What Everybody Ought To Know About Eye Hunger

When you were a kid, were your parents always telling you that your eyes are bigger than your stomach? That's because, as a kid, we would always take too much food and then not finish it. In other words, we would stop when we were full.

Now things are just the opposite. Eye hunger is at play and even if you start off full you still can't pass up a good-looking dessert on the dessert cart.

Why is that? The answer is LIFE. In between being a kid when hunger meant food then satisfaction, we learned to use food as comfort, to numb out, to seduce, reward, entertain, to distract and who knows what else.

You see, the eye has the power to override the signals from the stomach. Just seeing food can make us want to devour it. That's the power of eye hunger. And make no mistake about it, you see food all day.

Whether it's television ads, ads in magazines, on the Internet or browsing through a cookbook. Let me ask you a question. When you buy a cookbook, do you prefer one with or without pictures? When you cut a recipe out of a magazine, do you cut out the one with no picture? Or do you prefer the ones with the pictures.

And it doesn't matter whether or not you are hungry. When your eye hunger is activated by the pictures, the brain wants to eat.

Most of the time we decide what to eat and how much you eat, based on feedback from the eyes.

Reminder

In her book, mindful eating Jan Chozen Bays, MD says, "When we stop and look with awareness, we connect."

Research has proven that when we use bigger bowls, bigger plates and bigger serving utensils we eat more. When food is out where our eye hunger can be activated, we eat more.

If we see it, we think about it, and we want it.

So the old adage out of sight is out of mind is true in the case of our eyes and food the opposite is true as well. When food is within sight it is in your mind.

So if you're trying to watch what you eat, keep food out of sight. Don't have candy dishes around the house. Wrap leftover folds in foil rather than Saran wrap (it's clear and you can see through it)so that when you open the fridge, you keep your eye hunger at bay.

In his book mindless eating, Michael Wansink, Ph.D. recounts an experiment his research team conducted in a large office building. They gave all of the secretaries candy jars for their desks. Some of the candy jars were clear - you could see the candy inside. Others were opaque and you could not see what the contents of the jar were.

Every night after everyone had gone home, someone would go to the office and refill all of the candy jars after they counted how many had been eaten during the day. Sure enough, they discovered that each of the secretaries who had a clear see-through candy jar ate more.

Now if you are eating chicken wings or ribs be sure to leave the bones or paper where you can see it so that you'll have a sense of what you've eaten. This is the reverse of eye hunger. When your eyes see a stack of rib bones the brain takes note of what you have eaten and acts as an incentive for you to stop. Another instance of the eyes overriding the stomach.

Another recommendation is to keep tempting foods in hard to reach places. The more work you have to go through to get something, the less likely you'll grab it. And often if you can't see it you'll forget that you have at and again not eat it because you don't give your eye hunger an opportunity to kick in.

Give Your Brain Less Food to Think About

Do not eat in front of the television. Don't spend your days cruising through cookbooks because just the site of the food makes you want to eat it. If you have to use a cookbook or recipe reference it only when you are ready to shop or cook.

Reminder

If we see it, we think about it, and we want it.

Have you heard the old joke about the see-food diet. If you see it, you eat it. Make the see-food diet work for you not against you. Keep healthy foods where they are easy to see. Not just out in the open, for instance, in a fruit bowl but in the refrigerator as well.

When you open the refrigerator have fresh veggies or fruit the first thing you see and if you're wrapping your food in foil and keeping it in the back of the refrigerator. It'll be available when you want to use it for meals instead of being gobbled up on an impulse because someone saw it when they opened the refrigerator door.

If you can't move the food or hide the food, then move yourself around it.

In his book The Ultimate Weight Solution, Dr. Phil McGraw tells a story of how he would come home after work at night and enter the kitchen and start to eat whatever was laying around might be cookies might be brownies. Who knows, he would just grab and eat because it was there. He said on some nights he would consume from 1000 up to 10,000 cal before going upstairs to shower. Then he would come downstairs and have a full dinner.

His solution: he stopped entering the house via the back door. He started coming in the front door after work and going up for his shower without going into the kitchen. What a difference.

At mealtime, fill your plate in the kitchen, put all of the food that you intend to eat in the entire meal on the plates so that you not considering going back for seconds. In other words, don't serve family-style. Don't put bowls of food on the table. This is an open invitation for a second helping.

The opposite is true when it comes to water. Keep a pitcher of water on the table. This serves two purposes. You'll drink more because it's right there and it may help you to feel a little fuller as you eat.

Satisfy Eye Hunger Once and For All

You satisfy I hunger with beauty. Take time to look at your food. That assumes sitting at the table with no distractions - no television, no reading or any of all the other things you might be doing now. Notice the color, shape, and arrangement of the food on the plate.

When you eat out. Check out the restaurant. Take a look at the menu, any food displays, wall displays - these all contribute to feeding your eyes when you eat. Notice what appeals to you on a plate and eat and prepare what is appealing.

I notice when I go out to eat with friends. Sometimes when we go to a nice restaurant where the chef has gone through great pains to make the food very eye appealing, I find the meals very satisfying and memorable, even though often these restaurants serve smaller portions.

And I notice when I'm choosing a restaurant to go to those are the restaurants that I remember most vividly.

In her book, mindful eating Jan Chozen Bays, MD says, "When we stop and look with awareness, we connect."

This explains why when you eat while watching TV, reading, driving, or at your desk while working, you often don't even remember eating and it doesn't register in your brain that you've had a meal.

To paraphrase Mick Jagger "you can't get no satisfaction", and without it the odds of you prowling for food for the rest of the day are high, even though you've already eaten. Eye hunger is very powerful.

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