Honoring Hunger and Fullness

Are you ready to dive into a crucial discussion about honoring hunger and fullness? At times, it's something we all need to address, especially when the holiday season rolls around, or life gets busier than usual. Let's explore why it's essential to pay attention to these physical signals and why treating your body like a "baby" can lead to healthier habits.

Why Honor Hunger and Fullness

Now, let's talk about the concept of honoring hunger and fullness. It's a topic that requires us to be sensitive to the signals our body sends, regardless of the emotions, sensations, or situations we find ourselves in. Life can get pretty hectic, leaving us rushing around a million miles an hour. In the midst of all this chaos, we often ignore or neglect our body's simple yet vital signals.

How to Honor Hunger and Fullness

Let's use an analogy to understand this better: imagine your body as one of those dolls that cries or acts like a real baby when it's hungry. Your body is similar; it gives you signals when it's getting hungry. Your responsibility is to pay attention. After all, you wouldn't ignore a crying baby; you'd take care of it. Similarly, it's crucial to nurture your body because, deep down, there's a "little kid" waiting to be fed.

The idea of honoring hunger and fullness is straightforward yet profound. It consists of two key components: knowing when to start eating and knowing when to stop.

Hunger Scale

Starting with hunger, picture a scale ranging from zero to ten, with ten representing extreme hunger and zero being no hunger at all. The sweet spot to commence your meal is between two and three. When you start noticing these hunger signals in this range, you're doing the right thing. It's your body's way of communicating its needs.

Now, imagine what happens when you wait until you're at a hunger level of ten. Just like the baby doll we mentioned, you'll be screaming for food. When you're starving, you're more likely to overeat. It's not a wise idea to attend a party or visit a restaurant when you're famished. That's when we tend to consume more than we should, whether it's food or drinks, making it akin to grocery shopping when you're ravenous – it never ends well.

Fullness Scale

The next step in this process is honoring fullness. To do this effectively, you can follow a simple rule: it takes about 15 minutes for your brain to register fullness. You can extend your mealtime by chatting or taking smaller bites, which allows your body to catch up with your eating pace.

While you're eating, ask yourself the following: "On a scale from one to ten, how full am I?" If you find yourself between six and seven, and no more than eight, you're in the ideal range. However, if you're leaning towards eight or beyond, it's time to ease up on the food.

How to Stop Eating

In fact, if you continue eating after your body signals fullness, you'll be consuming more than your body needs. So, how do you stop? It's quite simple. You can announce it aloud, put your plate away, place your utensils on a napkin or paper towel on the plate, or even physically stand up and move away from the table. These actions signal both to your brain and anyone around you that you're done. This way, you won't find yourself going back for seconds just because the food is still on your plate.

Summary

So, let's honor our hunger and fullness scale by paying attention to our body's signals. It's about recognizing when you're getting hungry (between two and three) and preparing your food accordingly. When it comes to fullness, aim to stop eating between six and seven, but never more than eight. This simple yet profound approach allows you to connect with your body and improve your relationship with food.

Bon Appétit! 🍽️💆‍♀️

Video Transcript

So let's talk about honoring hunger and fullness. I believe this topic is we really need to be very attentive to honoring our body with any kind of emotions, any kind of sensations, any kind of signals when the body is trying to talk to us. And very often because we're so busy stressed out and overwhelmed and rushing, I'm Russian I can, but can you million miles an hour, we just ignore or neglect listening to the very simple, but profound important signals of the body sending to us.

To imagine, I love this comparison, imagine your body is like, you know, they used to have those maybe still do the dolls that you have to feed, and they start crying or they actually perform like a real human baby. To imagine your body is this way it's going to start giving you signals when it's kind of getting hungry or it's getting full and our job is to pay attention. If you have a baby, are you going to neglect the baby? If we neglect the baby, the baby is going to scream even louder. It's just not a good thing to do.

So let's treat our bodies like a baby, like a little kid because actually we do have that little kid sitting in our body wanting to be nourished. So it's really honoring our body by nourishing our body properly. Okay, so honoring hunger and fullness. So there are two elements here, right? If I say a hunger sometimes I show on the bottom fullness I show on the top, because it's like it's creating a scale. Okay, so especially if you can sit down right now and use a pen, draw a line in the middle of the page, so the bottom will be your hunger on top will be your fullness scale.

I love this comparison because I'm so visual and it helps me. So now imagine when like the baby, the baby is going to give some signals, right, that I'm kind of getting hungry. So the question is to really pay attention, do this for the upcoming week. It's so useful too. What signals does your body give you that you're getting hungry? So if on the bottom, the hunger scale from zero to 10, when let's say 10 is in the middle on the top of this line, and between two and three, you start noticing the signals of hunger.

Oh my gosh, I'm noticing the signals of my hunger. That means I'll have to take a snack with me. This is actually what's happening with my body. Okay, so starting to notice signals of hunger. And in fact, at this number between two and three, that's what I just did. We're preparing our food. I'm going to leave the house right after this, so I need to prepare, well, mentally decide what it's going to be and take my food with me. And then on the scale from between six and seven, no more than eight, we have to eat.

Now imagine when we wait until 10 that we are so hungry, whereas the horse of ketchup, we tend to overeat because we're starving. Not a good idea to go restaurant or a party starving. We tend to overeat over drink. By the way, the same concept when we go grocery shopping. Okay, so now imagine at six and seven, we're actually already eating. Now from that line, we talk about honoring fullness. Now I used to give an example, start timing yourself 15 minutes is what takes for our brain to get a signal, I am eating and I'm full.

We can, you can also chew for 33 times to make the time of food longer. So we want to stop eating. So while you eat and you constantly ask yourself a question on a scale from from one to 10. One, I'm not full yet 10 I'm too, too, too full that I need to unzip my pants and I can't because I'm in public. How full am I between six and seven, no more than eight. If you say I'm full about that scale. You stop each and if you take one more spoon. If I take one more spoon is going to be more than my body needs.

The trick is, how do I start eating. Yes, that's right. Talking about both skills. How do I start eating. In fact, I can verbally announce out loud I'm done. I can physically put my plate away. I can physically put utensils on napkin or paper towel on top of the plate. I can physically five four three two one stand up and actually move away take my plate to the kitchen. This signals, not just our brain that I'm done but also for others if they're with me, that I'm done. So I imagine if I open the pet can start eating again, there's always someone who's going to say, I thought you were done.

So please, stopping eating between six and seven, no more than eight. And enjoy. Bon appetit. So this is how we honor our hungry hungry hunger and fullness scale. We're really tapping into our signals of the physical body when I'm getting hungry two and three start prepping for food six and seven please start eating. And then on the fullness scale, how do I stop between six and seven on the fullness scale by announcing and physically moving my body away from the food.

Before you go. Please leave me the comments what stood out for you the most in this conversation and also, if you want to have more of those messages, sign up for some trainings get my power journal. Coach at your fingertips. Please go ahead and go to coaching by Nadia.com forward slash newsletter or just the front page. Bon appetit and leave me some comments.