Welcome back! I’m so glad you’re here! It’s so good – you took this time to read, to grow, to help yourself along the journey you’ve set for yourself. I’m so grateful to be part of your journey and to give you the help you need to make it to your goal and to live a life of peace and trust with food and your body. This is what we need – to live in balance, where food is fuel and comfort and care are available to us because we know how to provide them without substituting food to cover up our needs. Are you ready to add another tool to your kit of self-love? Let’s do it!
Today we’re continuing on our path of finding fullness. This is the companion to hunger – we need both hunger and fullness to work together as we move toward our healthy normal body weight. That’s the first key to finding fullness: In order to find fullness, you must find hunger first. It’s not possible to find hunger if you start eating and you’re not hungry. If you start a process that’s designed to start with hunger and you aren’t hungry when you start, you can’t figure out where is full enough.
Now, sometimes you find yourself snacking and realize that you aren’t even hungry. You just fell into mindless eating and woke up mid-bite to find you are eating when you didn’t really mean to. So what do you do? Stop it. Right now. I mean it. If you are eating and didn’t mean to, just stop. Don’t let it mean that you blew it, forget it, I’ve already messed up so I’ll just finish this doughnut. Nope. Just stop. You can stop with the bag of chips in your hand and drop them right in the trash or put them away for your meal. Even in the midst of a mistake, you can stop and take care of yourself – you’re worth it!
So, if you haven’t already read or watched this series on Finding Hunger, go back and get this for yourself. When you start with finding true physical hunger in your body, you have already started learning how to feel the quiet sensations from your stomach. So when you start looking for fullness, you’ll find it!
What is full enough? I’ve got two ways for you to start checking in with your body to find fullness. These are just tools, ways for you to gauge the sensation you feel in your body. Most of us have spent years ignoring our body and often abusing it – not giving it adequate rest, water, not using the bathroom when we need to, and eating regardless of whether we are actually hungry or not. So, see these tools as an opportunity to rebuild the connection between your mind and body.
The first tool is the hunger scale for my numerical people. If you went through the hunger series, you know this one. This time, we’re focusing on the positive end of the scale. Remember that the negative numbers are hunger and you want to be at about a -4 before you eat (hungry enough that you’re sure you’re truly hungry but not ravenous). You’re looking for the opposite for fullness – you want to be aiming for about a +4 for full enough. +4 is comfortable and light – it feels satisfied in your stomach, but not as though you need to loosen your pants or lay down for a break from that meal you just ate. Digestion takes energy, so if you overeat, you will divert lots of energy to your stomach and away from your brain and you’ll need a nap!
Now, for my non-numerical folks, let’s talk about the sensations your body feels when you’re full. Finding fullness with numbers or sensations is the same – it takes tuning in, paying attention, noticing the sensation of your body as it fills up with the meal. The ideal amount of fullness is enough. You want to be able to feel a quiet sense of satisfaction, where the hunger sensation has gone away and you just don’t need any more food. Sure, you could eat more, but you could be just fine with what you’ve eaten. The emptiness is gone, but you don’t feel a stretching sensation from your tummy. You feel light and energetic, able to go for a walk, able to bend over and pick your shoes up off the floor. You could fit more in your stomach because it’s stretchy, but you don’t need anymore because the hunger is gone.
Now, the difference between enough and too much, or +4 and +5 or more can be just a couple of bites. You might start to sense from your stomach that the meal is almost over and continue eating because you want more of the flavor. Often you’ll find yourself over full because that extra wasn’t needed. We will get into tactics and practicals to help you know exactly when to stop in upcoming posts, but for now, just know that enough is quiet. You’ll want to pay attention so you hear the whisper from your stomach that says you’re done. By the time your stomach yells at you to stop eating, you’ve had too much!
You can do this! Spend this week waiting for hunger and listening for the whisper of fullness. If you’re able to do that consistently, you will watch the scale go down too.
For those of you waiting for the webinar and course launch, it’s coming! Make sure you’re on my email list so you don’t miss it – sign up on the popup on this blog if you haven’t already and you’ll get my emails (and nothing else!). And if you really want to work with me one-on-one, the window is closing for private coaching with me. If that’s what you want, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and I’ll make sure to get you in before the course launch – let’s set up your consultation right away!
Here’s your video help for the week!