Focus On Fullness: What Is Full?

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back – so glad you’re here! We are starting a whole new series on Fullness to complement the one we just finished on Hunger. Hunger and Fullness go together like peanut butter and jelly, like spring and flowers, like sand and surf. If we want to get the scale to go down, we MUST stay dialed into our hunger and fullness signals! Weight loss doesn’t happen without them…

 

But it can be tricky. How full do I want to be? Do I have to stay hungry even after I eat? What if I don’t eat enough to make it to my next meal? How do I know if I overate if I’m not stuffed? These questions are what we are going to focus on this month – we’re going to learn how to define fullness and feel it in our bodies so that we can find the sweet spot where we eat enough to be satisfied AND the scale goes down. Are you ready?

 

 

First, I want you to know that if you’re reading this and you feel skeptical and tired and frustrated with the whole weight loss journey, I get it. Some days you just want to throw up your hands and be done with all of it. You’ve been working at this weight loss business for a long time and despite all of your efforts, the scale is going up and down and you don’t really see the changes you want. So you just feel frustrated! Then you want to eat everything in front of you – the kid’s soggy cereal, the pb pretzels in the pantry, a handful of M&Ms, leftover cold pizza – whatever. Doesn’t matter, so you’ll eat any of it as long as you don’t have to keep working at this weight loss thing that’s going nowhere.

Don’t give up! Even now, I have days where I feel that same frustration even though I’m living in a body that I’m thrilled to live in after a lifetime of being overweight and obese. I have hormone swings that cause the scale to jump up (never just jumps down though, right?!). I also am tempted to give in to out-of-control eating because I’m tired or frustrated or discouraged. But I’ve learned how to see what’s happening in my emotions and my thoughts so that I don’t sabotage myself. Don’t give up because you will get this – don’t set yourself back with self-sabotage! Let’s get to what you need to keep going…

 

 

First, I want to give you a new definition of fullness. When we eat for fullness that gets us to live in an overweight body, we have learned over the years to eat until we feel overfull. We eat until we are at least slightly uncomfortable at the end of a meal and that’s maybe why we stop eating. Sometimes we eat until we’re stuffed or we need to lay down on the couch to recover from that meal we just ate. Eating until we are overfull causes us to gain weight.

So what’s full? Our new definition of full is enough. We want to eat just enough to make the hunger feeling go away but not so much that the new sensation we feel is a distended stomach pressure. We want to feel satisfied but not a feeling of pressure in the stomach.

So what does it feel like? Remember when I described hunger as a sensation that comes in waves, first quietly and then louder as you wait? Fullness is similar. When you start to feel full, you want to feel it as it begins. It’s very quiet and polite – the feeling is like a little whisper in your ear that says, “I think I’m good.” If you’re not aware, you can easily miss it and the next thing you know, you feel overfull.

 

Now, we will spend the next few weeks getting into the details of how to eat to find fullness and all the tips and tricks I can give you! But for this week, I want you to just work at feeling full enough to make the hunger go away. I want you to get reacquainted with listening to your stomach as you eat. Often we go unconscious while we’re eating, and either the plate is clean or our stomach is screaming at us to stop before we’re done eating. Eating to a quiet and polite sense of fullness takes focus and practice and consciousness. But you’re up for it – you can learn this skill!

 

 

You can do this! Keep going and don’t give up on yourself – you’re worth all the care and love you offer to others. Do this good thing for yourself and give your body the food it needs and not more than it asks for – it’s an act of self-love!

If you’ve been waiting for the webinar I’ve created called Weight Loss Without Willpower – it’s coming! When it’s ready I will be sending you emails to sign up so you don’t miss it. But if you’re not on my list, how will I know you want to come for the webinar? If you’re not already subscribed to my list, just enter your name and email into the popup on this blog’s homepage and I’ll make sure to let you know when the signup for the webinar goes live. I can’t wait to see you there!

 

Here’s your video help for the week!