I teach a class called “Diabetes and the Native Americans”. I took over teaching this class seven years ago and it has morphed from a wellness/exercise class to a culturally-tailored, science-based course on how type 2 diabetes impacts Native populations. We discuss risk factors, symptoms, diagnostic tests, complications, in addition to the history of Native health and all the legislation that has impacted our population’s health. During the unit where we discuss prevention and management, we discuss eating. Just a whole lecture or two devoted to just how and why we eat.

I first read this book in August of 2008. I was overweight, having gained weight from breaking my foot the previous summer, and had difficulty motivating myself to track calories and keep up with my food journal. I don’t remember what made me buy this book (“Mindless Eating” by Brian Wansink, PhD), but I read it on the way back from a powwow in Michigan. It was eye-opening. And my first insight into the complicated maze of the psychology of eating.

There is so much fascinating information in this book: food labs to research exclusively what will make us eat more, “health halos”, why we seek comfort foods, how labeling and marketing campaigns convince us to buy more/eat more, and what was most interesting to me….the different “cues” to let us know when to stop eating. I didn’t realize that we are socialized to know when to stop eating.

For example….as in the book, I ask my class “When do you know that you have had enough food? When do you know when to stop eating?” I get all kinds of answers. “When I fall asleep”, or “When I have to unbutton the top button of my jeans”, or “When I have to change into stretchy pants”, or “When my plate is clean” or “When I’m full”. I got similar answers to what Dr. Wansink lists in his book. I catch myself telling my kids “just 2 more bites” which means I am socializing them to eat more as well (I have since made a concerted effort to not do that).

I read in his book that eating until you are full, and “eating until you are no longer hungry” are two entirely different things. He went on to describe how there can be a 25% caloric intake difference by stopping eating when you no longer experience hunger, as opposed to when you feel full. I like the examples he gave from France and Japan and how they are socialized to eat until they are no longer hungry. In the U.S., the love of Golden Corral restaurants (my husband’s favorite) and the proliferation of casino buffets, we tend to encourage eating until we pass the point of being full. Although I am well-acquainted with the concept of “eating until you are satisfied”, that phrase never truly clicked with me….but eating until I wasn’t hungry anymore did click (*lightbulb!!*)

So I had to see for myself. After getting back from Michigan and thinking about the concept of “eating until I wasn’t hungry”, I gave it a whirl. I had some leftover taco meat that I was going to fix a salad with for my lunch. I served myself the amount I normally eat, but I paid close attention to how I felt as I ate. I didn’t read or watch TV, or do anything that would take my mind off the eating task at-hand. I ate slowly, drank water, and when I reached the point where I didn’t feel hungry anymore I looked at my bowl. There was approximately 1/4 left of what I served myself. I then set about to see if those results would be replicated in my dinner and breakfast the following morning. I discovered I ate 25-30% LESS when I really attended to what I ate and stopped when I didn’t feel hungry anymore.

I ended up losing about 6 pounds within 2-3 weeks just by paying attention, or being mindful of what I ate and how I felt. I didn’t count calories, I didn’t buy any specific “diet friendly” foods (such as low-fat or fat free or low calorie). I I felt much more comfortable after eating because I wasn’t stuffed. As a result, I started serving myself less food so it wouldn’t go to waste, and learned to take more if I felt I really needed it. I figured if I didn’t stop eating when I was no longer hungry, the food was going to waste in one of two ways: it would either be left on my plate and go to “waste” and be tossed out, or it would go to “waist” and be stored as fat in the form of a muffin-top if I cleared my plate and didn’t burn up all the energy I took in. It was a true epiphany.

Native people have additional factors to deal with as well in regards to what we eat and how much we eat. On-going colonization (the methods used by dominate society/government to subjugate Indigenous peoples) is a huge factor in the status of our health. Under the colonization heading we can list historical trauma, food insecurity, socio-economic factors and all the mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, trauma from abuse. These factors can make it difficult to stop eating when we are no longer hungry. If you have experienced times where there wasn’t enough food, or have learned through hard life’s experiences that you need to eat as much as possible as fast as possible because you don’t know when your next meal will be, it will make it next to impossible to not clear your plate because you have been conditioned to not waste food. If you have attended residential boarding schools or were in the military, you have been conditioned to clean your plate. Depression and anxiety, or chronic stress, heavily influences our eating behaviors, as does substance abuse. And that’s not even taking into account the sugar/starch/carbohydrate-laden commodity foods many of us grew up on, and may find comfort in. We also have our cultural/social mores, many times which dictate having to serve ourselves a portion of each food offered at a feast or ceremony, or not turning down an offer of food so as to not offend a host/hostess in their own home. Although these factors influencing our eating are not insurmountable by any means, they are deeply entrenched and it will take concentrated effort and practice, and learning new coping mechanisms to overcome them to regain our health.

Like I tell my students, eating is complicated. There is so much more to healthy eating than just “don’t eat junk” (which is a blog post all on its own). Like one of my previous weight-loss participants said, “There’s more to it than just making poor choices.” We have many many influences on what we eat and how much we eat, but I truly believe they can be managed and we can improve our collective Indigenous health.