Are You Really Hungry or Eating Out of Habit?

Habits can be wonderful things.
Successfully creating a new fitness habit might take a bit of effort, but once it becomes part of your routine, you own it!
Unfortunately, habits can also be a bugger to break. When I was working nine-to-five, I got in the routine of eating a snack around 4 p.m. — required sustenance for my evening trek to the gym and a dinner that wouldn’t materialize until 8 p.m.
Now that I have the opportunity to work out in the morning and supper is on the table at a more reasonable hour, that mid-day snack isn’t always a necessity. But when I first started working at home, come late afternoon, I’d migrate toward the fridge, hungry or not.
If you are a clock-watcher, or if you are a stickler for eating a certain number of times/meals a day, you might be eating out of habit.

Check out my day of eats when I ignored the clock and listened to my body instead.

Breakfast: 9:30 a.m.

I’m always hungry first thing in the morning.
Check that.
I’m usually hungry first thing in the morning, but today, nada. It was a good three hours after waking before I even thought about breakfast and when I did, a soft-boiled egg on toast sufficed.

Lunch/Snack: 3:00 p.m.

It was way after lunchtime when my stomach started to gurgle and I still wasn’t overly hungry. Weird, but I went with it, foraged around the fridge and came out with a few spoonful of leftover crab salad and some cherries. It looked kinda of sad, so I added a couple slices of avocado and then ended up putting them back.

By dinnertime, I estimated I’d consumed less than 500 calories, a ridiculously low number for an active individual! (Besides the regular stuff, my day included a 45-minute dog walk and a yoga class.)

Dinner 7:00 p.m.

Bill suggested we check out Q39, a local barbeque joint run by national barbecue champion Rob Magee. The word is out about Q39 and we couldn’t get a table until 7:00 on a Thursday night; the place was packed and now I’m hungry!
More than a couple of award-winning items on Magee’s menu has folks talking. We were lucky they weren’t out of their blue ribbon burnt ends; that and a sampler platter that included house made chipotle sausage, smoked chicken, baked beans, cornbread and apple coleslaw …

and an order of onion straws with a BBQ aioli!

I have no idea why I wasn’t hungry earlier in the day; maybe my body sensed the meal to come! Luckily I listened to its cues, for this meal on top of my regular eats would have been way over the top!
Are you a three-squares type or do you go with the flow? This day was a bit unusual; usually I’m three squares and one snack, but, hey, it worked. —Karen