Being Full Versus Being Satiated

So yesterday I had a binge episode. It was pretty uncomfortable. I felt as though I sort of let myself down. I love my body. I do not want to treat myself this way. I ate until I felt sick, waited a while and then when the sickness lifted a bit I ate more. Not okay. This is not how I maintain feeling happy. In addition to this I felt pretty guilty for eating so much of my Brother and his Wife's food. They are both so sweet to me and I just stuffed myself on their food. I wasn't even hungry. This leads me to the point of my topic. I do not know what hunger feels like. And more importantly, I do not know what full feels like. 

So, I googled it. "What being full feels like". I came up with this forum:http://vnboards.ign.com/wow_asylum/b22603/111 860039/p1/ 

In it, there is a boy who is asking about what it feels like to be full. The most interesting reply I found was "Being full is eating too much. Being satiated is losing the feeling of hunger."

I don't usually eat until I feel "full". Rather, I eat as much food as my calorie allowance for the meal will let me eat. I certainly know what being very full (a.k.a. stuffed) feels like. However, I don't know what full feels like. Nor do I pay attention to what satiety feels like.

Do you guys think people ought to eat until they are full? Do you agree with what that poster said about full equaling eating too much? Or do you believe that the objective of eating is satiety?

These are radical thoughts for me. I have always thought that full is when you should stop. Since there is a delay of approximately twenty minutes of the information from your stomach to your brain of how full you are, then it makes complete sense that eating until full is eating too much. So, I suppose I need to switch gears into figuring out what satiety feels like.

What are your thoughts, all you lovely CCers out there?

Love,

Kat

My personal definition is to stop eating at a point where you feel you could still eat a little more.   Until that point, eat slowly... savour your food... appreciate the meal.  If you can, eat with other people as conversation slows everything down. 

Hey there, 

I'm sorry you're struggling with binging :( hang in there!

As far as determining whether you're full or satiated, I'll tell you what I do. I eat when I'm hungry and I usually try to eat a normal serving. Eating slowly and making sure you're hydrated will prevent overeating. Let's say I eat a normal sized dinner, and I feel hungry an hour later. I might grab a bowl of cereal or something. 

I guess I eat until I feel satisfied (or satiated). When I feel full, I feel gross and bloated. If I burp that's usually a sign I ate too much. Also heart burn. 

Portion control and listening to your body is tough to do. I fail often lol. But my best advice to you is just to work on it and don't get discouraged. You won't be able to learn intuitive eating in just one day. Take it slowly and move on if you have a set back. Everyone overeats sometimes, and I think it's actually good because it keeps your metabolism guessing :)

Good luck, and I'm sorry that I can't help you more.

gi-jane: Appreciating th meal is one of the things that truly helps keep me from over-eating. I try (though forget again and again, hehehe!) to smell my food, describe to myself the texture of the food and what it looks like. This is a really good tip and definitely one I need (apparently many) reminders. Thank you! > U < Your posts are always great~!

jcl76: Thank you so much for your sympathy and kindness. I really felt your heart in your post.

I live at a University and my main food source is the cafeteria so I get this "if I don't eat all I can now, then I will get hungry again" feeling. I suppose I have molded hunger into being this fearful thing. How strange the topic and subtopics of food can be sometimes. 

I like eating normal portions, though. I am still trying to figure out how to eat a serving size amount of food and be happy with that. Then, also dealing with the strangeness of hunger and figuring out how to have snacks so that I don't get too hungry.

Thank you so much for your supportive words, they were very warmly meant and I felt it.:) I will try my best to implement your advice!

When food tastes good, I can easily eat too much, even though I don't really have a binge problem.  I define too much as feeling uncomfortably full -- literally loosening my belt or changing out of tight clothing.  I am slowly training myself only eat as many calories as I need to maintain my goal weight.

