Tag Archive for: respect your fullness

4 Tips to Honor Your Fullness

One of the biggest lies diet culture pushes onto you is that there is an exact calorie or amount of food you should be eating every day. Diet culture also tells you to use outside sources to help guide your eating. Whether it’s tracking calories, points, macros, or using food lists or pre-made meal plans—these are all outside sources telling you “How much to eat”.

 

But guess what? You don’t need anything or anyone telling you when or how much to eat. You have the tools built inside of you, better known as your hunger fullness cues. These are innate feelings that tell you exactly when to start and stop eating. However, the feelings of hunger and fulness can be interrupted by long standing diets!

 

Can Hunger and Fullness Signals Return

 

The answer is yes. Once you ditch the diets and outside rules and learn to tune inward, you can reignite your inner cues!

 

I have found with my clients that attuning to hunger cues happens a bit quicker than fullness cues. There are many perceived barriers and social pressures that can cause you to eat passed the point of comfort. Perhaps you eat out of obligation and feel it would be rude to your hostess by not eating everything on the plate. Or you are distracted when eating out socially and miss that point of comfortable fullness. Or even still, you are really enjoying your meal and don’t want it to end.

 

4 Tips to Honor Your Fullness:

 

1: Be patient

 

When I talk about patience, I am referring to both patience as you eat your meal, and patience in your expectations of when you will attune to the signal.

 

In the fast-paced society we will live in, it’s easy to speed through your meal to get to the next task. Be kind to yourself, and your body, and make it a goal to slow down and not rush through the meal, be patient. Give yourself plenty of time to focus on what you are eating, savoring every bite. In this way, you will pick up your fullness signals more so than if you just focus on finishing the food on your plate.

 

You’ll also want to practice patience when it comes to actually hearing your fullness signals. It will take time for you to attune to it, especially if you’ve been dieting for a long time. There is no rush, it will come!

 

2: Check-in with Yourself

 

If you never pause to check it with how you are feeling, how will you learn to pick up the signals of your body. It’s important to periodically check in and ask yourself if you are getting less hungry and if fullness is starting to emerge. If you are still hungry, by all means continue eating. And if you are starting to feel full, perhaps now is a good time to consider finishing the meal. You are in charge.

 

3: Leave the Clean the Plate Club

 

This is one membership that does not have your best interest at heart. If you are finishing your plate because you are part of the clean the plate club, it’s time to re-evaluate. There are any number of reasons why you are a member of this club, but realizing the damage it’s caused you will help you respect the feelings of fullness you experience during the meal. You don’t have to throw away food! You can always save it for later or the next day. Just imagine how delicious it will taste when you are hungry again.

 

4: Set up a Positive Home Environment

 

Make your home a place for success by clearing space at a table for mealtime. When you have a designated area to eat your meals at, you are more likely to focus on the food in front of you. This space should be free of distractions like television and computers.

 

I recognize that it might take a while for your signals to reappear, and for you to trust them. Take your time, be patient, and enjoy the ride!

Limit Food Waste While Respecting Your Fullness

Wasting food is a hot topic in my house. While neither my husband nor myself like to waste food, I would sooner throw out leftovers or food that is “turning” than my husband would. For him, it’s about valuing the dollar. For me, it’s about respecting my body.

There are two types of food waste that I’d like to address. First, food that would be left on your plate after you’ve identified comfortable fullness. And second, food that is sitting around too long and is going bad, i.e. those bananas on your counter that are starting to get brown.

Food Left on Your Plate

If you’ve been a chronic dieter, it’s possible that you don’t know what comfortable fullness feels like. You can tell what full, overfull, and stuffed feels like, but comfortable fullness may be a foreign concept to you. This is likely because when you are dieting, you finish your plate because you are entitled to eat what you measured out. And, you’re a good rule follower, and if the diet told you what and how much to eat at dinner, you will finish the plate regardless of what your belly might say. More on this topic here.

As you move along your intuitive eating journey, you will begin to attune to hunger and fullness. And eventually, your belly will give you a signal that you are comfortably full and can stop eating now. If it happens to be that there is no food left on the plate, so be it. But if there is still food on your plate, then continuing to eat past the point of comfortable fullness will cause you to become overfull.

This is when you must decide. If you’re someone that values the dollar and doesn’t like to waste food, this can become an inner conflict. You might think that there isn’t “enough” left to save for later. But let’s take a moment to rethink this.

No matter how much is left on the plate when you’ve identified comfortable fullness, know that you don’t have to throw the food away. You can put it in a small storage container in the fridge to enjoy with your next meal or snack. I have, in the past, left over ¼ sandwich and added it to my next snack. What a treat!

Tip: If you continue to eat past comfortable fullness, the taste pleasure and satisfaction from the food diminishes. But it can be at its peak again if you save it to eat when you are hungry.

Food Spoiling

There’s nothing more aggravating than looking on the counter and seeing the bananas getting spotty, the potatoes sprouting, or the apples in the fridge turning brown. Like many others, when I food shop, I try to predict what my family will use within the next few days, however, sometimes plans go awry. Whether we decided on takeout one night or had a surprise family barbecue, some of the produce goes untouched.

As discussed earlier, I don’t want to eat the food if I am not hungry just to avoid wasting it. That is not treating my body with care and respect. But at the same time, I don’t want to throw it out. Below you will find 3 ways that I reduce food wastage while still honoring my body.

1.Freeze Your Produce 

Instead of throwing out those bananas when you notice some spots, remove the peel, cut it in chunks and freeze it to use in a smoothie later. I do the same with berries. If I see them starting to “go”, I lay them on wax paper on a tray and freeze them. Certain produce cannot be frozen; however, a good amount of vegetables and fruit can be safely stored in the freezer for weeks. Vegetables like Brussel sprouts require blanching before freezing, however it is an easy process that takes minutes and can extend shelf-life by weeks.

2.Reinvent Your Meal

If you notice that the potatoes have started to soften, change your dinner game plan. Instead of making baked potatoes, which require more firm potatoes, make mashed potatoes! While it may not have been your intended use of the potatoes, you’re still able to eat them enjoyably without them going to waste. And guess what? You can freeze mashed potatoes too! I’ve done it many times.

And for those recovering chronic dieters, can I get a YUM for mashed potatoes. These were probably on your “do not eat” list for a while. Now that you have given up dieting, you can enjoy them without guilt.

Brown bananas? Make banana muffins!

Mushy peaches and plums? Make fruit compote!

You get the idea!

3.Proper Storage

While some fruits and vegetables can be left on the counter, most last longer in the refrigerator. The colder temperature in the refrigerator can slow down many of the enzymes in ripening, extending produce shelf-life. Research the best ways to store the produce you love to make sure you are enjoying them at their best.

There are so many ways that you can limit your food waste without compromising your intuitive eating journey. Let me know some of your tips below.