Episode 27: How to Stop Eating When You Feel Full

You’re starting to feel full but the mac and cheese is so good…and dessert goes in a second stomach right? Sound familiar? If so, welcome to the club. Today we’re diving into the reasons we eat past fullness and how to listen and respond when our bodies feel full. 

Episode Transcript:

Oftentimes when it comes to honoring our fullness, we don't need more control. We need more awareness. We need more mindfulness. We need more perspective.

INTRO MUSIC: Welcome to The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. I'm Alex Treanor. I'm a Nationally Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, and I am so excited you're here. The wellness industry is full of do's and do not's, should's and should not's. But I like to take a different approach. I'll be sharing all things health and wellness from a joyful, real-life compassionate perspective. If you're ready to drop the cookie-cutter approach and create a life you truly love, while eating a cookie or two along the way, let's dive in.

Hey, friends! Welcome, welcome to this week's episode of The Compassionate Wellness Podcast. Today, I want to talk a little bit about recognizing our fullness and learning how to honor or respect our fullness and actually stopping eating when we are full.

This topic has come up a lot recently in my coaching sessions with clients because holidays are quickly approaching and holidays are a weird food time. We know there's a lot of extra foods, a lot of special or unique foods. It's hard to find that balance of enjoying those foods and finding pleasure in them, and also maintaining health and wellness goals when we have them or working on different goals that we have in mind.

One of the ways that we do that is through mindful eating, learning how to honor or respect our fullness. When it comes to mindful eating, we look at recognizing our hunger or fullness and our satisfaction. We hear a lot about hunger because it can be tricky to figure out physical hunger versus emotional hunger versus cravings, right? There's a lot of information on that.

Figuring out how to stop eating is not talked about as much in the wellness space. We do hear it referred to quite a bit in terms of eating being just a matter of eating when you're hungry, stopping when you're full. That sounds nice in theory, but in practice that can be hard to do. I think especially with fullness we see that figuring out how to stop eating when you're full, it's kind of this mental mind game. So that's what I want to talk a little bit about today, hopefully give you some tools or help you feel a little bit more confident with being able to recognize when you are starting to feel full and knowing how to honor that and how to stop eating without feeling like you have to force yourself or rely on willpower or that it's this really controlled thing. Because oftentimes when it comes to honoring our fullness, we don't need more control. We need more awareness. We need more mindfulness. We need more perspective, and usually not more willpower. That's not not usually the answer.

So as we dive into that, I thought it may be helpful just to give you a little bit of an idea of how fullness works in our body, the physical sensations of fullness, because there's a couple different ways that our body will register that we're feeling full and a lot of them take some time. That's why with mindful eating, we're really big on going slow and paying attention because it is not uncommon that we eat so quickly, that by the time our body starts to register, like "hey, I'm feeling full", we've already eaten way past that and we feel more full than we want to just because of the speed at which we eat.

A few of the ways that fullness works. One is your stomach actually stretching when your stomach fills with food. Those cells that line your stomach send messages to your brain that say, "Hey, we're at capacity, and I've got stuff in here". That's one way. There's also several hormones, like leptin and ghrelin, you may be familiar with those, these hormones that regulate our appetite and let our brain know when we're hungry when we're full. It can also take some time for those to be produced and to be sent and get the messages where they need to go.

There's another part of fullness that is called sensory-specific satiety. It's basically feeling full on a certain flavor or a taste. So for example, let's say you go out to a restaurant, you get a big steak, and halfway through your steak, you're like, "Oh, I'm feeling full. I am done". But then the waiter comes out and says, "Here's the dessert menu. Would you like chocolate chip cookie in a nice little skillet with some ice cream on top?" and now suddenly, you don't feel as full, right? You still have room for that dessert. What happens is we start to get bored or full of a specific flavor. So you've eaten this steak you're getting accustomed to it, that flavor is there, it's kind of growing on you, and it's like, "Okay, I'm done with this". However, if we switch up what we're having, if now the option is to have some cookies and ice cream, that still sounds good, that still sounds like something I have room for.

Another thing to be mindful of with fullness is that nutrition and the nutrients in the foods we're eating matter. Some foods will help you to feel full, because they're providing nutrients to your body. So if you're getting those nutrients, it's going to hold you over longer than if you eat something, in intuitive eating they call it air foods, something that fills your stomach, but doesn't have a lot of nutrition to it. So when it's getting digested, there's not a lot of energy or substance to it in terms of physically benefiting your cells of your body, providing nutrition. So you're going to feel hungry again, because those cells are still hungry. They still need the nutrition, they need those nutrients.

