S1E8 Respect Your Fullness & Discover Satisfaction

In this episode, Gillian Yuan, Non-Diet Mom Coach talks about Principles 5 & 6 of Intuitive Eating, Respecting Your Fullness and Discovering Satisfaction.  Gillian discusses how to move past barriers to applying these principles, her experience with them, and how they can also be applied in other areas of Moms' lives beyond food and eating.
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email: contact@gillianyuan.com
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The thoughts and opinions discussed in this podcast are solely the opinion of Gillian and/or her guests and for information/ educational purposes only. Gillian is not a licensed health or psychology practitioner. Please consult your healthcare providers prior to utilizing any information presented in the podcast.

Transcript

The Motherhood UnDieted Podcast with Gillian Yuan

S1E8: Respect your Fullness & Discover Satisfaction

Hello and welcome to Season 1 Episode 8 of The Motherhood UnDieted Podcast!

This week, we’re talking about Intuitive Eating Principles 5 & 6, Respect your fullness and Discover the Satisfaction factor.  

Last week, we talked about Honouring your hunger and how it is related to honoring your needs as a mom and as a human being..  How did that go?  If you haven’t listened to that episode, I highly recommend you do!  Fortunately, nothing about Intuitive Eating is right or wrong, or set in stone.  So, you can listen to this episode and then go back and listen to the one about hunger.  No biggie!  Let’s dive into Respecting your fullness and Discovering satisfaction.

Have you ever enjoyed your meal so much that you may have eaten a little too much, but it was SO good...and then, maybe you felt ill or at least very uncomfortable?  Have you ever eaten a meal of reasonable size for you, but still felt like there was something missing, so you ate a bit more to see if that satisfied you, but it didn’t?  These are the reasons respecting your fullness and discovering satisfaction are important parts of Intuitive Eating.

Patriarchy and Diet Culture have taught us not only to not honor our hunger, as discussed last episode, but it has also taught us not to allow ourselves to feel full… or that if we do feel full, then it is something to be ashamed of, or feel “guilty” about!  The same goes for fully seeking satisfaction with what we eat and with our life. 

Before I get into feeling your fullness, let me be clear that nothing about Intuitive Eating is black and white.  Noticing when you’re full doesn’t mean you have to stop eating when you feel comfortably full, nor does it mean that you only eat when you feel hungry.  Eating is a dynamic process that ebbs and flows with life.  Prior to determining your signals for fullness, I’d like you to agree with me, that you will give yourself unconditional permission to eat...without judgement.  Know that you are worthy of fulfilling your need for food, as much as you are worthy to breathe as much air as you need to function!  Food is a physiological and even, psychological need, and it’s ok for you to meet that need fully, without internal or external judgement.  

Tribole and Resch developed a numerical hunger and fullness levelling system where 1 indicates very hungry and 10 indicates overly full, with 4 being early signs of hunger and 7 being about comfortably full.  If you are a numbers person, you can notice how your hunger and fullness feels and associate the number to that.  However, if like me, you have an aversion to associating numbers with food and eating,, go by how the sensation of fullness feels in your body, and name it like, almost full, comfortably full, and overly full. 

The first step to respecting your fullness, is to honour your hunger and do so consistently overtime, without judgement.  As your body begins to trust that you will feed it regularly, you will emerge from the state of starvation/ hibernation, and you may find you feel your hunger and fullness cues more easily.  

Next, start giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all foods, without judgement.  The exception being if you have a medically diagnosed allergy with symptoms of anaphylaxis, or hives and rash.   (I’m not talking about sensitivities from that blood test you got from a naturopath...more on that another time).  By giving yourself unconditional permission to eat all foods without judgement, you allow yourself to experiment and discover what foods you actually enjoy and that are satisfying to you, instead of following any externally set meal plan, cleanse or diet.  Allowing yourself to determine what satisfies you at any given meal, will help you feel your true comfortably full sensation.  We tend to eat until uncomfortably full, the foods that don’t truly satisfy us on a psychological level, because we keep hoping that one more bite of that food will actually satisfy our minds as well.  Which is not the case.

When you begin to eat, tune into yourself and eat with all of your sensations. 

