Stop Eating When Full

stop eating when full

For most people, learning to eat when hungry is the easy part. It is the learning to stop eating when full that poses the most questions. This can be caused for a variety of reasons. One of the big reasons is because for many people, the signals their body and mind send just aren’t as strong as hunger signals. When you compound that with eating for emotional reasons or even binging – we lose sight of the nuances in between hunger and completely stuffed. But, just like hunger, we can learn to tune into our signals of fullness and even begin to respect those signals.

Stop Eating When Full

The most important thing is that in order to respect your fullness you have to be hungry to start with. If you aren’t hungry, you are not going to be able to tell when you are full. In fact, food will taste best if you are hungry and have worked up an appetite for it.

You also need to be eating mindfully, focusing on the process of just eating. Being this hyper focused won’t always be necessary but in the beginning, you may need to pay a bit of extra attention to tune into the physical process of fullness. It will be a good idea to not watch television, read or work while you are eating and periodically check in every few bites to see how you are feeling both mentally and physically. You may also find it helpful to consciously slow down and put your fork or spoon down in between bites.

Like hunger, understanding the nuances of fullness takes patience and awareness. Stopping when you feel the gentle sensation of fullness is they key. Have you ever eaten a meal and stopped when you felt full only to feel stuffed a half hour later? That is because you probably missed that gentle signal telling you that you are full.

In the beginning, stopping at this point is going to feel too soon but trust yourself and stop. The good news is that because you are working towards intuitive eating, if after a half hour or so, you still feel physical hunger, you can eat again. Food will always be there and if it takes you a while to catch on to your signals, that is OK because you can eat whenever you feel hunger.

As with hunger, each person’s fullness is going to feel slightly different but most people feel most satisfied when they eat to a point often referred to as gentle fullness. This point is when there is a slight sensation of food being in the stomach and the feelings of hunger are completely gone. Often times, people get caught up in the idea that they must stop when they are “satisfied” and that somehow “satisfied” isn’t actually satisfied. I’ve had many people tell me that when they stop eating when they are “satisfied” that they end up still hungry or obsessing over whether or not they are still hungry.

That’s not satisfied!

Your body is satisfied when you are no longer feel any physical sensations of hunger and you feel content in your body. You may also notice that your thoughts begin to roam to other tasks or that the food just doesn’t taste as good as before. Some people say that they “sigh” when they feel gentle fullness. It is often often described as satisfied but still light and energetic. Gentle fullness does not feel heavy, bloated or weighed down at all.

If you struggle with emotional eating, my best tip for you is to recognize that you want to eat past this physical feeling of fullness. Pay attention to both your mind and body and observe what happens when you stop eating when you want to keep eating anyway. What thoughts pop up and what does it feel like physically? And most importantly, how does it change with time? The only way to move beyond this stage is to cultivate the awareness around why you want to eat past full. Also, be gentle with yourself and remind yourself that the food will always be there. Once you have developed healthier coping skills, the desire to eat beyond fullness will greatly diminish and beginning to stop eating when full will happen naturally.

Do you struggle to stop eating when full? If you’re interested in learning more, feel free to enter your email address below, and I’ll send you a complimentary copy of my getting started guide to drop the struggle.