much food you need to eat to feel satisfied. When it comes to eating regularly and being in tune with your own hunger and fullness cues you get a better sense of how much you need or want to eat to be satisfied and comfortable.

3. Knowing when you are hungry

Becoming aware and familiar with your hunger and fullness cues can also help you get an idea of when you will likely be hungry. This helps you plan when meals and snacks should be. Maybe you notice that you are particularly hungry in the mornings and no matter what you eat for breakfast you are hungry again in a couple hours. From this information you can choose to schedule, I’m using this term loosely, a midmorning snack. You also may come to realize that when you eat supper at 7:00 pm you are STARVING by the time you get to this meal. With that information you could, plan to eat supper earlier, have a snack later in the afternoon, eat a larger lunch, etc. There is no right or wrong way to do this, it is all based on what works for you.

The other plus to this benefit is being able to plan around work, family, extracurriculars, and events. You will have a better idea of how much food to pack for work, if you need to bring some snacks on the road with you, or if you need to stop somewhere for a snack or lunch.

4. Becoming more aware of what your body needs

This may sound odd, but when you start listening to your body, it starts talking to you. Okay not literally, but when you’re hungry, when you’re full, and what foods would be satisfying are all things your body will tell you. Just like when you know you're thirsty or have to pee, your body also tells you a lot of information about eating and food. The problem most people have is that we’ve been taught not to listen.

We’ve been told since we were babies what, when, and how much to eat by our parents or caregivers: just three more bites and then you can be done, broccoli is good for you so you have to eat it, or by diet culture from a multitude of sources: don’t eat that it will make you gain weight, don’t eat after 7:00 pm, or only eat X amount of calories, carbs, blah blah blah.

If we stop listening to the myriad of advice from external voices, no matter how well meaning they are, and start listening to what our body is telling us eating, food, and nutrition become a lot less complicated. This is true for those of us diagnosed with chronic conditions as well, I’ll elaborate in a future blog.

5. Digestion

There isn’t a lot of research on eating regularly and digestion and there is a good reason for that, it’s very difficult to define what eating regularly means. When it comes to research, especially quantitative research, if you cannot define a study parameter with confidence it’s pretty much impossible to study. If you ask a group of people to eat ‘regularly’ it’s likely they will all take that to mean something different. And that’s what happens with research except it’s the researchers who interpret eating regularly differently and then the studies become very difficult to compare.

Anyway, from what research I could find there was some information on how eating small frequent meals, what some might define as eating regularly, can improve a lot of digestive symptoms like dyspepsia (upper abdominal pain), heartburn or reflux, nausea, etc. This makes sense considering it’s frequent advice given by health care providers to people with digestive symptoms.

Otherwise, eating at regular intervals consistently day to day can also improve regularity and make your internal pooping schedule more predictable. Just like taking your medications at the same time everyday can help regulate their effects, eating at the same times each day can also help regulate its effects.

Challenges:

Now, I know you’re thinking, this all sounds great but it can’t all be sunshine and roses. You’re right there are some challenges involved.

1. Trial and Error

Depending on how far you’ve moved away from your hunger and fullness cues, there may be a lot of trial and error involved in figuring all of this out. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get to a place where regular eating is second nature, it just means that it may take some time and you may need some extra help. That would be where I come in.

2. Diet culture

We touched on this a little bit already. Diet culture makes it really difficult to listen to what your body needs, because it wants you to do the exact opposite. If someone is trying to sell you a diet, supplement, meal plan, or whatever to lose weight, they want you to listen to them for how much, what, and when you should eat instead of listening to what your body is telling you it needs. And likely, if you have a history of dieting, weight cycling, or restriction, what your body may need is more food more consistently.

Pretty much every large grocery store is going to sell appetite suppressants, half of social media is telling you to just eat like they do, and your aunt, chiropractor, doctor, coworker, and pharmacist might be telling you eat this, don’t eat that, or take this pink drink (Plexus not StarBucks). When you have confidence in and a firm understanding of what your body is telling you it needs, it’s a lot easier to just smile and nod along to whatever everyone else is telling you, or tell them to mind their own business, and then forget about it.

3. Life happens

Oh boy does life happen. But this isn’t a diet, there's no need for rigidity, and failure isn’t a thing here! There’s no real end goal. Just like most things in life, learning to listen to YOU instead of others when it comes to what, when, and how much you should eat is a journey.

Thankfully the benefits out number the challenges, at least for me. You might be thinking to yourself right now, “Okay, I don’t eat very regularly or consistently but I think my grazing or missing meals is fine. I don’t notice any issues”. Maybe you don’t feel like the way you're eating is a problem, and maybe you're right, but I believe it’s 100% worth trying just to see if you do notice a difference.

So you might start by adding one structured meal or snack to your day. This might look like a small breakfast, if that is usually a meal you skip, like an apple and a granola bar and set a goal of eating it everyday (or 4/7 days) for 1 - 2 weeks. If you think that’s working for you then you can add in an afternoon snack like cheese and crackers, toast with peanut butter, drinkable yogurt, or a bag of chips from the vending machine, what you're eating isn’t the point.

Just remember to be mindful of the changes you're making to your diet. Ask yourself, can I keep this up (doesn’t have to be perfect) for the long term? Is it benefitting me? Am I enjoying the change? And remember, there is no specific plan to follow, there’s no failure or end to this journey, and it’s about finding what works for you so you feel the best mentally and physically in a way that is completely sustainable.

P.S.

If you are interesting in exploring more about listening to your body here is a great place to start: https://www.intuitiveeating.org/10-principles-of-intuitive-eating/

Sources:

Patterns of diet-related practices and prevalence of gastro-esophageal reflux disease (2013), Esmaillzadeh et al.

Patterns of dietary behaviours identified by latent class analysis are associated with chronic uninvestigated dyspepsia (2014), Keshteli et al.