Recognizing Comfortable Fullness

Written by Michelle Shelton

April 25, 2023

While working with a client recently, he shared his frustration with learning to feel his fullness. He knew exactly what it felt like to be too full. He knew the discomfort, the heartburn, the lethargy that comes with eating past the point of fullness. But he could not recognize the earlier signs and body cues that led up to this. How could he know when to stop? He did not know how to tell when he had eaten enough to sustain his energy, feel satisfied, and still feel comfortable in his body. My body is broken, he expressed. After years of overeating, I just don’t know what fullness feels like. 

While he may have felt discouraged and different, the truth is that this is very, very common. If this story resonates with you, know you are not alone. And the good news is, recognizing your fullness can be relearned. It will take new awareness and new habits, but such is the case for any positive change in your life. And recognizing your fullness is absolutely a source of positive change. 

Where do you begin? Relearning to recognize your fullness can be achieved by following these four practices.

1. Practice Neutral Observation of your eating experience. This is so important. We are surrounded by so much noise related to food and eating, so much judgment and declaration of right and wrong, so many shoulds. For example, if you believe you should only eat a specific portion of a certain food, this belief could interfere with your ability to tell when you are full. This could work either way. You may actually be full before you’ve eaten the full amount. Or you could finish and believe you should be full when, in fact, you are still hungry. When you notice these judgments and shoulds, gently let them know you are listening to your body for the answers and relax back into the neutral observation. 

2. Pause throughout the meal. Last night, my niece joined us for dinner. Our family is practicing eating slowly, noticing how the food tastes, noticing what we enjoy and what we don’t enjoy, and stopping when we are full. As they sat down at the table, I reminded them to eat slowly and enjoy. My niece responded, I have to eat fast! Otherwise I fill up too fast and I can’t finish my food! I smiled inside and thought, exactly! 

Most of us rush through our meals as if they were a task to be completed rather than an experience to be enjoyed. Slowing down gives you space to pay attention. Pausing throughout the meal gives you the chance to practice neutral observation as you consider, how does this food taste? Am I still enjoying it? Do I still feel hungry? Am I satisfied? Remember, this is a neutral observation. These questions aren’t intended to get you to stop eating. They are only intended to help you tune in to your body. 

3. Eat without distraction. In our frenetic world of busyness and distraction, multitasking sometimes seems like the key to success. The truth is, in most cases, there is so much more power in single tasking. Single tasking allows you to tune in to your present experience. Single tasking when you are eating allows you to really enjoy the food, to notice the effect it is having on your body, and to savor the experience of being nourished and feeling satisfied. When you eat, turn off the t.v. Resist the urge to read the news or scroll through social media. Tune in to the table, tune in to the food, tune in to the people around you. Not only will this improve your eating experience, it will improve your relationship with your body and with the people around you.

4. When you finish eating, describe what you experience in your body. Rate your fullness as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Going back to where we started in this article, it is very common to lose touch with what fullness feels like in your body. The journey back to deeper awareness and connection to these cues will take time and will involve some trial and error. Taking the time to pause and notice how you feel after you finish eating brings it all together. If you notice you are over full, take note of all the sensations you experienced leading up to this feeling as you paused and noticed throughout the meal. Identify what you felt earlier in the meal and use these as cues to stop the next time. This is not a journey of perfection. It is a journey of returning to yourself. 

In summary, know you are not alone if you feel like you do not know how to recognize comfortable fullness. Know that two things are true: it is very, very common and there is a path back to your fullness intuition. By withholding judgment, creating space to observe through regular pauses, removing distractions, and noticing what you are feeling both during and after the meal, you will rediscover your comfortable fullness cues that will help you nourish who you are.