Eating Past Fullness: Why Does This Happen and How Should We Respond?
Have you ever wondered: “Why do I eat past fullness?” If this question has crossed your mind, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s an extremely common question or frustration that clients bring to us. Sometimes, pursuing Intuitive Eating leads us to (incorrectly) believe that we’ll never again be uncomfortably full, we’ll never again have diet culture influence our decisions or we’ll never again have the desire to lose weight. Becoming an intuitive eater simply means that instead of a pass/fail program, you’re on a continuous life-long journey of pursuing health and a peaceful relationship with food and with your own body. Sometimes, you will eat past fullness. It’s just a thing that happens in the course of normal eating. But because eating past fullness can be physically uncomfortable and can also trigger downward spiraling thoughts of “failure” or guilt, we wanted to go deeper on this topic and discuss the different reasons it might happen as well as how to handle it when it does.
Why Do We Eat?
Let’s briefly separate a few different reasons why we eat. Food meets a physical need: nourishment, energy, calories. Food also meets social and emotional needs: connection, fellowship, celebration, and pure pleasure. On occasions when you’re eating to meet social and emotional needs, it makes sense that tuning into the hunger and fullness scale isn’t on the forefront of your mind. It’s simply not the purpose of that particular eating experience. On the other hand, when the focus of the meal or snack is on nourishment and satisfying your hunger, then stopping at a particular point of fullness may be more appropriate to focus on. Let’s consider next why we overeat.
Types of Overeating
Another great non-diet RD named Kylie Mitchell has a few blog posts on the topic of overeating. In one of them, she breaks down overeating into two categories: pleasurable and chaotic. This is such a helpful way to view the different reasons one may overeat.
Pleasurable overeating happens usually when you’re eating for social and emotional needs. The eating experience itself was enjoyable, satisfying, and part of what made it so pleasurable was that you weren’t hyperfocused on feeling your fullness or assessing your place on the hunger-fullness scale. You were enjoying the moment, you were fully present with the people around you, and you were eating for the pure joy of the occasion. This might lead to a point past fullness. And that’s OK. Remember: overeating is a normal thing that occasionally happens in the course of a neutral and peaceful relationship with food. This type of overeating or eating past fullness doesn’t really require analyzing or reflecting. You don’t need to try and figure out what happened. You can just acknowledge it, move on, and maybe use a mantra to remind yourself of this: there is nothing you need to do to make fullness go away. It takes care of itself. Deep breath in. “This feeling will pass.” Deep breath out.
Chaotic overeating is the other type. This can also be described as an out-of-control eating experience. This type of overeating not only feels unpleasant afterwards, when you’re overful, but it also likely feels unpleasant while you’re eating. You might feel: distracted, a foreboding sense of the oncoming guilt/shame, desperate, numb, worried, confused or upset. Usually, when we look deeply at them, out of control eating experiences are happening due to one main root reason: restriction.
Why Do We Eat Past Fullness?
Restriction is the most common cause of chaotic overeating. Restriction has different forms:
physical restriction and
mental restriction
Physical restriction happens when you are not consuming enough food/calories/energy to nourish your body. You are simply undereating. It may be intentional or unintentional, but your body perceives it the same way: restriction and deprivation.
If you are either currently restricting or have a history of restricting the amounts of food you eat, your body could be overshooting your fullness out of self-preservation. The body will go to great lengths to protect you, to preserve life and to prevent starvation. If it has experienced a starvation situation before (simply not eating when you’re hungry is a form of starvation for the body) then it makes sense that the next time the body senses undereating, it will take any opportunity to overcompensate and store up. The body is making sure it has enough energy to survive if and when you restrict again.
Another more mild form of physical restriction might happen if you simply get too hungry. Again, this happens sometimes in the course of normal eating. Sometimes you go too long without food and you get really ravenously hungry. Then, when you finally get the opportunity to eat, you may overshoot fullness accidentally because you were just so hungry.
Mental restriction happens when you label foods as bad in your head. Even if you eat these foods, you still have a restriction mentality because you’ve attached morality and judgement to the food. If you try and limit portions of certain foods, you have a sense of “being careful” around certain foods or you avoid buying certain foods so they aren’t available in your home, these are all types of mental restriction. Mental restriction will elicit a similar reaction from your body and brain just like physical restriction does. The brain still goes into the restriction/binge cycle which usually leads to chaotic overeating that leaves you well past fullness.
To really make peace with food and practice intuitive eating, you must have unconditional permission to eat. This helps your body learn: there’s nothing special about that particular food. You can have that food today, tomorrow or whenever. When you remove the scarcity element, your mind can calm down and make clearer decisions about if you want to eat a particular food and how much of it you require to be satisfied.
What To Do After Overeating
Take a deep breath and let the feeling pass. As we mentioned before, if this is the kind of overeating that occasionally happens as the result of pleasurable eating experiences, there is nothing you need to do. Fullness will eventually subside completely on its own. You don’t need to analyze the situation, feel guilty or try to figure out “why” this occurred.
Approach with curiosity. If the overeating is uncomfortable, chaotic, feels out-of-control or is happening routinely, you could do some neutral reflecting. Try to get curious by making observations, not judgements. Think about what events, emotions or circumstances led up to the over eating. Consider whether you might have a restriction mentality in some way, even with just one specific food, or if you might be undereating without realizing it.
Get on the same team as your body. After eating past fullness, consider the possible reactions you can have. A) You can feel shame, guilt, or even self-loathing. These responses will never be helpful, they will only be harmful and get in the way of making peace with food. B) You can be curious. You can wonder why this happened. You can reflect and analyze what led up to this event and how you were feeling while eating. Curiosity will sometimes be helpful, but sometimes is unnecessary and just draws attention to something that isn’t problematic. C) You can take the same team mentality. Look down at your body and remind yourself that you and your body are on the same team. You aren’t adversaries working against each other. You can be kind to yourself, you can express self-compassion. The same-team mentality is always helpful in moving forward. It is helpful whether you are going to explore some possible changes to make to avoid unpleasant, chaotic overeating in the future or whether you are going to simply move on and let go of this particular experience.
Seek the partnership of a professional. If you feel like eating past fullness is a problem, if you feel confused about how to address it or if you feel powerless to make changes, it might be helpful to seek out a therapist or Registered Dietitian. If you find someone who is weight-inclusive and well-versed in intuitive eating, they should be able to help you thoughtfully and lovingly reflect and implement some changes so that eating can become more natural, easy, stress-free and comfortable.
Remember, none of us can see into the future. We don’t always know how a particular food or amount of food will make us feel. Sometimes we’ll get it just right and feel perfectly, comfortably full at the end, while other times we overshoot. It’s just life. Progressing on your intuitive eating journey looks like accepting these occasional instances of eating past fullness, neutrally acknowledging them, and moving on. If routine overeating is getting in the way of a normal, peaceful relationship with food and eating, we’d love to dive into this with you. You can book a free discovery call here and get the conversation started about where you currently are with food and where you’d like to be.
Not ready for individual work? Download your free guide on 6 Steps to Heal Your Relationship with Food.
