When you’re frequently dieting, it’s so easy to get out of touch with how to naturally stop eating when you’re comfortably full. That’s because you’re eating based on some meal plan someone created that doesn’t match your natural fluctuations in hunger and fullness levels.
Of course, this makes it more difficult to stop eating when you feel comfortably full because dieting disconnects you from how to actually do that.
By healing your relationship with food you can learn to get back in touch with your intuitive instincts around food to create ease – no willpower or discipline required.
Why it’s hard to stop eating even when you’re full
The reason it’s hard to stop eating when you’re comfortably full comes down to your relationship with food and your connection to your hunger and fullness cues.
Let’s take a closer look at the 3 most common reasons it’s hard to stop when full that I’ve noticed after working with my intuitive eating coaching clients.
You were extra hungry before eating
If you’re waiting to eat until you’re extremely hungry, it’s so much easier to eat more than your body needs to be satisfied. I know I’ve been there before. When I was dieting I thought I would eat less if I waited until I was hungrier to eat because I was putting more time between meals.
But I’d end up being so hungry that I would eat quickly that I couldn’t feel when I got full until after I was done eating and felt uncomfortable from my overly full stomach.
Clean your plate club
As a kid, were you told you couldn’t leave the table until your plate was clean? Or were you told to eat more so you didn’t waste the food?
It’s so common for people to feel like they need to eat the entire serving they put onto their plate even if they’re already feeling full. So this could be the reason you’re having a hard time stopping when you feel comfortably full.
You don’t let yourself eat those foods often
When a food you like is rare, it’s more tasty when you’re used to having it. Scarcity increases the craving for that food and the dopamine when you do have it.
It’s why people joke that they can’t keep some food in the house because then when they do have it, they just eat it all in a day.
The more we restrict and limit a food the harder it actually is to eat it in moderation because you’re trying to get as much of it as you can while it’s available.
Tips to stop eating when comfortably full with ease
If you want to stop eating when you’re at that comfortably full and satisfied level, you first want to pick out why you’re not stopping. It could be one of the reasons above, a few of them, or something else.
Most tips will try to just give you strategies to stop, but those behavior changes don’t work without also changing your mindset and relationship with food. This is why working on your relationship with food is so much more valuable than just finding a new diet plan to follow.
Address any physical needs
First and foremost, if you want to stop when full you need to be eating enough food throughout the day to satisfy your physical hunger needs. The exact schedule is whatever works for you, but make sure you’re getting balanced meals throughout the day so your body is getting all the nutrients it needs.
Practice full permission with food
This tip follows the principles of intuitive eating. When you give yourself full permission to eat as much food as you want of any food, you’ll feel less pressure to eat food while it’s available. Creating restrictions and scarcity around food increases your sense of urgency to eat those foods.
But when you give yourself full permission to eat, there isn’t a rush to eat as much as you can right now. You can always come back later to eat more.
Addressing the clean plate belief
I personally think the beliefs needed to finish your plate come from the generations that experienced times of hardship, like the great depression, and a bit of evolution from when people were hunters and gatherers. When you don’t have enough food it makes sense to want to consume every bite of food available.
But you don’t have to continue to carry that forward. There are a couple of beliefs and practices you can try to help move past this relationship with food.
If you are experiencing a time when maybe financially or for whatever reason you have poor access to food. If that’s the case and you want to be able to stop when full. I’d recommend saving whatever is left on your plate to eat later when you do feel hungry again.
Another option is looking at your belief around what it means to waste food. Here’s one belief I adopted on my own intuitive eating journey – it’s a waste to eat food that I don’t truly want at that moment.
I decided to believe forcing myself to finish my plate was a waste of my energy and it wasted my physical comfort by making me uncomfortably full. So depending on the food I would save the leftovers or toss it. Whatever option felt most aligned for that day.
The most important thing to remember is your behaviors and actions with food come from your relationship and beliefs about food. When you create the relationship with food you want, your actions will naturally align themselves with what you want without willpower.