Tapping Into Your Hunger and Fullness ** LAST EPISODE UNTIL MARCH **
This is the breakdown you need to begin to understand your hunger fullness cues. If you’ve had a long history of dieting and disordered eating, chances are this isn’t something you’ve paid that much attention to. So how the heck do you do so? Stay right here!
Before we get started with today’s episode, I wanted to take a second and let you know that although there are a couple of weeks left in December, this will be the last episode of 2022.
The reason for that is I’m going to be starting maternity leave right after this. I’ll take a couple of months off, and then I’ll update you exactly what I’ll return – most likely the first week of March 2023. I’ll update my mailing list on the exact details of my return as I know them more, so be sure to sign up here! You’ll get updates about when we’re coming back, along with my best tips, thoughts, and journal prompts each week.
Okay, back to today’s episode on hunger fullness cues! Even though it seems like a simple concept, there are plenty of misconceptions that come along with hunger and fullness. Like when to start relying on them and how to identify each nuance. Let’s break down the whole mystery so you can avoid mistakes that make this process feel ineffective.
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Intuitive Eating
If you ask someone to define intuitive eating, most people will say two things:
Breaking your food rules (being able to have whatever you want, when you want).
Tapping into your hunger fullness cues.
These are very, very important parts of intuitive eating, but they’re only a couple of the principles of intuitive eating (there’s actually 10 principles).
Intuitive eating is more of a framework for how to take care of your mind, body, and soul, and boiling intuitive eating down to just these two ideas is a reductionist idea of intuitive eating. It also makes you jump into intuitive eating too quickly (yes, that’s a thing)… which can lead to bingeing, frustration, and the feeling that intuitive eating doesn’t work.
Instead of jumping in, we have to slooooow things down and realize there’s a precursor to suddenly breaking your food rules after a history of dieting and/or restriction: The precursor is a focus on refueling your body consistently.
This means that whether you have an eating disorder or a history of yo-yo dieting, there needs to be a period of reconditioning your body to begin to trust it’ll get enough food consistently.
This does NOT entail listening to your hunger fullness cues, or breaking food rules. Why?
Because your body is completely out of whack from the history of dieting. Your body doesn’t trust that it’s going to get the nutrition it needs, when it needs it – and it definitely doesn’t trust it’s going to get nutrition without some level of stress.
So if one day you wake up and decide you’re going to listen to your hunger fullness cues, it won’t work. Your hunger fullness cues have already skipped town – why would your body continue to send you messages about when it’s hungry or when it’s full when you’ve continued to ignore them?
So, we have to focus on reconditioning your body and consistently eating in order to reintroduce hunger fullness. If you try to focus on hunger fullness before you’ve done this, IT. WILL. NOT. WORK.
100%, I am SURE of this. It will never work.
Working With a Dietitian
The first step to reconditioning your body is working with a dietitian.
I’m not saying you don’t know anything about nutrition. Honestly, you probably know a lot more about nutrition than the average person if you have a history of dieting and/or restricting.
But clearly, something isn’t working.
There’s a need for someone outside of you who can:
Teach you the knowledge they’ve learned in school/training in eating disorder treatment (rather than Google 🙃), and
Help you implement tools and skills that are hard to do alone.
Work with a dietitian who specializes in intuitive eating, eating disorders, or both. And again, without this first step of focusing on refueling your body consistently, you will never be able to feel hunger fullness cues in intuitive eating. (I may have said that more than once for a reason. 😛)
Hunger Fullness
Once you have done that first step, then you can start looking at hunger fullness cues.
Especially if you’ve read Intuitive Eating, you know about the hunger fullness scale. I love this scale, because I’m a visual person. It’s a scale from 1-10, and it goes from being absolutely famished at 1, to so full you feel like you’ll be sick at 10.
Very often, people are only in touch with the feeling of 1 and 10: when you’re really hungry and should’ve eaten hours ago, or when you’re really full and could’ve stopped several snacks ago.
