Too Full or Not too Full?
Just as it is important to get in touch with your hunger, it’s equally as important to get in touch with your fullness. It can be challenging to identify our body telling us it’s full sometimes, especially if we are distracted or not used to listening to our body’s signals.
Some common barriers to listening to fullness:
- Having a “ clean your plate” mentality or habit
- Working through your lunch
- Using your phone while eating
- Reading while eating
- Watching television during a meal
- Eating while driving
- Eating too quickly
So how can we tune into our hunger?
- Eat slower. Make sure that you are not going into meals ravenous. When we get too hungry, our physiological drive to eat can takeover, causing us to eat rapidly and often not pay attention to our fullness.
- Eat mindfully, free of distractions. When eating alone, find a quiet, peaceful place to enjoy your meal. When possible, try to just focus on the food rather than multitasking.
- Check in with your emotions. It’s difficult to eat mindfully when we are stressed, tired, or upset. Be aware of what emotions you are feeling going into a meal.
- Be aware of how different foods affect your hunger and fullness. Some foods like grains, protein, and fat can keep us full for long periods of time, while other foods such as fruits, vegetables, low carb foods, diet foods, and artificially sweetened foods might fill us up for a moment but not keep us satiated for long. Pay attention to how foods feel in your body and whether they keep you satiated.
Sometimes we go past our fullness, and that’s okay! Eating is a learning experience. Overall, getting in touch with our fullness helps keep us feeling good in our body and ensures we have the energy we need to do the amazing things we want to do in life.
Start your Intuitive Eating journey TODAY with one of our registered dietitians at I Live Well Nutrition in Austin, TX and follow us on Instagram to learn more healthy lifestyle tips!
By Zoe Halbert – Zoe is a registered dietitian, licensed in Austin Texas who is passionate about helping people create healthy relationships with food and body. She focuses on intuitive eating with a non-diet and practices from the health at every size (HAES) approach when working with clients.
