The sixth principle of Intuitive Eating is: Feel Your Fullness. This principle is about more than stopping when you are full. This principle is about listening to your body, respecting your body and making choices based on how you feel versus the programmed stories from your past about food.
When you were growing up were you told to clean your plate? Were you told that there were children starving in another country that would be grateful to have the food you are refusing eat to or complaining about having to eat? While children might feign fullness so they don’t have to eat their vegetables, these stories you hear stick in your mind and can influence your choices and feelings about food as an adult.
How do you know when you are full? What signs does your body send you so you know you’d be best off to stop eating? In order to hear and respond to these messages from your body, you have to be paying attention. Mindful eating allows you to sense and tune into these signals from your body. It’s helpful to discern how full you feel when you are truly paying attention to the process of eating and the impact your food has on your body.
This principle requires that you listen to your body and respect how it feels and make choices accordingly. The principle is about feeling your fullness, meaning you need to be connected to your body, fully aware of your experience in the present moment. The following guide can be a helpful place to start. It is directly from the chart in my book: Wholistic Food Therapy: A Mindful Approach to Making Peace with Food.
Full Scale:
0= not at all full
1= not at all full, but aware of food in your stomach
2= slightly full, still could eat more
3= fairly full, may be helpful to wait 5-10 minutes and see if you are satiated
4= overly full, slightly uncomfortable or bloated
5= completely stuffed, very uncomfortable
Ideally you want to stop when you are a 3 on the full scale. If you find after a pause that you are not quite full, then eat more food. If you find that after a pause when you are at a 3 that you are full, stop eating. While this may seem simple, those food stories can take over and create all kinds of justifications to keep eating or to stop eating rather than listening to your body.
Some of the most common stories/internal excuses include:
It’s so delicious, I don’t want to stop eating
There’re only two bites left, what’s the difference?
I don’t want to waste this food
I should clean my plate
This is a “cheat” meal/food so I need to eat it all since I can’t have it again for X amount of time
Here’s why each of these above justifications are ineffective and potentially harmful. For the first mental excuse, “it’s so delicious I don’t want to stop eating,” we’ve all been there. The question to ask yourself is, how am I going to feel if I finish this despite how delicious it is? If you are going to feel stuffed, uncomfortable, bloated, in pain or even sick, is it worth it? Only you can determine the answer.
For the second excuse, “there’s only two bites left, what’s the difference?” Here’s another way to consider this, if you eat it are you respecting how your body feels? What will be the impact of those two bites? Again, only you can answer this. If it feels potentially harmful to eat those bites, is it worth it to you?
The third excuse, “I don’t want to waste this food,” it can be helpful to really consider what wasting food means. Can you save the food for later? If you can’t, ask yourself what is the difference between stuffing it into your body when your body is already full or throwing it into the trashcan? There really is a difference here that can be difficult to discern and yet important. Throwing the food away is actually the more respectful choice for your body and ultimately the less “wasteful.”
The fourth excuse, “I should clean my plate” is a story you are telling yourself. Question this story, ask yourself, why should I clean my plate? What’s the purpose? If this is a story you have been telling yourself due to your childhood associations with meals, it can be a tough one to change. If this feels important to you, one way you can practice overcoming it is to always make a point to leave a bite or two on your plate and just see how it feels. If you truly are still hungry, eat it, if you are not, leave it. Give yourself space to practice a new story such as, “I do not need to clean my plate, I deserve to stop when I am full.”
The last reason is quite common. For those who are still struggling with the first principle of intuitive eating: rejecting the diet mentality, then this reason may feel really big. If you are restricting certain foods and only allowing them as “cheat” days or meals, then you will most likely overeat on those days/meals. If you are allowed to have that food again tomorrow—if you want it again tomorrow—would you feel such a compulsion to eat it all? Restricting leads to overeating and potentially binge eating. Pay attention to any restricting or judging of your food. The same applies to if you are restricting at a meal in order to over indulge in another meal. This pattern is dangerous and ineffective.
If feeling your fullness is an area that you struggle with, try starting with practicing this principle with one meal or snack per day. As always, try to limit distractions and eat mindfully. Pay attention to how your food tastes and the impact it has on your body. Listen to your hunger cues and your full cues. Practice pausing and tuning into your body. You might begin with setting an intention such as, “for this meal (or snack) I intend to listen to my body and stop when I feel full and satisfied.” Note what satiation and true comfortable fullness feels like for your body. Honor this feeling and allow yourself to continue to create closer alignment with your body’s wants and needs each and every time you practice.