Eating Intuitively: Learn to trust your body
Ditch traditional diet methods and let your hunger and fullness cues be your guide.
Did you know that you were born with the ability to eat intuitively? As a child, you ate when you were hungry and stopped eating when you were full. Some days that meant eating everything on your plate or only half of it. Your hunger and fullness cues were your natural guide. Many people become disconnected from their hunger and even go on to develop unhealthy relationships with food as they become busy with school and work or feel societal pressures to follow certain diets that recommend avoiding entire food groups.
With intuitive eating, different foods are not labeled as bad or good and doesn’t make you feel guilty for honoring your hunger. When getting started, it is important to reflect on your own eating habits and become aware of the differences between physical and emotional hunger. Physical hunger comes on gradually and you can use the hunger-fullness scale to gauge your level of hunger. Emotional hunger, on the other hand, can be brought on suddenly in response to strong emotions such as stress or sadness and can cause you to overeat as you will never truly feel satisfied. When this occurs, be kind to yourself and find a healthy activity to help you manage your emotions such as exercising or meditating.
What is the Hunger-Fullness Scale?
The Hunger-Fullness Scale is a guide that can help you mindfully connect to your body’s hunger and satiety cues. Simply put, the scale describes different levels of hunger and fullness to help you understand when to start or stop eating. When looking at the Hunger-Fullness Scale, level 1 would be described as painfully hungry, while level 10 would be painfully full. When eating intuitively, you should aim to start eating once you have reached a level 3 or 4 on the Hunger-Fullness Scale. At this point you are naturally hungry but have not reached extreme levels of hunger, which will allow you to thoughtfully choose what you would like to eat before reaching extreme or painful hunger. Aim to stop eating once you have reached a 6 or 7 on the scale. Staying within the 4 to 7 range will help you avoid extreme hunger or fullness and allow you to eat mindfully!