The tools/tricks I have found (mostly from the great folks here at CC) that are helping me:

• Keep food in the kitchen, only eat in the dining room.
• Weigh out my portions in the kitchen so that I keep in my calorie target for the day.
• Eat more vegetables, or have a bowl of soup or a salad before the "main" course.
• Take a bite, eat it, savor the flavor, swallow it, then get the next bite ready (don't have a forkful of food ready for my mouth before I have swallowed the bite I am chewing).
• Take a sip of water between bites.
• Have conversation be the focus of the meal in order to eat more slowly.
• When I have finished my portions (appropriate to my calorie goal) wait at least 20 minutes before getting more food if I think I am still hungry.  I usually find I am satisfied and don't need to get more.
• If I am thinking of eating at an unscheduled time I ask myself if I am really hungry.  If I am, I "offer" myself a healthy snack like an apple with some PB.  If that doesn't appeal, but I am reaching for something like chips, I know that I am not really hungry.  If I am not really hungry, I don't eat, but take a walk, or call my mother, or play a computer game to distract myself.

For me, I discovered that I had a bad habit of eating more than I needed to to maintain a healthy weight.  By making better habits, I am finding fairly straight forward to recognize satiety or satisfaction with few enough calories to lose weight.  I am still not an "intuitive eater" -- after all, eating as much as my intuition told me to got me morbidly obese.  But I hope to be an intuitive eater by the time I reach goal weight.  Halfway there, I am finding it much easier to recognize how much and what to eat to feel healthy.  But I still need my "tricks"!

They have done studies that prove that North Americans mostly define being full/satiated (they are the same thing really -- some people call "full" what is really "over-full") as the plate or bowl being empty. They proved it by having bowls of soup that secretly were being refilled from a pipe at the bottom of the bowl as people ate. On average, North Americans ended up eating 4 more litres of soup than would be a normal serving size. But with Europeans, most stopped when they had had approximately the normal serving size.

The time spent eating dinner as a family has gone from just under 30 minutes half a century ago to about 6 minutes now. Today, the average US household spends just over 5% of its income on food, the average Spanish household spends 19%. In 1930, the average US household spent 24.2% of its income on food.

The faster we eat, the more we expect our food to be cheap (meaningless) and of completely unknown origin then it seems the more we are disconnected from what is the slower biological process of recognizing being full. 

I tend to eat too fast.  I take medication that forces me to eat at certain times during the day and for only a set amount of time.  So I sometimes eat bits of my meal as I am preparing it.  Then I sit down at the table with my food and a tall glass of water and tuck in.  When I feel like I have taken too many bites in a row I stop, chew, swallow, then take a a swig or two of water and sit.  I also eat with a little book of crossword puzzles.  I have to stop eating to work on the puzzle so if I ever feel as if I am rushing I work on the crosswords.  I usually finish my entire meal in 10-15 minutes.  Studies say it takes 20 for the "full signal" to reach your brain/stomach.  So after I have cleaned my plate I drink some water and wait.  I usually feel like I could still eat when I finish, but after about five minutes...or the time it takes me to clean up and wash the dishes....I no longer feel like I want to eat more.

My remedies for overeating:

-be aware of yourself

-drink a lot of water before, during and after a meal

-keep busy during and after meal

In my opinion, when I am stuffed my stomach feels like it is going to burst...I guess a bloated feeling.  When I am satiated I feel like I could eat more but after five minutes I don't.

so if you are full does that mean youve over eaten ?

tessa: not necessarily...it's a fine line.  If you feel bloated or sick and full then you probably have overeaten.  If you just feel like you couldn't/shouldn't put more in your stomach then you haven't overeaten.

JMHO...hope that helps :)

thanks i guess thats probably not a good question when you are suffering from anorexia but that does help thanks and sorry for taking over the thread h x

Original Post by hedgren:

They have done studies that prove that North Americans mostly define being full/satiated (they are the same thing really -- some people call "full" what is really "over-full") as the plate or bowl being empty. They proved it by having bowls of soup that secretly were being refilled from a pipe at the bottom of the bowl as people ate. On average, North Americans ended up eating 4 more litres of soup than would be a normal serving size. But with Europeans, most stopped when they had had approximately the normal serving size.