•  Set the mood for a satisfying meal experience.  This may include some soft music, lighting a candle, setting the table with eye-appealing plates ,and  practicing gratitude for your meal. 
• Take a slow, deep breath,  then notice how the food looks on your plate.
• How does the food smell?  Does it make you want to take a bite?  
• Next, take a bite...how does the food feel in your mouth, how does it taste? How does chewing feel? Chew your food well and then swallow.  
• Notice how you feel after the first bite, do you want more.  Continue on this way and check in with yourself after a few bites, ask yourself if you are starting to feel full, and continue on this way until you think you feel almost comfortably full.
• Then check in bite- by- bite until you feel comfortably full. 
•  At this point, you don’t have to stop eating.  
• Remember, this is not the hunger/fullness diet where you only eat when you’re hungry and absolutely stop when you’re full.  
• Check-in with yourself and ask yourself if you would like to stop eating, or if there’s anything else you need to feel full and satisfied.  

Once I decided to stop dieting for good, I had an aversion to foods that I had considered “Diet Foods”...these included salads, vegetables and oatmeal, to name a few.  As I was going through Intuitive Eating and came to discover satisfaction, I noticed that I was missing color and crunch in my meals!  So, I started adding in vegetables with appealing colors like carrots, spinach, red and orange peppers and broccoli.  I found, once I added in these colors and different textures, my meals not only tasted better, but I felt more satisfied too!  Now I frequently include colorful vegetables and fruit to satisfy my eye...yes, they do have beneficial nutrition too, but  that is not the main reason I include them.  I am still working on eating oatmeal for the “joy” of it, but I also don’t judge myself for not eating it, or never eating it again!

Sometimes, after years of dieting, it can feel scary to allow yourself to feel full, just as it may have felt scary to honour your hunger with food. What would be the worst case scenario of allowing yourself to feel comfortably full, most of the time?  Perhaps you think, as I did, that the worst case scenario would be that you gain a bunch of weight.  Initially, you may gain weight, as your body holds onto the nourishment more in case it may be the last satisfying and filling meal it ever has, but as you continually eat to comfortable fullness, your body will start to trust that you will continue to feed it and it will start letting go of any excess that it was holding onto out of fear.  As you become more comfortable, your body will become more comfortable as well. 

 So, now that is out of the way, how would you like to feel about allowing yourself to feel comfortably full at meals?  Perhaps you’d like to feel relaxed, or calm.  Now, what can you THINK that will help you feel this way?  
Perhaps it’s,

• ”Nourishing myself to my full satisfaction shows my body that she is worthy, and therefore, I am worthy of food and satisfaction too”.  
• Or, “I partner with my body to fill and satisfy my needs”.  

Once you have found a new positive,  possible and plausible thought that sits well with you, continue thinking this before meals, and notice how you feel when you truly allow yourself to feed yourself until you are comfortably full.  

Then experiment with what fully satisfying yourself in life looks like and feels like to you.  I’m not talking about being even more busy, I’m talking about living a full life and doing the things that truly matter to you NOW, not years from now.  It may be going on that dream vacation or doing work that is meaningful and fulfilling to you.  Perhaps you are able to make the time to do something you’ve always wanted to do?  Maybe you say “YES” to social invites?  Maybe it’s buying that awesome dress in the size that fits you now, instead of waiting for an unreasonable goal to be achieved.  Imagine to yourself, what living a full and satisfying life would look and feel like to you?  How can you start moving towards that with one small baby step at a time?

Remember, Mama, you are worthy of food, satisfaction and respect!

That’s all for this week.  I hope this was helpful for you!  If you are following along with the Principles of Intuitive Eating that I discuss, let me know how they’re going for you!  If you have any questions or would like some more personalized support, email me or book in for a free Discovery call, where I can coach you in an area you feel stuck on.  The links are included in the description.  Also, I have a gift for you to help you along in this journey.  It is a guide with the 3 Important Facts and Steps to Stop Dieting for Good!  I look forward to talking with you next week!  Have a great day everyone!!

References: 

• Intuitive Eating, A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, Evelyn Tribole & Elise Resch
• Intutitive Eating Project; Conscious Eating, Stephanie Dodier, Clinical Nutritionist