How Do I Know If I'm Still Hungry or Full?

By: Erin Naimi, R.D.

If you've ever spent time with a baby, and paid attention to their feeding habits, you've witnessed how unmistakable hunger and fullness signals can be. When they are hungry, nothing but food will pacify their cries, and once they’re full, their mouth is sealed shut like a steel trap door!  

We are all born with these intuitive cues, and by the way, we all still have these signals as adults.  In fact, and they never go away… but for some people, they get buried under a pile of other things that we’ll call “distractions” for now.  Unfortunately, if hunger and fullness signals are ignored long enough trying to heed their cues may feel like trying to follow a GPS system in a foreign language. Confusing, right?

If these signals are so innate, what went wrong between birth and that first overeaten meal?

 Most likely, something or someone started distracting you from those intuitive cues, and/or telling you that you were wrong about them, and pretty soon you stopped paying attention to them all together.

Whether it was a well-meaning parent encouraging you to “finish your food,” the guilt you tend to perseverate over because you’re not following your diet plan, or a TV screen keeping you company during a meal, any form of on-going distraction from your body’s intuitive signals will create a sense of internal dissonance.  When your attention is diverted (at meals times), the distinct and subtle cues that your body sends to your brain to let you know that you are full, satisfied, and ready to move on, (thanks in part to a hormone called Leptin), do not get detected. In other words, your belly is politely trying to tell you you’re full, but your brain is ignoring it because it’s distracted by different conversation, and so you keep on eating and eating until either there’s nothing left to eat and/or you are intolerably stuffed and somewhat miserable.

Enough suffering. How about we get you re-acquainted with your hunger and fullness signals? After all, they are available and ready to help guide you.  Those signals act as your internal navigation system-and as long as you listen, no other GPS system (i.e. D-I-E-T) will ever be needed.

Here are a couple of simple tools:

First, start to listen for hunger and fullness signals when they are subtle and calm (similar to handling a baby, you want to avoid getting to a point when there’s a tantrum.)

To assist you in deciphering your body’s (hunger /fullness) signals, refer to the scale below:

Hungry         1- Starving, dizzy, insatiable appetite.

                        2- Very hungry, irritable, unable to concentrate.

            3- Hungry  (ready to eat a meal).

4- Beginning signs of hunger (may want a snack).

Neutral           5- Neutral, neither hungry nor full.

6- Comfortably full, though not completely satisfied.

7- Comfortably full & satisfied.                                                 

8- Slightly over full- had a couple bites too many.

                        9- Uncomfortably full, feel stuffed.

Full                 10- Stuffed to the point of feeling sick.   
 

Each time you are about to begin eating make note of your hunger level, and then continue to pay attention to how it moves towards fullness during the course of the meal.  Ideally, begin eating when you notice you are at level 3 or 4, and stop when you notice you’re at level 6 or 7. Do your best to avoid the polar ends of the spectrum, as one end often tends to rebound to the other.

Next, take the 1-week  NEWD Challenge- (No, this does not have anything to do with getting naked).

NEWD: Not Eating With Distractions.

For 1 week, commit to eliminating any distractions while you eat, (i.e. TV, computer, phone, or any reading material) and simply pay attention to the taste, texture, and your experience of your meal and body (this is also known as Mindful Eating).

 This is very simple process, but not necessarily easy one. In fact most of my clients (initially) hate me for it… At first, they start to notice all sorts of feelings they had never noticed before, including how angry they are at me for “having taken their TV away.”  Eventually though, they also notice other things, like how much less they need or want to eat before they feel satisfied and full.

After the initial protest, I promise the process will become easier and more natural, and you will be blown away by all the things your body has been trying to tell you all this time- that have gone unnoticed.

C’mon, give it one week… if you don’t notice a difference in the communication between you and your body- and, how much you’re eating, you can always turn the TV back on. 

These changes will create huge changes in your relationship to food and  help you reconnect to the intuitive signals you were born with, and hunger and fullness will no longer be a guessing game for you.

Feel free to share any experiences or questions along the way….

Bon Appétit!