The time spent eating dinner as a family has gone from just under 30 minutes half a century ago to about 6 minutes now. Today, the average US household spends just over 5% of its income on food, the average Spanish household spends 19%. In 1930, the average US household spent 24.2% of its income on food.

The faster we eat, the more we expect our food to be cheap (meaningless) and of completely unknown origin then it seems the more we are disconnected from what is the slower biological process of recognizing being full. 

 hedgren, do you have a source for this study?  I'd very much like to read it. 

I've been trying to eat European style with smaller portions and more time spent at the table in good company and it's working.  I used to eat huge bowls of pasta without even thinking about it.  I began measuring out my portion and at first it wasn't enough so I'd fill up on vegetables instead.  Gradually I got used to the smaller portion.  When offered the opportunity to eat a lot of pasta at a family party, I allowed them to serve me the customary large plateful.  I found that I automatically stop eating when I've had my 1 cup portion.  I just can't eat any more of it.  So I'm a big believer in portion control.

I believe that our society has glorified eating huge amounts of food to the point that people think it's normal.  Do you remember a restaurant movement in the 1970s & early 80s called nouvelle cuisine?  It went nowhere because it specialized in small portions of perfect food.  For instance, and entree might be 3 perfect seared sea scallops with a fan of half a dozen snow peas and a tiny spoon of caviar, rather like what you see on TV shows like Top Chef.  It was expensive and people left feeling hungry and cheated. 

On the other hand, all you can eat buffets with terrible food are very popular because people believe they are getting their money's worth.  There has to be a happy medium.

Your post reminded me of this article:

http://caloriecount.about.com/hunger-fullness -scale-b287971?utm_source=newsletter&utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_2009 0409&utm_term=continue1

Here's the bottomless bowl study abstract:  Link.

I still have a tendency to prefer being overfull.  It helps to have the tools now to know what a normal portion is and prepare that amount of food. 

I don't think I'd define being full as having "eaten too much."  To me, that is overfull.  I think I'd define full as having eaten enough.  Satisfied, to me, means no longer hungry. 

I do think it is healthy to eat until we are satisfied, and that we may not feel full until a little bit later, once our brain has had time to process what we've done, and to signal to us that we don't need more food right now.  It can sometimes take the brain about 30 minutes to get that signal, based upon our biochemistry, so if we are in a situation where we are tempted to eat past satisfaction, we probably will over eat by a full half hour.

I read recently (In the Eating Well Diet Book) though that it is our human instinct to overeat.  The nutritionist who wrote the book suggests that this is our nature because our bodies were meant to hunt for our food and eat as much of it as possible before it spoiled... but that we would not necessarily be able to eat again for days.  Society has alleviated this problem for us, but we still have the urge to overeat, to gorge.

For this reason, I agree with you, that we should eat until we are satisfied, and we will feel full, but later, when we are not thinking about it.

Maybe the point of the article in the link, is that if you're still eating when you feel full, and past, then you've already overeaten.

"The nutritionist who wrote the book suggests that this is our nature because our bodies were meant to hunt for our food and eat as much of it as possible before it spoiled... but that we would not necessarily be able to eat again for days."

I read something that is contrary to this; that in fact, our ancestors did not overeat and instead were hardwired to know how much food their bodies needed for survival.  The body would maintain homeostasis by expending and taking in the appropriate amount of calories.  Our ancestors knew what to eat, when, and how much of it.  Sure, food may have been harder to come by at that time, but overeating was not hardwired into our ancestors the way it is in us.  And it has become hardwired into us by the foods that we as a society comsume today. 

