Whenever you are asked to eat some more in parties or in family lunch or dinner, your probable answer would be, “Thank you, I am full”. It means that you don’t have enough space in your stomach for the additional food being offered to you. Your stomach is already “stuffed” with the mixture of solid foods and drinks that you have ingested.

The problem now among us is how to determine if we are already “stuffed” with food after our meals. Sometimes, most of us would loosen our belts and allow our stomach to bulge to the fullest when we say that we are “full” already. Others would simply eat the right amount and have the discipline and consciousness to eat the right amount of food without being “stuffed” or without their stomach “ballooned” to a bigger size.

We always do this whenever we are invited to parties and other events where the host would prepare a lot of mixed selection of foods. This is a chance for us to eat the foods which are not normal or ordinary in our daily meals. This is a chance and opportunity for us to stuff our belly with such served foods. Much more when we are invited when the food being offered are in buffet style!

For a runner like me, I would say that I could easily burn the calories on those foods for 1-2 hours of steady run the following day and I could revert back to my usual foods for the days to come. But for others who are not consistent with their running workout and for those who are not involved in any kind of sports, such foods “stuffed” in their stomach would be converted to fats and I am sure that this will result to some additional pound/s in their body weight. And when they see that their weight had increased, then that the only time that they realize that they have to exercise or go out for a run/bike/swim. It is sad to note that it is faster to add more pounds to your body weight than the time needed to reduce one’s weight!

So, how do we find out if we are already “stuffed” or “full” when we eat? The technique that I would recommend is to make a rating of fullness from 1-to-5 scale. If your rating is 5 on the scale, it means that you are about to loosen your belt and remove the upper button of your pants! If your rating is 1, then you need to eat some more! So to be safe, a rating of 3-4 on the scale would be a good gauge to say that you have stuffed the right amount of food which you could easily burn while you are doing your regular daily activities.

Remember, the rating 3-4 on the scale whenever you eat in parties or in buffet lunch and dinner so that you can still maintain your running performance weight in every running event you would want to join.

Good luck and see you at the Starting Line!