Eating Fabulous

Enjoying Your Food is Key to Healthy Eating

by ruth on September 21st, 2007

Finally, a healthy eating program that feels absolutely right to me: The Satter Eating Competence Model, aka ecSatter.

[snip]…the eating competence model cultivates effective eating attitudes and behavior by emphasizing permission and discipline:

The permission to choose food you enjoy and eat it in amounts you find satisfying.

The discipline to provide yourself with regular and reliable meals and snacks and to pay attention when you eat them.

I abhor restrictive diets and feel that they only create a sense of dissatisfaction and deprivation. That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve never fallen into those fad diets, not that I ever really needed them. I personally feel that the key to maintaining an optimal weight is to eat sensibly, and to be mindful of what and when you eat. So how do you enjoy food and still keep a healthy weight? According to the creators of this model, there are four steps to competent eating:

• Take time to eat, and provide yourself with rewarding meals and snacks at regular and reliable times;
• Cultivate positive attitudes about eating and about food. Emphasize providing rather than depriving, seeking food rather than avoiding it;
• Enjoy your eating, eat things you like and let yourself be comfortable with and relaxed about what you eat. Enjoying eating supports the natural inclination to seek variety, the keystone of healthful food selection;
• Pay attention to sensations of hunger and fullness to determine how much to eat. Go to the table hungry, eat until you feel satisfied and then stop, knowing another meal or snack is coming soon when you can do it again.

I believe that there is an inherent voice within all of us which tells us what food we need, when, and how much. If we learn to listen to that voice, I see no reason why we have to deprive ourselves of such an enjoyable experience. In fact, data shows that people who are confident, comfortable and flexible with their eating habits may actually be at a significantly lower risk of cardiovascular disease than people who are not.

The creator of this nutritional model is also the author of

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POSTED IN: Healthy Eating, ~Cardiovascular Health, ~Weight Management