Hunger/Fullness scale -- last one for now -- I promise

So...the magic number 7.

Yesterday, I said that 7 is the trickiest but possibly the most useful number on the scale. Here is why...

When you are physically hungry and start to eat, there is a space in time when you have eaten enough calories that the physical hunger is gone but you have no sense of fullness.

A good example of this is if you have ever run home to pick up the kids before heading out to some kind of kid activity and grabbed an apple off the counter. Before you start eating, you are at a level 3. You eat the apple (one of the smaller apples not the ones the size as your head)and when you are done, you are no longer hungry -- but you have no sense of fullness either. The reason you stopped eating was probably because the apple was gone -- had there been more, chances are you would have eaten more. But there wasn't, so you didn't.

Maybe you haven't ever paid attention to what that feels like but trust me -- it is possible, as you are eating a meal, to notice that you are no longer physically hungry and not full either.

The reason it is helpful to recognize a 7 is that if you are eating something that has no value to you (for me, an example is boxed mac and cheese -- gross but it takes care of the hunger). I do not want to spend my precious, hard-earned calories on boxed mac and cheese -- sometimes, it is necessary to eat it (if the kids cook it)to get rid of the hunger -- but I don't want to fill up on it!

Recognizing when hunger is gone, gives you one more opportunity to stop eating if the goal is just to get rid of the hunger.

Hunger/Fullness Scale continued

The last couple posts, we have been talking about the Hunger/Fullness Scale. We have covered both ends but how about the middle?

One of the questions I get asked ALOT is, "Do you expect me to only eat when I am hungry?"

NO! In our culture, there are any number of reasons to eat -- one of them is for the physical body but a great many of them social (think birthday parties, wakes, business lunches, graduation parties... Not to mention because you are happy, sad, stressed, angry -- need I say more?)

What I am asking you to do is be able to accurately label your experience. Be able to understand why you are about to do what you are about to do. That way, if you want to make a change -- you are working with all of the available information.

So...the middle of the scale.

4 5 6 Trigger Eating
Eating for any reason other than physical hunger

I use these three numbers all as one (456 instead of 4,5,6)

Trigger eating is eating for any reason other than physical hunger. (Bored, sad, etc but also because it is noon and that is lunch time even though you aren't really hungry, the piece of pie your neighbor offers when you go over to visit, the obligatory appetizer when you are out with friends)

Sometimes, clients get a little nervous about "admitting" to a 456. There is nothing wrong with eating for reasons other than hunger!! What I am asking you to do is understand this is your behavior -- learn to differentiate trigger eating from physical hunger.

The last number on the scale is a level 7. It is the trickiest but possibly the most useful number on the whole scale. More on the virtues of the 7 tomorrow.

Hunger/Fullness scale continued

Yesterday, we talked about the fullness side of the Hunger/Fullness Scale. But what if you are the person who never really gets full and is constantly snacking?

Let's look at the hunger side of the equation.

0 Extremely Hungry
Physically sick, nauseous from not eating

1 Very Hungry
Need to eat is very strong, may be light headed

2 Hungry
Sense of emptiness or hollowness in stomach

3 Physically Hungry
The first sensations of physical hunger but you are in charge and can start planning what you are going to eat

The most important thing to remember is that we are talking about physical hunger. If you ask yourself if you are physically hungry and you have to stop to think about it -- you probably aren't! Physical hunger is like a light switch -- you either are or you aren't -- there isn't a kind of.

Often, I have started coaching a client only to have had them call me a few days in and tell me they didn't realize they haven't felt physical hunger in years. With all of the available food around all of the time, many clients never wait to eat until they are physically hungry.

The goal I set for a client is to start making a plan for what they are going to eat and how full they they want to feel when they reach a level 3. At a 3, you are still very much in charge of your ability to make positive decisions for yourself. You could still safely make it through the grocery store checkout line without adding a couple candy bars into the cart ("Don't put those into the bag, please -- I will just put them here in my purse")

If you don't eat when you started to feel the first sensations of hunger, your hunger will become more intense over time. (this differs from cravings -- more on that in a later post). Once you start getting into the level 2 and 1, your ability to make decisions on what and how much to eat diminishes. You run the risk of getting so hungry that you get more full than you intended to.


Tomorrow, we will cover the center of the scale (456).

Hunger/Fullness Scale

Yesterday, I talked about not getting uncomfortably full -- ever. Simple enough in concept. How are you going to make that happen in practice?

One easy way to start this process it to understand how to use a hunger/fullness scale (think a 0-10 scale -- hunger 0-3 and fullness 8-10). For the sake of a starting point, let's start on the fullness side.


8 Full
You feel the first sensations of fullness
Anytime you have any sensation of anything in your stomach you are at least an 8

9 Very Full
Your stomach is starting to stretch

10 Extremely Full
There is a large enough volume to cause the stomach to feel significantly stretched

One of the ways to think about fullness is to visualize a balloon.

