Prior to Thanksgiving this year, I thought a lot about my hunger and fullness discussions with clients which are a big piece of practicing Intuitive Eating. When I am working with someone on listening to their body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, we often start by looking at or creating a hunger-fullness scale which ranges from 1-10. I find it helpful to frame the scale with descriptions of level one and ten for my clients and then we explore the levels of hunger and fullness in the middle.
I often begin by describing level one as “ravenous hunger, you haven’t eaten in many hours, likely feeling lightheaded, no energy”. For level ten, I describe it as “Post-Thanksgiving meal full, can’t put another bite in your mouth, belly uncomfortable, unbuttoning the top button of your pants”. This description usually gets a laugh and most say they understand what I’m describing.
This year, going into this food-focused holiday, I wondered if my description was accurate or possibly needed to be updated. I spent the holiday with my family and parents and had a wide range of eating styles to observe. From my kids who had all they wanted to eat in fifteen minutes tops to the rest of us who sat much longer, some with plates piled high, others getting second helpings of their favorite foods. It was neat to observe a family whose normal eating patterns and schedules (if they had them) were thrown off by this one, wonderful meal.
All in all, I would argue that for a lot of us, my description of level 10 fullness stands as a decent descriptor with “Post-Thanksgiving Meal” full. There were several grumbles about eating too much at the meal while others wondered when they would even feel ready for dessert. I saw some tummy rubs and even heard an “I ate too much this year” comment. And I believe that my changing into sweatpants shortly after the meal equates to unbuttoning the top button of my pants! It should have been no surprise though that my children were the only ones that didn’t seem to reach a level ten of fullness since they aren’t huge fans of many of the Thanksgiving dishes yet and only seemed confused by the fact that we were eating “dinner” super early.