We’ve talked about honoring our hunger. Today we’re talking about the flip side of that: feeling our fullness. As you’ll remember, on the other end of the Hunger Discovery Scale from hunger is fullness in its varying degrees.
While it sounds pretty common sense to stop eating when we’re full, lots of ideas and habits get in the way.
Clean your plate mentality –This practice trains us to depend on external cues for deciding how much to eat and has little or nothing to do with when our body tells us it’s done eating.
Regimented eating – There are benefits to having some structure to our eating as we’re adopting a healthy, intuitive way of eating. Problems can develop when we become more dependent on a clock or schedule than on our bodies for telling us when and how much we should eat.
Regulated portions of many diets – Many diets have pretty fixed portions: a liquid replacement meal for breakfast, specific morning and afternoon snacks, pre-portioned lunches and dinners, or some variation of that template. Other eating plans may offer more flexibility but still have precise portion sizes. Of course, being aware of our portions isn’t bad practice. It’s when we let a set idea of what a portion is influence our eating that it fails to serve us. Again, it’s an external cue.
Feeling wasteful if we throw away food – It’s okay to throw food away. If you only want part of the apple and aren’t somewhere you can really save the rest for another time, then throw it out. I promise the food gods aren’t going to smite you. Food is here to serve us, not the other way around.
“OCD” eating – If you’re like me (and a lot of other people), it can be hard to leave a partial package or portion of food uneaten. I call this OCD eating. Somehow leaving those five chips or those four carrots in that little bag or those last few bites of whatever uneaten would upset the order of the universe. Of course, this is ridiculous.
Letting ourselves get overly hungry – When we reach the point of ravenous hunger all hope of being sanely attentive to our fullness cues goes out the window.
Eating on autopilot – If we check out while we eat, obviously we’re not paying enough attention to notice when we’re full.
Fast eating – Hurrying through a meal or snack doesn’t give our body a chance to catch up and give us accurate signals at appropriate times.
Habit – Don’t underestimate the power of habits. For example, we’ve been starting every work day with the pastries laid out on the break room table or ending our night with a bowl of ice cream on the couch for years. Regardless of how attentive we become to our hunger and fullness levels our old habits will continue to pull at us as we work at setting new ones. We can overcome; we just need to appreciate what we’re up against.
Social influences – Who we eat with impacts our choices. There can be pressure to eat too much or too little, what or when to eat or not eat, how to eat – fast or slow, seriously or joyfully, and so on. This influence isn’t right or wrong, good or bad; it just is. If we simply notice it, we can look past it, which makes it much easier to let our body’s opinions have more sway than our companions’.
All of these patterns can get in the way of recognizing how full we are, so now let’s talk about some tools to help us through.
How to recognize and respect our fullness
Eat consciously. – No more checking out. Let’s be present when we eat. Let’s honest enough with ourselves to be fully aware of our eating.
Hit the pause button mid-meal or mid-snack. – Take a moment mid-meal to stop and consider how delicious and satisfying our food is and what our hunger/fullness level is.
Check on your fullness level when you’re done eating. – At the end of our meal or snack let’s take another look at where we are on the hunger/fullness scale – no judgment, just observation.
Practice identifying your last bite. – If we’re attentive to our body’s cues, we’ll get better and better at knowing when the food in our mouth is the last bite we want/need. However, if we’re not eating from biological hunger, we can’t expect to stop from biological fullness. Paying attention to our fullness will help us identify when our hunger is something other than our body’s need for sustenance.
Understand that cleaning our plate and leaving food on our plate are both options. – Let’s not decide before we’ve even taken a bite whether there will be food left on our plate when we finish eating. There’s no obligation to empty our plates or not.
Realize that what we eat (‘air food,’ heartier food) impacts how much & how often we eat. – Our dieting culture teaches us that foods like rice cakes and air-popped popcorn and such are good, low-calorie options for filling up. They could be more of a problem than a help though. Because of the lack of nutrients in them, we may find ourselves hungry and not satiated soon after eating them.
Let’s remember WE get to choose what, when, and how we eat. Let’s slow down, pay attention, and practice honoring our hunger and feeling our fullness. The more we practice listening to our body the more we’ll understand it and learn to trust it. Let’s honor our choices and our bodies.
THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE – Notice how satisfied you are by the foods you eat and by the amount of food consumed.
Week 2 – What is Intuitive Eating?
Week 3 – Honor Your Hunger
Week 4 – Make Peace With Food
Week 5 – Get Sassy With Your Food Cops