“Stop Eating When You're Not Hungry with The Intuitive Eating Hunger Scale”
You may be feeling frustrated with your body because of how bloated and uncomfortable you often feel after meals. All the different health information out there can feel overwhelming, not to mention the damaging impacts that a lifetime of diet culture can have on your relationship with food and your body. A lot of my clients feel out of touch with their bodies and come to me wondering “how do I know how much food to eat?” or “how do I stop eating when I’m not hungry?” The amount of food you eat, mindfulness around eating, and the timing of eating throughout the day can have a major impact on your gut health. Being able to start eating when you’re hungry (rather than starving & hangry), and stop eating when you’re comfortably full, is a non-negotiable step towards gut health and ultimately freedom from symptoms. The good news is you can start today with a tried and true tool, the Intuitive Eating Hunger Scale.
Intuitive Eating 101
It’s not only what you eat that makes a difference but also how you eat. As someone who used to struggle with gut dysbiosis, the practice of mindful and intuitive eating has been a game changer in reducing my digestive symptoms, stress levels, and improving my mind-body connection. Intuitive eating has actually been shown to reduce physiological stress, blood pressure and even fasting glucose.
The fundamental premise behind intuitive eating is that, if listened to, the body intrinsically ‘knows’ the quantity of food to eat to maintain both nutritional health and an appropriate weight. It’s also about trusting yourself to make food choices that feel good for you, without judging yourself or the influence of diet culture.
Intuitive Eating is based on 10 basic principles, including: rejecting a “diet mentality”, honoring your hunger and fullness, eating for satisfaction, respecting your body, and honoring your health.
When practicing intuitive eating, you let go of rigidity around food and give yourself permission to eat in a way that feels good for your body.
The Hunger Scale
The Hunger/Fullness Scale is a quintessential Intuitive Eating (IE) tool. Learning to interpret your body’s hunger and fullness cues can be easier said than done - whether your upbringing involved the expectation to be a member of the “clean your plate club” (aka continuing to eat even if you’re not hungry) and/or you have decades of dieting experience under your belt (ie counting calories & ignoring your hunger in the name of weight loss).
The intuitive eating hunger scale is a tool that’s used to better understand different levels of hunger and fullness, and how to appropriately respond to those levels. Below is the hunger scale I use.
The hunger scale is simple to use! People feel various levels of hunger in different ways, and it can take some time to get accustomed to the meaning of your body’s signals.
How to use the Hunger Scale:
Here are the basics of how to use the Hunger/Fullness Scale:
Check in with yourself before, during, and after each meal or snack, and make note of where you currently stand on the hunger/fullness scale.
To check in with your body, it can be helpful to close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, ask yourself how you are feeling, and notice any sensations in your body.
The goal is to start eating when you’re around a 3 or 4 on the hunger scale, and stop eating around a 6 or 7. It’s helpful to slow down during your meal and really eat mindfully. Here are some simple ways you can eat mindfully:
Set aside at least 15-20 minutes for eating your meal
Avoid distractions like the TV, computer, your phone, or loud music while eating
Sit at a table
Chew your food thoroughly (like to applesauce consistency)
Put your fork down between bites
How to Stop Eating When You’re Not Hungry
The sensations of hunger and fullness include physical, mental, and emotional changes and can feel different for different people. Learning to identify your body’s unique hunger and fullness signals can help you better nourish yourself by eating before you get TOO hungry and stopping when you’re comfortably full. Below are the ways the Intuitive Eating Workbook explains the sensations:
“Full” can feel like:
Stomach: ranging from slight distention to heaviness and some (normal!) bloating.
Head: Fewer thoughts about food and eating. The desire to eat is diminished.
Mood: Many feel a mood shift; they begin to feel pleasant or relaxed.
Energy: Some people feel re-energized. Others may even feel drowsy.
“Not hungry” can feel like:
Not fully satisfied.
Often get hungry soon - within one or two hours - after eating.
Could comfortably take a few more bites.
“Hunger” can feel like:
Nuances of hunger
Stomach feels empty, rumbly, gurgling, or gnawing. While it’s common to experience hunger in the stomach, it isn’t always this way and is actually commonly experienced elsewhere in the body.
Throat: dull ache.
Head: Cloudy thinking, light-headedness, headache, difficulty focusing and concentrating. Experiencing more thoughts about food and eating.
Mood: Irritability or crankiness. Perhaps you have to work harder to refrain from snapping, even though you don’t present as irritable to the outside world.
Energy: Waning, perhaps to the point of sleepiness. There can be dullness and even apathy.
Numbness: overall lethargy.
Benefits of Using the Hunger Scale
When people are successfully able to identify their own hunger & fullness, and use it before and during meals, they tend to experience increased mindfulness. This has been found to lead to increased blood flow to the digestive tract, increased nutrient absorption, reduced bodily inflammation, reduced preventable intestinal permeability, increased stomach acid, and improved vagus nerve activity. (4)
All of the above can lead to a decrease in digestive symptoms like bloating, acid reflux, and constipation or diarrhea. Now that’s a very tangible win!
Takeaways
Intuitive eating is a mindful, non-diet approach to food that encourages you to eat what your body needs. Monitoring your feelings with the Hunger & Fullness Scale can help you get more in touch with your body & improve your ability to properly nourish it.
Looking for one-on-one support with a gut health coach? If you’d like help implementing these intuitive eating tools and figuring out the root cause for your digestive symptoms, click here to learn more about my nutrition coaching services.
Written by Rachel Doyle, MS, RD
July 18, 2022
Sources:
1.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6819977/
3. Tribole, Evelyn, and Elyse Resch. The Intuitive Eating Workbook: Principles for Nourishing a Healthy Relationship with Food. Echo Point Books & Media, LLC., 2019.