Knowing How Much to Eat – Eating Competence

How much do we really need to eat to stay healthy? There are two ways to go about this.

One: Knowing your recommended daily calories and keeping track

The website http://www.mypyramid.gov/ is a wonderfully useful site to calculate how many calories you need a day.

1. Under “Interactive Tools” on the left side, go to “My pyramid plan”
2. Type in your information and it will tell you approximately how many calories you need a day.

Then you would keep track of your calories to see if you are over or under your calorie needs. Overall, it is good to know about how many calories your body needs.

Two: The Satter (ecSatter) Eating Competence Model

One of the components of this model is eating according to your internal regulation. The Satter model has been put through many studies and has shown to be successful. Having structure in nutrition is the goal, and the way you achieve structure is by internally regulating your food intake.

Internally regulated food intake is managed by paying attention to three things: hunger, appetite, and satiety. Hunger – wanting to eat food because your body needs energy. Appetite – desiring a specific food for its aesthetics or taste. Satiety – the feeling of being full. Together, these three internal cues know your individual energy needs. Problems arise when these internal regulators are ignored or overruled.

So the Satter model suggests listening to your internal cues, as apposed to listening to your external cues. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between external and internal cues. The external cues are things such as eating when you’re not hungry but because everyone else is or you’re bored. Before you eat, try to recognize your internal and external cues. Learning to distinguish internal and external cues will make it easier to follow your internal cues.

It takes some time to learn how to listen to your internal cues. The Satter model explains how moderate levels of physical activity make internal cues stand out more or easier to recognize.

(Ellyn Satter, MS, RD, LCSW, BCD. “Eating Competence: Definition and Evidence for the Satter Eating Competence Model.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2007;39:S142-S153.)

The Satter eating competence model is intriguing to me and I love learning about it. There is much more to this model. If you have any questions about it let me know. Also you can visit the Ellyn Satter website at http://www.ellynsatter.com/ to learn more.