PART 6: Break through emotional Eating

Learn to better evaluate your fullness. It can take twenty minutes to start feeling physically full.

1. Be satisfied in other ways. Enjoy the taste of food, the people you are with, or the place you are eating.

2. Express gratitude for your food. This includes who prepared the food (it may be you!) and where it comes from.

3. Drink a glass of water throughout the meal. This will help with digestion and feeling full.

4. Make half your plate vegetables. It will take longer to eat these nutrient-dense foods.

5. Keep consistent “food rules” like sitting at the table and drinking a glass of water with each meal or snack. This can be a built in “speed bump” for overeating. If you don’t want to sit at the table or drink water, you may not be physically hungry and emotional hunger is your trigger.

6. When tracking your intake, also track your hunger-fullness using the scale to the right. Try to eat in the gray area (range 4-7). Avoid being too hungry or too full.

The Hunger-Fullness Scale

 0: Empty

 1: Ravenous

 2: Over-hungry

 3: Hunger pangs

 4: Hunger awakens

 5: Neutral

 6: Just satisfied

 7: Completely satisfied

 8: Full

 9: Stuffed

 10: Sick

7. Slow down. If you can, try to increase the time it takes you to finish your meal by 50%. If you currently finish dinner in 10 minutes, set a timer to stretch the meal out by 5 minutes—or longer!