How skinny people eat

1. Choose a place and time where you can relax quietly for 20 minutes.

2. Think about how you’ll know when it’s time to eat. Maybe you see food? Maybe you hear someone say, “It’s time to eat”? Maybe you looked at your watch and realized that it was time for lunch? Maybe you feel hungry? Imagine that you are sitting at a table filled with various dishes, or looking in the refrigerator, or perusing the menu.

3. Now remember how you feel in your stomach. Pay attention to the quality of sensations. You are not checking whether you are hungry or full, but what your stomach feels in general. At the same time, the state of the stomach depends on what you ate the day before, whether you are tense or relaxed, and so on.

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4. Ask yourself, “What food will make my stomach feel good right now?”

5. Then think of one available meal. For example, you might imagine a ham sandwich, a bowl of vegetable soup, or a salad.

6. Now imagine that you are eating what you have chosen. If you think of a ham sandwich, immediately feel the taste in your mouth. Then pay attention to how you feel as the sandwich sinks into your stomach. You can feel how the sandwich will feel in your stomach and how the whole body will react to it over the next hours.

7. Now compare this feeling with what you felt in your stomach before you ate. Which feeling is better? Would you feel better if you ate a sandwich, or would you rather eat nothing? If you feel better after eating, keep a ham sandwich in mind as one of your choices. If eating nothing is better than eating a sandwich, rule it out. Please note that your decision is based on what will give you the most pleasure for a long time. You don’t have to eat something that will ruin the rest of your day.

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8. Now imagine another dish. Maybe you want to eat a salad.

9. Now you have to figure out if you really want to eat it. Imagine that you are eating a salad, feel it sink into your stomach. Feel its presence in the stomach for several hours. What do you experience?

10 Compare your feelings in step nine with what you felt in step seven. Which feeling is better? Which option makes you feel better? Keep in mind the dish that gives you more pleasant sensations.

11 Repeat the same process (steps 8, 9 and 10) with a few more possible dishes. Each time, keep in mind the dish that gives you the most pleasant sensations for a long time.

12 When you think you’ve explored enough dishes, take note of which one gave you the most pleasure. Now imagine that you are eating this dish and getting lasting satisfaction from what you eat.

13 Now think about situations in which you are particularly prone to overeating. Some people overeat at a party, others overeat alone. There are people for whom overeating is associated only with a certain type of food: ice cream, pizza, chocolate, Chinese cuisine. Repeat all the steps again for the situation that provokes you to overeat, to make sure that you have mastered the new strategy well enough.

14 The same strategy helps you decide when to stop. Every time you are about to bite into something, you can very quickly imagine how that piece will feel in your stomach. And as soon as you feel that this piece will prevent you from feeling as good as at the moment, you will stop eating. When this process becomes a habit, you will make such a decision very quickly, and you will not even have to think about it.

15 Some people feel compelled to eat everything on their plate so that the food doesn’t go to waste. If you follow this rule, you should take small portions, and then ask for a supplement if you feel that you have not eaten enough.

For more details, see I. Malkina-Pykh “Eating Behavior Therapy” (Eksmo, 2007).