The meanings of the numbers in the middle are going to be different for everyone. If you Google hunger fullness scale, there will be tons of things that pop up, and everyone will have their own version of a scale… but I want to encourage you to create your own. It’s your body, and you create the rules.
Example of Hunger Fullness
I want to give you an example of hunger fullness from the way I understand it (again, this is just for me – you create your own!).
painfully hungry, nauseous or dizzy
very, very hungry, hangry, headache, impatient to eat
pretty hungry, low energy, it’s important to eat – but you can wait
you’re hungry and ready to eat but less urgency; not hungry, not full
you’re starting to feel fullness, but you’re not satisfied yet
comfortably full, feeling content and satisfied
slightly uncomfortably full
really, really, full; stuffed and uncomfortable, feeling tired
painfully full, physically sick and nauseous
For me, staying with a 3 and 7 is a window of “comfortable hunger” and “comfortable fullness.” If I go below a 3, I feel starving, hangry, and light-headed, and above a 7 means I feel uncomfortable and physically sick. This range of 3-7 is ideal for me.
If you DO go outside of those windows of your “ideal,” that’s okay! If you did it by mistake, let’s learn from it and see what happened so you can avoid the same thing next time. Every time you eat is an opportunity for learning.
But also, there’s no right or wrong here. For example, we’re about to jump into the holiday season, and I know there’s going to be LOTS of food. If you go into a meal and then you feel really, really full after a party… there’s nothing wrong with that. We have to take away the idea that you HAVE to be within a comfortable hunger or fullness to be “right.”
Where You Feel Hunger
When you’re beginning to tap into your hunger cues, asking yourself questions can help uncover how you are feeling. There are different places where someone feels hunger. It’s possible you feel them in all different places, or you may gravitate to different parts.
Ask yourself if you feel hunger in your:
Stomach (emptiness, growling)
Mouth (it waters at food or feels parched)
Mind (you’re preoccupied with food, pictures of food look really good)
Think about your level of interest as it goes to obsession, and as it goes to a disinterest in food and how that correlates to your hunger.
You can also ask yourself about your energy level. Do you have low energy, or do you feel very energized? These can reflect your hunger or fullness levels.
Taking This to the Next Level
If you want to get curious about some of the deeper stuff about why hunger/fullness is difficult, here are some questions to consider:
What feels difficult about being in touch with your body?
What feels threatening about looking inward?
How does this happen in other places in your life?
How is it difficult for you to tap into your intuition, your decision making, or your opinions?
Does your hunger feel warranted?
How do you react to your fullness? Is it acceptable?
I want to encourage you to go beyond what’s surface level, and get even more curious.
Tweetable Quotes
“If you’ve tried to focus on hunger fullness before you’ve [focused on reconditioning your body to eat consistently], it will not work. 100%, I am sure of this, whether you’ve tried it or not, it will never work.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“Everyone is going to have their own version of a hunger fullness scale… and I want to encourage you to create your own. No matter what anyone else says, this is your body and you’re getting in touch with your body. You create the rules.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“The last place a lot of people want to be is in their body. I think we need to give space for the fact that there’s a reason this isn’t natural for you anymore and that it’s going to take a lot of time, and that’s okay. That’s expected.” – Rachelle Heinemann
“What feels so difficult about being in touch with your body? What feels so threatening about looking inward and seeing what’s going on?” – Rachelle Heinemann
Resources
Understanding Disorder Eating Episodes:
45. Basics of Intuitive Eating
46. Intuitive Eating Gone Wrong with Leah Kern, RD
54. When Intuitive Eating Isn’t The Answer with Laura Pumillo MA, RDN, CDN, CEDRD-S
More From Rachelle
Hey there! I’m Rachelle, the host of the Understanding Disordered Eating Podcast. As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I work with clients to make sense of life’s messy emotional experiences.
I believe in the power of deep work and its positive impact on your life in the long term. Learn more about how we can work together here.
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