Some of these air foods might be things like popcorn, celery, diet soda, things that fill your stomach, but break down into not, not too much. I'm not saying these are bad options, right? All foods can be appropriate. The thing to keep in mind with them is sometimes these are sold as like a dieting solution of like, "oh, just eat some popcorn and you'll fill up", but you won't really fill up.

These are things that we can use and still enjoy. But be mindful that these are more like snacks or things that might hold you over until a meal. If you're getting really hungry before dinnertime, maybe you have a little bit of popcorn or some celery, it's not going to be the bulk of your meal. Trying to fill up on some of these air foods is not a long term solution, because you will be starving again, pretty quickly.

The foods that do keep you full longer, things that have those macronutrients are protein, complex carbohydrates, things with fiber in it specifically, and healthy fats. That is what is feeding our body. So by including these nutrients, we are going to fill full longer.

So that's a little bit about how fullness works inside of our body. When it comes to figuring out how to recognize and be mindful and honor our fullness, there's a couple of things that tend to get in the way, and that are pretty common to get in the way. Some of that might be past experiences. For example, if you grew up in a household where your parents were always saying, "You need to clear your plate before you can go out to play". If it was always reinforced to clear your plate, as an adult, you may still have that mentality. You may feel like "I need to finish this entire plate, regardless of how hungry or full I'm feeling. This is what I'm eating."

If you had any type of food insecurity in your life, that can impact your ability to honor your fullness. Oftentimes, if we don't know where our next meal is coming from, we will tend to eat as much as we can now because we need to get that energy. We need those calories, we need that meal to hold us over for who knows how long.

Dieting experience also plays into this. If your mindset is constantly checking in on "how many calories do I have? How many points do I have? How many servings do I have left today?" Using these external indicators to tell us how much we're able or allowed to eat really disassociates us from our body. It takes us away from our ability to pay attention to how we feel because in that sense, when you're dieting, how you feel doesn't matter. What matters is how many calories you have left in the day. So that can be something that pulls us away from our ability to respect our fullness level.

And the final thing I want to talk about is sometimes it's not so much what we're eating but how we're eating that can also distract us from being able to honor our fullness. So for example, if you go to a movie theater, and you order a bucket of popcorn, it's common that we'll just snack on that popcorn not having the mindfulness about the popcorn because our brain is focused on the movie. You may leave the theater not feeling like you ate anything, when in reality you ate probably a meals worth of popcorn at that point. It's just not going to hold you over like it would if you were mindfully eating that food. So that lack of awareness can also get in the way from being able to really feel and respect our fullness level.

So knowing that we are heading into the holidays I know a lot of you have goals in mind, things that you're working on and I know that this season can feel a little bit like a balancing act. So I want to give you just five reminders, tips, whatever you want to call them, ways that we can stay in touch with our fullness level, and honor it and respect it and actually stop eating when we recognize that we're starting to feel full.

So my first tip is that this takes practice, and you're likely going to feel like you mess up. And that is okay. That is part of the process. It takes practice to learn what fullness feels like, and to learn what thoughts are helpful or unhelpful for us. It's not something we can just embody overnight and now all of a sudden, "oh, I always know when I'm full. And I can always stop eating once I feel full!" As you are stepping into this process, just remember, there is no right or wrong, there is no good or bad way to do it. It is all a learning experience. And it's all a part of the process and requires this growth over time.

The second thing I want to remind you of is to use that mindful awareness. We talk a lot on this podcast about mindful eating skills. Putting those into practice gives you a solid foundation for being able to recognize your fullness and being able to honor that. So staying present when you eat, recognizing and paying attention to what foods are satisfying to you. Getting off of autopilot and not just doing the things that we've always done. But really being considerate of what do I want this day to look like in terms of my food choices. Limiting distractions, when you're eating can be helpful. Part of intuitive eating even talks about taking a pause mid-eating to check in with yourself. The pause does not necessarily mean you have to pause and be done at this certain point. It's just a pause to check in and say "Do I still want more food? Am I starting to feel full? Am I feeling like I'm okay?" and then making that conscious choice. Because then it is mindful; if you're consciously choosing something, you have more awareness around it.

The third tip for you is to pay attention to your thoughts. Of course, it's always about thoughts, isn't it? So let's say you are eating a meal, and you're starting to feel full and you recognize the physical sensation of fullness in your body. And then you tell yourself, "Oh, I can't throw this way I have to clear my plate" or we hear that voice of like our grandparent, "oh, they're starving children in Africa". We hear these things. We have these automatic thoughts that come into our mind of why we can't stop eating. And that is so important to pay attention to because oftentimes those thoughts are those ingrained automatic thoughts. Not necessarily true. And if we look at them, so let's say I can't throw this away or have to clear my plate. Is that true? No, you are totally capable of throwing something away. You are also totally capable of not clearing your plate. I'm sure there are plenty of other things that your parents have told you or taught you that you don't listen to now as an adult, right? We all have things that we were told, sometime in our history, sometime in our past, and they just don't really apply anymore and that's okay to let them go.

