How to Listen to Your Hunger Cues
As you eat more slowly, your brain can catch up with your stomach before you overeat. The successful folks have built the skills, through practice, that allow them to be mindful, pay attention to their emotions, and tune into their body’s signals. After years (or decades) of dieting, hunger and fullness cues have long since been overruled by strict calorie rations and drowned out by the highs and lows of emotion-driven binges. At your next meal, stop to check in with yourself and see where your hunger levels are. This might be challenging at first, so be patient with yourself as your practice and learn. When we’re bored, it’s common to mindlessly reach for snacks or sweets out of habit.
Tuning into Internal Signals for Eating
Hunger can manifest in various ways, such as a growling stomach, low energy, difficulty concentrating, or even irritability. Fullness, on the other hand, is the feeling of satisfaction and comfort after eating, indicating that our body’s energy needs have been met. Learn to differentiate between physical hunger and emotional hunger. Ask yourself if you’re eating out of true physiological need or if you’re using food to cope with stress, boredom, or other emotions. In this analogy, reestablishing the friendship means feeding your body adequately throughout the day. As a general guideline (not a rule), that looks like eating a satisfying meal or snack every 2-4ish hours.
Supports hunger and fullness signals, since frequent overeating can make the stomach and brain less responsive to fullness cues. Psychological hunger, on the other hand, is not about your body’s need for energy—it’s driven by emotions, habits, or environmental triggers. You might feel the urge to eat out of boredom, stress, sadness, or simply because it’s part of a routine (like snacking while watching TV). Basically, if you’re not responding to your body’s signals, eventually, you’ll lose touch with them. To get back in touch with your body’s signals, you first need to have your basic needs met with relative safety, adequate sleep, food and water. If you are still working on consistency with eating and having difficulty hearing hunger cues, be careful not to go more than 3-4 hours without eating.
Acknowledge that the cycle of restriction, temporary weight loss, and subsequent regain is a biological response, not a personal failure. Throwing out “dieter’s tools” such as scales, measuring cups, and calorie-counting apps helps eliminate the external metrics that override the body’s internal signals. Intuitive Eating (IE) is an evidence-based framework created by dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch that moves away from external food rules.
How to Know If You’re Really Hungry
When I’m teaching clients how to use the hunger fullness scale, I encourage them to think of it like a multiple choice question. Rule out the options that don’t make sense, then go with your gut instinct on what remains. Remember, the goal isn’t that you are able to perfectly identify that you are at 3.47 or something like that. It’s a tool for building back the connection with your body and the goal is the practice, not the perfection of it. To use the hunger and fullness scale, simply take a second to check in with how you feel, and pick the number on the scale that best corresponds.
A Guide on How to Listen to Your Body’s Hunger Cues
The goal of the Stop, Drop, & Feel is to sit completely still with your emotions for two minutes with zero distractions. It will feel like the longest two minutes of your life—because the emotions that drive us to eat when we aren’t hungry are the edgiest ones—and that’s how you know you’re onto something big. Also, the ‘feeling’ step can also be quite difficult, and it’s important to distinguish between “feeling your feelings” and self-care. Learning how to stop eating when you’re full is arguably the hardest step, especially for those struggling with compulsive eating.
- Let’s dive into why understanding hunger signals are so important, as well as how you can get started today.
- Ignoring these early signs triggers a primal drive to overeat later, making mindful eating nearly impossible.
- Assessments — or worksheets, diaries, journals — can be used to help you objectively observe and evaluate your eating and exercise choices, and how those choices make you feel.
- When I’m teaching clients how to use the hunger fullness scale, I encourage them to think of it like a multiple choice question.
- This ability is so fine-tuned that – if left to determine their own energy intake – they will eat to within a few calories of their daily energy needs.
- The intuitive principles of honoring hunger and feeling fullness are primarily reliant on connecting to and listening to the body.
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By finding ways to balance your internal hunger cues with external demands, you can maintain a healthy and flexible relationship with food and your body, even in challenging situations. In situations where you need to eat on a schedule, such as at work or school, it’s essential to find ways to balance your hunger cues with external demands. Start by listening to your body’s hunger and fullness signals as much as possible, even if it means eating at slightly unconventional times. If you know you have a busy day ahead, try to eat a nourishing meal or snack beforehand to satisfy your physical hunger. If you’re unable to eat when you’re hungry, try to choose snacks or meals that are nutrient-dense and satisfying, rather than relying on convenience or processed foods.
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With practice, you’ll be able to better understand what your body wants and needs and make choices that align with what it’s asking for. Throughout the day (before meals, during meals, and after meals), take note of where you are on the hunger and satiety scale. Checking in with your hunger signals before you eat can help you identify if you’re actually hungry, or if the environment or situation you’re in is influencing your decision of what to eat or how much to eat. From being CONSUMED by working out and her struggle with her body and food to living in flow and having it totally easy in this department so she can focus on other things in life. Watch Christine’s Interview where she shares how she was able to let go of food focus and control and focus on what matters, in turn making her relationship with food and her body a smooth and easy one.
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Learning how to listen to hunger cues was life-changing, especially during my weight loss journey, where I lost over 110 pounds. Normally this watermelon and cantaloupe caprese would not be enough food for me at a meal, but I wasn’t feeling super hungry so I didn’t bother with the store bought pasta salad I was going to have on the side. I was at a 7ish after eating, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5556586/ but since I knew I ate less than typical, I usually try to check in to see if I need a snack a little earlier than usual.
How to Use the Hunger and Fullness Scale
Shifting the focus to how movement enhances mood, increases energy, or reduces stress makes it a sustainable form of self-care. This encourages choosing enjoyable activities like dancing, gardening, or a brisk walk instead of forcing adherence to a high-intensity routine that is mentally draining. This is why under-eating and getting over-hungry is not the answer to weight loss. Deprivation of any kind (purposeful or circumstantial) will lead to you being over-hungry.
Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?
Make sure to include proteins and complex carbs in your diet. Carbs are often seen as the enemy, but our brains need them to function and thus become a vital part of our diet. Proteins take longer to digest so they make you feel fuller between meals. Also, a high protein intake is critical while working out to avoid the loss of muscles. Avoid starting a meal when you are at a hunger level of 1 or 2.
It’s helpful to pause and take a few seconds to slow down and breathe before according to checking in to help connect with your stomach cues. Because research tells us that overriding these signals (not listening to those internal cues of hunger and satiety) can lead to overeating and eating in the absence of hunger. And, relearning to hear these messages takes a lot of patience and hard work. Personally, I often mistake thirst for hunger, and end up eating…then feeling unsatisfied…because what I really needed was a drink. Even knowing this about myself, it remains a tough message for me to hear. I share this analogy because so often, clients feel frustrated when they don’t feel their hunger and fullness cues.
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If you find yourself reaching for food in response to emotional states, try to identify the underlying feelings and address them in alternative ways. For example, if you are stressed, try taking a few deep breaths, going for a short walk, or practicing yoga. If you are bored, engage in a creative activity or call a friend to chat. By acknowledging and addressing your emotional needs, you can reduce unnecessary eating and develop a healthier relationship with food.