Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was feeling really full. I think it started with the overstuffing of the Thanksgiving meal and just kept going with all of the holiday treats that were around. I just kept eating, everywhere I went. At school each day, there was either leftover Thanksgiving baked goods or early Christmas candy. Then there were holiday parties with appetizers and desserts. And finally, there were gifts of chocolate or baked goods from the kids.
I tired to monitor myself around this. I tried to limit the amount of food that I ate: okay, you can have two treats, no more or okay, eat a small lunch so that you can save your appetite for the party tonight or have a sample of each dish, but don't go back for seconds.
This never worked.
After eating two treats, I would say "You only ate two, you can go back for more!"
When I would eat a small lunch, I would just use the fact that I had only eaten a little as an excuse to basically gorge myself on the food at the party.
And the whole "sample" every dish idea, totally backfired. I would "sample" every dish, but because they were only "samples," I would go back and "sample" every dish at least two more times and end up eating three times the amount that I actually wanted.
I didn't like this feeling. I really didn't like feeling overstuffed. So I decided to start paying attention to how full I felt. I decided that when I wanted to eat something, I would think about how full I was feeling. If I felt full, I would not eat. If I felt hungry, I would eat.
But then, this didn't work either. It's true that I would feel whether or not I was full, but then I would think about it. I would make a decision about whether or not to eat based on the level of full that I was feeling. I would evaluate my full and consider whether or not to eat something.
For the most part, anytime I got to think about whether or not I was "empty" enough to have a treat, I would always err on the side of eating, even if I truly felt full. The food was just too delicious for me to prefer not eating it to the idea of how bad it felt to feel overstuffed.
One day, post Christmas, I was eating breakfast with a friend. I had ordered a Belgian waffle, with strawberries and whipped cream. About a quarter of the way through the waffle, my hand put down my fork. And I stopped eating.
"What was that?" I thought to myself. "I'm not finished. I haven't even eaten half of this waffle. There's no way that I'm done."
But I didn't feel like eating. I definitely wasn't feeling any sense of hunger. So, I just kept talking to my friend, enjoying our time together. As I watched my friend finish their plate, I looked at mine.
"Dude, you payed bucks for this waffle, you should finish it. Plus, if you eat all of it now, you won't need as much for lunch so you can just have leftover soup instead of making a meal."
But when I picked up the fork, I just didn't feel like eating anymore. I took another bite anyway, probably because of the whipped cream, but after that, I was done. I just let it go, let them clear my plate. I didn't think about it anymore after that.
A few days later, when I was eating out with friends, the same thing happened. My food arrived, I started eating it, and then, without thinking, I put it down.
"Darn it!" I said as I looked at my plate full of fries and a burger. "I totally want to eat those. They were super good!" But I didn't feel like eating anymore. My body wanted nothing to do with eating more. It was full, and it knew it.
I was kind of pissed this time, because I had barely eaten half of the burger, and really, it was good. But at the same time, I genuinely didn't want the burger, and I could feel this. Logically, it didn't make sense that I was full. It was lunch time, I had eaten breakfast hours ago, I really should have been hungry. And the amount that I had eaten, wasn't nearly enough for me to feel full. But here I was- I had put down the burger without thinking. I couldn't argue with that. I couldn't argue with my body and the fact that it felt full. I nibbled on the fries some more, because it felt like they might not fill me up too much. But after that, I just left my plate as it was. It felt weird to leave my plate half full, like I was wasting food or hadn't liked my meal; but I had to leave it like that, I really didn't want anymore.
"This is really insteresting," I thought to myself. "After all this effort I put in to feeling whether or not I was full, in to planning how I would eat less, in to watching what I was eating, it was my body that was the final decider. If I actually listen to my body- not think about what my body is doing, not try to decide when I'm full or not- when I actually allow my body to say to me 'You're full' I actually eat the appropriate amount and end up feeling good. And I mean feeling genuinely good- not "good" because I didn't eat too much, not "good" because I don't feel overstuffed, just good because I'm in tune with what my body feels."
This hasn't totally stuck around. There have been many times since these episodes when I have eaten way more than I should have, when I have "finished my plate," when I have eaten food even when I was feeling full. But there have also been times when my body has spoken up for itself and I have listened. I can't really figure out when it is that I actually listen to my body. I kind of think that I always hear it, always feel it, it's just a matter of actually responding to what it's feeling instead of thinking about whether or not it makes sense.
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