You might also hear yourself saying, "Oh, I've already blown it, I might as well eat the rest of this" or "I have to eat this while I can". Those thoughts are also not true. Because when we are eating mindfully, you can't blow it. You can eat whenever so you don't have to eat it while you can. These thoughts only lead us to overeating and feeling like we need to keep going even though we don't want to we're feeling that fullness. These thoughts get in the way and overcomplicate a situation that is much simpler than we make it out to be. When it comes down to your thoughts, if you're eating something that you don't necessarily want anymore, you're starting to feel full, and it's not something that your body needs because you have enough energy that you've already had, then really what is the benefit of continuing to eat it?

When it comes down to looking at our thoughts, this is also something that doesn't change overnight. That's why the tip for this is just to pay attention to your thoughts. Start to recognize them. Start to hear what you're telling yourself and what is getting in the way or preventing you from being able to respect once you're starting to feel full.

The fourth tip or thing to remember is that you can always eat more later. Just because you stop eating now doesn't mean you can't have more later. It doesn't mean that you have to be done eating for the day even. This goes back to the idea of unconditional permission. If you don't feel like you can eat this again later, of course you will want to eat it all now. If you can only brownies at a certain time, you're going to eat as many brownies as you can when you're in that window. If you can eat brownies at any time, it loses that magic appeal. It becomes normal and we can think about it in a normal way.

Sometimes we feel, especially with holiday foods, that this isn't something that I get all the time. I only make this at Thanksgiving, or I only make this around the holidays. And that may be true. But it also doesn't mean you can't make it. When I finally realized that I could have stuffing at any time of the year, it wasn't just a Thanksgiving food, it was like mind blowing to me. Because we eat these foods at holidays thinking that we can only have them at this time so I have to eat them all. And it takes away your choice. We feel that, "oh, if I don't eat all these holiday foods now I won't get them again for another year". But you can. You can eat them any time of year. If it is something that's truly unique, if it's something someone else makes, or maybe you're on a trip in Paris having a croissant, it's okay to enjoy those things as well. That's still being mindful if it's a conscious choice. I'm not saying that you have to limit; that's the whole beauty of honoring your fullness. You know what your fullness is and you know what to honor and what is important. It's making the choice but being aware of it enough to make the choice so that it's not unconscious eating.

Okay, and the final thing to remember is that overeating is a subjective term. So with a hunger fullness scale, generally we hear that it's recommended to eat to about a seven on your fullness. Ten would be like completely stuffed where you're sick, so we usually say eat to about a seven. I want to highlight this, especially with the holidays coming up, because some days you might eat to an eight or a nine, that's okay because you get to decide. Overeating is when we eat more than we intend or more than we want to. But you get to decide. It's not a diet plan where you have to eat to a seven and then be done. On Thanksgiving, you may eat more than you would on an average Tuesday at dinner. That's okay! That's not a problem in any way!

So keeping in mind that overeating is a subjective term. Just because you have more food one day doesn't mean that you overate, it might mean that you mindfully chose to eat more on Thanksgiving and that is okay. You can still do that and align with your goals. By knowing at what point you feel comfortable eating to, maybe you say "I want to get to an eight or nine and not make myself completely sick at that ten". Then as long as you stick to the eight or nine, you're good, right? You honored the fullness that you were looking for in that meal.

Okay, so just to summarize those five reminders. One, this is going to take practice, so give yourself room to mess up and allow yourself some grace and self compassion. Two, use your mindful awareness and mindful eating skills. Three, pay attention to your thoughts as you are starting to feel full. Four, remember you can always have more later. And five, remember that overeating is a subjective term.

That is what I have for you today. I hope this is helpful. I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week and I look forward to talking with you again next week.

OUTRO MUSIC: Thanks for joining me on this episode of the compassionate wellness podcast. If this message resonated with you, please share it with someone you care about. I'd love to connect with you as well follow me on Instagram @alextreanor.coaching, or visit my website alextreanorcoaching.com. And as a reminder, Treanor spelled kind of goofy, it's T-R-E-A-N-O-R. For any references mentioned in this episode, be sure to check out the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful day and don't forget to make time for something you enjoy.