Is your fullness gauge broken?
Learning how to feel your fullness is a principle of Intuitive Eating which can help you reach your health goals.
I bet you can easily describe to me the feeling of being overstuffed but can you describe the feeling of comfortable satiety?
In this week’s post, I explore how you can tune into your body and learn how to stop eating before you feel uncomfortable and offer some tips to support you in doing this.
Honouring Your Fullness
Honouring your fullness can be difficult if you are more accustomed to honouring values such as;
- Cleaning our plate
- Eating to completion
- Not wanting to waste food
- Food insecurity, not knowing when your next meal will be
Many long-term and chronic dieters have trouble knowing when they are full because they aren’t listening to what their body wants, instead they are following RULES about when what and how much they can eat.
Deprivation can lead to overeating.
When we have ‘permission to eat’ for instance when the diet rules allow us to OR when we have a ‘F%*k-it’ moment it can lead to overeating or eating past comfortable fullness.
Eating past comfortable fullness can lead to feeling bloated, uncomfortable and even nauseous and that’s not including the emotional distress this kind of disordered eating can bring.
If your sense of deprivation is high it can override the ability to feel your fullness
Is this you? It has definitely been me.
What is the solution?
Making peace with food and giving yourself unconditional permission to eat will help you learn to feel your fullness.
When you know you can have a particular food or meal again, whenever you want, it removes the urgency to make the most of it while you can.
Intuitive Eating teaches us to approach the learning of ‘feeling our fullness’ with curiosity, not judgement.
If you begin eating when you are too hungry you may find that you overeat before you are satiated, and that is ok.
Learn from this experience, what did you eat earlier in the day, was it enough? How can you prevent becoming too hungry again?
Finding foods that satisfy you is key to feeling your fullness.
If you are not satisfied you will continue to think about and search your cupboards for something to scratch that itch whether you are hungry or not.
Eating correctly balanced meals containing all macronutrients will support you satisfaction and fullness along with improving menopause symptoms.
Recognising Comfortable Fullness
We women are great overachievers.
We are naturally busy people, juggling all of our responsibilities and multitasking.
Multitasking can be our worst enemy.
The more research and reading I do about organisation and being productive (I know, a little sad) the more I learn that it is far MORE productive to focus on one task at a time and find your FLOW.
Even if you have a few tasks to complete, using a strategy such as the Pomodoro Technique to actually focus your time blocks on one task at a time instead of multitasking is found to be more productive.
Anyway, back to our stomachs, focusing on what we are eating and nothing else can help us regain the ability to feel our fullness. Here are some ideas:
Eat without distraction
Limit reading or watching TV or filling the dishwasher as you spoon another mouthful of breakfast in. Engage in mindful eating, and think about the sight, taste, smell, and texture of the food.
Pause during your meal
During your meal put your utensils or food down and check in with yourself. How do you feel? How full are you? How does your food taste? This isn’t a threat to stop eating it’s just an observation.
Decide to stop
When you have reached your last bite limit, stop. Do something to signal to yourself that you have finished, put your utensils together, and push the plate away an inch or two. If your ‘don’t waste food’ value kicks in, can you save the leftovers for later or tomorrow? If you are eating out can you ask to ‘take away’ your leftover portion?
What does Comfortable Fullness feel like?
Everyone will feel something different. Explore what this feels like for you:
- Pleasant completeness?
- Not needing anything more?
- No longer feeling hunger?
- Pain-free – from hunger or being too full
This can take a while to learn.
Approach this part of Intuitive Eating with curiosity and kindness towards yourself.
Many women have had years of conditioning with thoughts and values that have disconnected them from being able to recognise fullness within their bodies.
Honouring your Hunger/Fullness level
Have you ever felt hungry, looked at the time and thought “I can’t be hungry! It’s only been 2 hours since I ate!”
A statement like this comes from following diet rules.
An external force telling you when you can and can’t be hungry or full.
This is how we disconnect from our intuition.
The ability to recognise when we need to eat again can depend on many factors:
When was the last time you ate? The more often you eat the less hungry you will be, this is true of nibblers who have many snacks compared to consistent 3 square meals a day eaters. Studies show that both types of eating can provide the same number of calories but the feelings will be different.
What did your last meal/snack comprise of? The macronutrient makeup of a meal can affect how long the food will remain in your stomach and the rate at which the glucose enters your bloodstream. Was it ‘air food’? Popcorn, rice cakes, fat-free crackers, calorie-free beverages. These are ways we can try to ‘trick’ our body into feeling full but our body is smart and it knows it hasn’t had enough to eat.
What have you been doing? Have you been sedentary or have you been physically active? Your body will have different energy needs depending on these factors.
What if you can’t stop eating?
If you practice this principle for a while alongside the other principles and you find that you just can’t stop eating there is a good chance you are using food as a coping mechanism. This needs to be explored further.
Journaling may help you uncover what triggers you and you may be able to put strategies in place to overcome this.
January 2023 Challenge
Would you like to experience a C.A.L.M menopause journey?
Confident – Learn what is going on in your body and why
Aligned – Live in balance with your values
Lifestyle – design a plan that fits your individual lifestyle and menopause journey
Makeover – Transformation from barely surviving to THRIVING
Before you switch off for Christmas I would like to extend an invite to you for my January Challenge…
https://www.subscribepage.com/the-calm-menopause-january-challenge
This challenge is for…
Anyone on their menopause journey whether you are preparing, on the roller coaster of transition OR post-menopause and wanting to protect their future health and feel amazing.
If old strategies such as restrictive dieting and gruelling exercise no longer work to keep you in the shape you want to be.
You are over this New Year, New Me shit and just want to feel clear-headed, energetic and more like your old self without having to change your whole life to achieve it.
This challenge is for you if you are looking for something MORE in life. You are open-minded to explore your purpose and how you can truly take care of yourself so you can take care of those you love effectively.
Follow the link to learn more and sign up, I would love to show you an alternative way to achieve your health and well-being goals and create a positive menopause journey in 2023.
