Over the years, I’ve noticed in the intuitive eating space we end up spending more time on honoring hunger, and fullness can become an afterthought. But for many people feeling their fullness and honoring that can be just as challenging as honoring their hunger.
So we’re going to spend this post talking about the fullness scale and tips to help honor your fullness.
What is the fullness scale?
The fullness scale is one-half of the intuitive eating hunger fullness scale that can be used to get more in touch with your body’s hunger and fullness cues.
You can use the fullness scale as a tool to start getting a better feel for how your body experiences fullness in its different stages. We all feel fullness from neutral (where we don’t really feel hungry or full) all the way to extremely full (where you might feel sick from being so full).
You can use the fullness scale to rate your fullness during and after your meal to gain insight into how your fullness changes. Try to approach using the fullness scale as an experiment.
Intuitive eating is NOT a hunger fullness diet where you have to stop eating at a certain fullness level. Instead, it’s just getting to know your body better and what you prefer.
Why honoring your fullness matters
Fullness is an important part of the eating experience. Because when we allow ourselves to feel full and satisfied, it honors our hunger and body’s needs.
I find that once I started allowing myself to feel satisfied with meals I was able to focus on food less. When I was eating based on a meal plan or trying to stop at 80% full to eat less, half the time I wouldn’t feel satisfied and would spend more energy thinking about food all the time.
Honoring your fullness is part of a healthy relationship with food.
And yes, you deserve to feel full no matter what your body looks like or what you’re eating.
Feeling full and satisfied with meals is just a human experience everyone deserves. Diet culture may have taught you otherwise, but we can change that by healing your relationship with food.
Tips for using the fullness scale
Try out these tips:
Check in with your body during and after eating
The simplest way to start learning or deepen your understanding of your fullness cues is to start checking in with how your body is feeling. While eating you can do quick assessments with questions like “how full do I feel” and “is this satisfying”.
You can watch how your fullness progresses during the meal then repeat the questions when finished and about 30 minutes after eating. Over time, you’ll get a better understanding of your body’s fullness cues that will help you honor your fullness.
Test stopping your meal at different fullness levels
Experimenting with ending your meal at different fullness levels deepens your understanding of your fullness levels. This tip can be hard for people to do. Especially if you have ingrained beliefs about when you’re supposed to stop eating, like when you’re partially full, overly full, or when your plate is clean.
So try to approach this as a test and tell yourself it’s not how you’ll always do it. It’s just an experiment.
Give yourself permission to eat more later
Whenever you stop eating, give yourself full permission to eat more later. This can ease any stress when experimenting with stopping at different levels of hunger. It can feel safer and more comfortable to stop eating when you know you can have more later if you want it.
So save the leftovers (if there are some) and just remind yourself it’s there if you want it later.
Break the “clean your plate” rule
So many people were taught to clean their plates before they could leave the table or maybe the rule was to finish your meal before you could have dessert. While the rule was probably well intended to avoid wasting food and make sure you had enough to eat, it can create some anxiety about not finishing your plate.
So, as part of the food freedom journey most people need to spend some time on this belief. To break the habit it can help to leave some food on your plate and practice new beliefs like:
- I was taught to finish my plate, but I don’t have to if I don’t want to
- It’s okay not to finish my plate
- I can save this food for later
- I got the value out of this food whether I eat the last of it or throw it away
- It’s more valuable to me to feel comfortably full and satisfied than to finish this
I do want to mention there is nothing wrong with finishing your plate or leaving food on it. We don’t always know how much will satisfy us when filling up our plates.
Honoring your fullness will take some practice. But over time it becomes second nature where you’ll eat without really spending much time or energy thinking about it. Instead, you’ll simply start enjoying food and moving on with your day.