It’s often said that the best offense is a good defense, and this generally holds true in the realm of healthy eating and weight management.
If you know, for example, that you always get hungry at 4 p.m. but don’t plan to have something healthy available to eat, you’re vulnerable to the office vending machine and at risk of overeating at dinner due to excessive hunger. A good defense, then, would be to pack an apple and some peanut butter; a Greek yogurt and some berries; some grape tomatoes and single serving of string cheese; or a handful of almonds and a banana. These satiating snacks are a smart, 200-calorie defense against overeating many more calories later.
But in some cases, helpful “defensive eating” can cross the line into harmful “pre-emptive eating.” When it does, it often undermines one’s efforts to maintain a healthy weight — as well as a healthy relationship with food.
So what is “pre-emptive” eating, exactly? It’s a term I use to describe eating behaviors driven by excessive fear of becoming hungry, rather than by the experience of feeling actual hunger. Pre-emptive eaters typically catastrophize the possible outcomes of becoming hungry and feel anxious about what might happen if hunger strikes. They worry about getting weak or lightheaded, getting a migraine or just feeling physically uncomfortable if they become hungry; and they take pre-emptive measures to prevent the possibility of hunger.
As such, people who eat pre-emptively are often mentally consumed with when their next meal will be. They may graze constantly in between meals; bring food with them wherever they go; plan their day around food to ensure activities do not interfere with eating; and never allow themselves to go long enough without eating to actually experience hunger. The consequences are typically weight gain — or an inability to lose weight — and an unhealthy preoccupation with food that can result in compulsive-type eating or interfere with a person’s ability to make plans, travel or diverge from a usual routine.
Pre-emptive eating also shows up in parental feeding practices. Concerned about the anticipated consequences of having a hungry child — like having to endure their cranky behavior or temper tantrums — some parents dole out an unending supply of Goldfish crackers and gummy fruit chews. But what might seem like a necessary preventive measure can result in kids consuming too many snacks between meals. All that grazing generally undermines eating at meals, since kids aren’t ever allowed to feel hungry. It also worsens a common childhood predisposition to picky eating.
To be sure, it’s no fun to feel hungry. It’s uncomfortable, it’s distracting and it can adversely affect our mood and performance at work or school. For those folks with certain health conditions — like acid reflux or chronic migraines — becoming too hungry can also provoke symptoms and lead to prolonged physical discomfort even once the hunger has passed.
Nonetheless, feeling a little bit hungry for a few minutes is not a catastrophe; and we shouldn’t seek to prevent hunger at all costs. Allowing ourselves and our children to feel hunger is essential to our ability to regulate our food choices, portions and ultimately our weight.
A truly hungry person will eat an apple if offered. A person who is eating for reasons other than physiological hunger will go for foods that purely meet a desire for pleasure, such as eating caramel-coated snack bars, a few cookies or a bag of chips. Similarly, a hungry kid is far more likely to eat a balanced family meal — or at least some of it — than a kid who is full. A child who’s been grazing all afternoon will hold out for pizza or a hot dog, and forego dinner entirely if this hedonic preference isn’t met.
Uncomfortable but essential, hunger is an easily solvable problem that need not be pre-empted so much as simply addressed when it arises. It is also a state of being that rarely sneaks up on us; we can generally anticipate precisely when we, or our children, will start to feel hungry.
Rather than snack compulsively throughout the day in order to prevent the onset of hunger, it’s far healthier to just plan what you’ll eat when your body actually begins to experience the hunger you’ve anticipated. Even when people are particularly sensitive to the effects of excessive hunger — whether from low blood sugar or migraines or gnawing acid pain — there is almost always a reasonable window of time between the first rumble of the tummy and the onset of truly uncomfortable symptoms. When the hunger cues present themselves, it’s an appropriate time to eat what you’ve planned. But it’s best to wait for the cues.
When I see patients whose habit of pre-emptive eating interferes with their weight loss efforts, I challenge them to talk through the “what if” scenarios of hunger aloud: What if you did find yourself feeling hungry when you were out for a noontime appointment? What would happen? What could you do about it?
Sometimes, just talking through the fear helps patients realize that the worst-case scenario isn’t actually so scary, and that the condition they fear so much is one that can be managed as it arises, rather than needing to be pre-empted entirely. This realization allows many people to let go of an eating habit that isn’t serving a positive purpose in their lives and to reconnect with the cues of hunger and satiety that support our body’s ability to maintain a healthy weight.
In other cases, I’ll suggest that patients keep a written food journal that requires them to rate their level of hunger and record their emotions when noting a food they’ve eaten. This exercise helps bring more mindfulness to eating habits and allows people to tune into what’s triggering them to eat.
Identifying situations or times of day when patients are prone to eating pre-emptively — or eating out of habit rather than because of hunger — enables us to focus on challenging the thinking patterns that contribute to this automatic behavior and make healthier choices.
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Is ‘Pre-emptive Eating’ Your Undoing? originally appeared on usnews.com