Original Post by myvstarpops:

Do you guys think people ought to eat until they are full? Do you agree with what that poster said about full equaling eating too much? Or do you believe that the objective of eating is satiety?

I used to be a mild bulimic/anorexic and went into therapy (not just for that). I used to be just like you, eating till I had enough calories, not enough food. After like, two months of therapy and trying to convince my therapist it was okay to lose weight and restrict my food, I listened to what she had to say and it really is the truth: 

If you eat till you're full and not eat when you're not hungry, you will not be overweight. Your body--influenced by genetics--has a weight range it likes to be in and will stay in so long as you follow this Eat When You're Hungry, Stop When You're Full formula. That's what EVERYONE who loses weight doesn't think about, I feel. 

Being healthy isn't about looking good, it's about feeling good (which can be influenced by looking good ) but satiation and fullness are very arbitrary. Where one person will feel full if they can't eat another bite without getting sick, the next person might define fullness as no longer being hungry. 

I personally find fullness to be when you lose interest in the food and when my shirt begins to feel a bit more snug. If it's good food, you may not, but if it's average joe Apples, then it's gonna happen earlier. Satiation is when my hunger's gone and nothing else, I don't feel overfull or anything. When I was a kid I'd eat EVERYTHING. i had like, 8 poptarts every night for two months and I ate sugars and allll that crapola. So when I don't feel hungry anymore, I may have eaten a lot as I have stretched my stomach over the years. That's why it's arbitrary. 

I think balance is not about calories, but about hunger/fullness balance AND nutrition.

^^ Amen to that...well said

In my log, I noted that it took me about 10 days to come to realize and understand the difference between being satisfied and being stuffed.

It takes around 20 minutes for the stomach to send the necessary signals to your body that you have enough food, and if you are inhaling your food in less than 10, you'll end up more likely to overeat.

With my calorie goal, I would get worried those first 2 weeks that I wasn't going to get enough food as it simply wasn't an option for me to go back for seconds.  But I came to realize that even though I'd be done eating a 400-500 calorie meal in 10 minutes, that I would not only be satisfied, but that I would not need to eat anything else for 3 hours.

It's amazing to consider that when my wife and I would go out a year ago, we'd get an appetizer, full meals, and then dessert.

Now, we usually end up taking leftovers home with just the meal order.

Original Post by ptresadactyl:

Original Post by myvstarpops:

Do you guys think people ought to eat until they are full? Do you agree with what that poster said about full equaling eating too much? Or do you believe that the objective of eating is satiety?

I used to be a mild bulimic/anorexic and went into therapy (not just for that). I used to be just like you, eating till I had enough calories, not enough food. After like, two months of therapy and trying to convince my therapist it was okay to lose weight and restrict my food, I listened to what she had to say and it really is the truth: 

If you eat till you're full and not eat when you're not hungry, you will not be overweight. Your body--influenced by genetics--has a weight range it likes to be in and will stay in so long as you follow this Eat When You're Hungry, Stop When You're Full formula. That's what EVERYONE who loses weight doesn't think about, I feel. 

Being healthy isn't about looking good, it's about feeling good (which can be influenced by looking good ) but satiation and fullness are very arbitrary. Where one person will feel full if they can't eat another bite without getting sick, the next person might define fullness as no longer being hungry. 

I personally find fullness to be when you lose interest in the food and when my shirt begins to feel a bit more snug. If it's good food, you may not, but if it's average joe Apples, then it's gonna happen earlier. Satiation is when my hunger's gone and nothing else, I don't feel overfull or anything. When I was a kid I'd eat EVERYTHING. i had like, 8 poptarts every night for two months and I ate sugars and allll that crapola. So when I don't feel hungry anymore, I may have eaten a lot as I have stretched my stomach over the years. That's why it's arbitrary. 

I think balance is not about calories, but about hunger/fullness balance AND nutrition.

 thankyou so much forv that , that has really helped me h x