When you have gotten the balloon out of the package and put the first small breath of air into it and it has started to take shape, that is a level 8. The sides of the balloon haven't started to stretch but there is something in there.

After you put another small breath of air into the balloon, the walls will start to stretch -- when the stretch happens, that is the level 9.

With the next small breath of air, the balloon will be an entirely different size than it started out -- this is the level 10.

At a level 8, chances are you will still feel like you should/could/want to eat more. But the thing to keep in mind is the physical sensation of hunger is gone. Eating after that point is just for your head -- your body is taken care of.

The advantage of having scale numbers to write down in your journal is that you can't argue with them. If your goal at the beginning of the meal is to eat until you reach a level 8 -- you can eat to that level and then stop. If you are relying words to describe how full you are, there is some wiggle room for the extra bite (or 3)that your head wants to experience.

And remember:

The whole point of being Mindful in your eating, is to cut out a few bites so you can lose weight while still enjoying the foods you love.

Simple is different than Easy

How about this for a thought:

Losing weight is simple. Simple is different than easy.

Have you been taught it should be easy? But you know it's not -- if it was easy, we wouldn't be having these discussions. If we knew it was simple, we (the U.S.) wouldn't be spending $54 billion on diet "stuff" (food, books, gimmicks) this year.

The simple solution?

Start listening to your body. Don't get uncomfortably full -- ever. Even when something is tasting great -- stop eating sooner than you do now. You don't have to do it perfectly -- you just have to do it consistently. This isn't easy to learn -- but what is the alternative? Spending more money on complicated systems that don't work over the long-term? Losing weight on a specific diet and then gaining it all back over the next two years? That is not a solution.

Why do we eat 3 meals a day??

I received an email from my friend J. He writes:

So why do we eat three times a day? Over the last couple of weeks I have been eating just when I am hungry and I have found more often than not this is about once a day, (does not include coffee and water) at most twice but almost never three times. Sometimes its breakfast, yesterday it was a very nice lunch.

So why do we eat three times a day? Do we need it? Are we just programmed to do it? Is there any benefit to it? I have read studies about the fact that people who eat breakfast are usually thinner but perhaps this is because they don’t gorge themselves at lunch.

Great questions all -- to which I answer:

Eating 3 times a day is a social construct.

From a blood sugar perspective, we would all do well to eat 6 small meals per day -- this will have the effect of stabilizing our blood sugar and insulin release so it is more like rolling hills than the Rockies.

As for being hungry -- maybe your are more hungry than you realize but just don't notice it during the day while you are busy doing other things. Or... you are not workouting out as much (burning as many calories) as you have in the past and your body doesn't send hunger signals because you do not need the calorie intake.

Eating one or two meals a day is kind of a misrepresentation on how much food you are taking in. If you are having a fairly calorie dense meal (think pasta, alfredo, bread and oil, etc) you are obviously going to take in a greater number of calories in a given amount of time than if you were eating a dinner salad (lettuce, tomato, and cucumber -- no dressing) in the same amount of time. Therefore, it depends on what you are eating.

From eating with you in the past, I think I am fairly safe in saying that you do not spend that much time debating on what you "should" be eating and doing battle with yourself about how that stacks up against what you want to eat. You eat whatever you decide -- on to a level of fullness you find acceptable -- and then you move on.

Coffee acts as a mild appetite supressant and when you add the cream, those are the calories that get you started in the morning. The other consideration is any soda, beer or wine will have calories. Calories are what your body is really after -- doesn't really matter, from a hunger perspective, where they come from.

Lastly, you mentioned the studies about people who eat breakfast losing more weight or being able to manage their weight more effectively. You hit it right on the head with the thought that it is about the decisions people make when they are very hungry. If a person gets very hungry, they tend to overconsume when they do finally eat.

Why is more better than one?

The other day I was having a discussion with a client. He was relaying the story of his visit to friend’s house and how the friend pulled out a huge tub of cookies and exclaimed his guests “just had to try one!”. The guests (my client) ate one and it was unbelievably good. So…after the guests had eaten their cookie, the host packed up the box and put the rest away. No more cookies -- just one. The guests were stunned.

In talking with the client about this, the question came up “would you have eaten the one cookie differently if you knew it was going to be the only one you got?”. The answer was a resounding yes!

We have gotten used to many -- not just one. It didn’t even enter into my client’s head that there would be just one offered. If it had, he would have eaten the cookie slowly, savoring the texture and the taste of butter.

Why is more better than one? Honestly, I do not believe it is. More is just what we are used to. More just means that we have more opportunities to taste what we are eating without having to pay close attention while we are doing it. But we eat more calories and gain weight. In the case of the cookies, we amp up our blood sugar and put additional strain on our pancreas as it tries to secrete enough insulin to bring our blood sugar back in line. The downsides are there because of our lack of attention. Honestly, we do not care enough about what we are doing to bring our full attention to it. That one cookie does not merit our full attention because there is a whole tub of them and we can always have more.

Sound familiar??