Michael Graziano rather persuasively argues that the body’s mechanisms for managing hunger work just fine. Eating high-carbohydrate food products, calorie-counting, snacking, etc. mess up the body’s default mechanisms and lead to obesity.
Graziano makes the case that hunger, for many people, is a psychological state. The hunger mood can make a small plate of food look like either not-enough or not-now-I’m-full. A successful strategy for managing hunger would work with the body’s hunger mechanisms and avoid the use of will power.
He does not lay out a 10-step plan or techniques to deploy in the article. Each person has to find their own path. In his case, that meant a low-carb, slightly higher-fat diet and the permission to eat as much as he wanted at any meal. His essay goes into more depth on his reasons for adopting an ultimately successful eating plan.
For myself, I prefer eating one-meal-a-day and that has proven to be a low-effort strategy for me. But I do get plagued around 2-4pm by hankerings for whatever is in the snack machine at work.
Here’s a technique I found years ago that helps me in the moment. Whenever I feel prompted to raid the snack machine, I stand up, take a deep breath, put my hands on my stomach, and ask “Is this hunger or craving?” Before I’m done asking the question, I know that it’s usually craving. At that point, I get water or coffee, walk around outside, or socialize — anything that gets me physically moving and uses the large muscles of the body or in some way distracts my attention.
