How to Use the Hunger Fullness Scale

We are born with a natural, intuitive ability to recognize our hunger and fullness signals. However, years of dieting, food rules, or looking to outside sources to guide our eating, can cause us to become incredibly out of touch with these internal cues. The hunger fullness scale is a great tool used in Mindful and Intuitive Eating to help you reconnect with your body’s signals telling you when and how much to eat in a way that feels good. Read this post to learn how!

Do you ever feel like you just can’t trust your body? That if you listened to it you’d never stop eating, or that you can’t seem to connect with your hunger and fullness signals even when you’re paying attention?

While hunger and fullness signals are inherent and there to help us, it’s not uncommon for many of us to feel incredibly disconnected from them. This is often a result of years of dieting, restrictive behaviors around food, or following food rules we may or may not even be aware of! As a dietitian , this is one of the first things we work on with clients—learning to understand and trust our body’s hunger and fullness cues is one of  the most powerful tools we can harness to live as true free and intuitive eaters!

In this post I’m sharing more about what the hunger fullness scale is, the benefits of being in touch with our hunger and fullness levels, and how to use this tool to help you create a better relationship with food. The hunger fullness scale helps you understand and trust your body, so you can nourish yourself daily in a way that best honors your needs! 

So let’s dive in.

What are Hunger and Fullness Signals or Cues?

Hunger and Fullness Signals or Cues (used interchangeably) really are as simple as they sound. They’re signals from your body letting you know when you need to eat (hunger) and when you are ready to stop eating (fullness).

What may not be so simple is our ability to recognize these cues if we’ve experienced years of dieting or food rules that lead us to believe outside sources are better judges of our needs than our own body. 

Now here, we are talking specifically about the 3 different types of hunger – physical hunger, or stomach hunger. Of course, there will be times where you eat for pleasure, or enjoyment, but for the purposes of this post we’re focusing on physical hunger.

Benefits of Getting in Touch with Your Hunger & Fullness Signals

The benefits of being in touch with your hunger and fullness signals, in my opinion, are invaluable. They are key to developing trust with your body and becoming (or coming back to being) an intuitive eater.

It’s only natural as human beings that our nutritional needs and our metabolism will vary—not just throughout our lives, but even day to day! 

There are SO many factors that impact our energy (caloric) needs, like our activity level, different stages of life (like pregnancy or breastfeeding), or changes in metabolism as we age. Even things like getting a cold will impact how our needs vary from day to day. 

Because of these ever changing needs, understanding how to recognize hunger and fullness cues is one of the best tools we can use to honor our needs as we ebb and flow through the changes of life. 

At first it may feel like you have to consciously think about this a lot, or pay attention to what these signals might feel like, but as you practice, recognizing them will start to become second nature! 

When & How to Use the Hunger Fullness Scale

The hunger fullness scale is a tool to help you familiarize with the different levels or stages of hunger and fullness. In the Make Food Feel Good Program, we focus on getting attuned with your body’s cues before diving into nutrition. This is because it makes a huge difference in being able to trust your body—and feel confident in the food decisions you make!

Often, we’re aware of what it feels like to be extremely hungry or overly full, but not so much the the more subtle signs as hunger begins to build or as you start to fill up and move into satisfaction, eventually becoming full. 

It can be helpful to use the hunger fullness scale before, during, and after eating. This doesn’t mean you have to do this for every single meal! But if and when it feels good, take a minute to check in and see where you may be on the scale.

To start, it can be helpful to use the hunger fullness scale before a meal.

Before you begin: apply mindfulness. Mindfulness is awareness without judgement, and when using a tool like this and tuning into your body—approaching with curiosity instead of judgement—makes all the difference!

Step 1: Before you sit down to eat, check in with your yourself and see if you can identify where you are on the hunger scale. 

Step 2: Check in near the end of the meal. Again, see if you can identify where you are on the scale. If you tend to eat quickly, or if you were very hungry before eating, it may take longer to recognize some of these fullness signals. 

Step 3: 5-10 minutes after you’ve finished eating, check in again.

Step 4: Reflect:

• Were you extremely hungry or just ready to eat before your meal?
• What did you notice in your body or in the way the food tasted as you neared the end of your meal? Did you recognize some of the more subtle signs of fullness?
• How did you feel after you finished? Were you physically and mentally satisfied? Needing a bit more? Uncomfortably full? 

Step 5: Take note and ask yourself, is there anything you’d do differently next time?

If you were overly hungry, maybe you need to eat sooner or add a snack between meals.

I’ve got a whole list of balanced meal prep snacks here if you’re looking for ideas!

If you were uncomfortably full after eating, maybe practicing mindfulness during the meal could help you notice some of the more subtle cues as you begin to fill up. 

I’ve given the example of meals above, but you can use this any time of day. I know that snacking can be a major cause of stress or guilt for many; the hunger meter can also help in determining what feels best in this department too (if you find yourself nighttime snacking, this is super helpful!). Remember, hunger and fullness are just one piece of the puzzle in making decisions around if and when to eat. Familiarizing yourself with these cues can be really helpful in the overall decision of landing on what feels best for you overall.

More Tips on How to Use the Hunger Scale

There is no “right” or “wrong” way to use the hunger fullness scale and no magic number for when to start or stop eating. (If you struggle with feeling guilty after eating, read this post.)

Depending on where you are on your food and eating journey, it’s also important to assess whether this is a helpful tool at this stage. If there’s a history of restricting and being hyper aware of hunger and fullness, and this feels triggering, it may be best to focus on mechanical eating or honoring hunger before diving into this tool.

The hunger fullness scale is meant to be exactly that: a tool, to help you better attune to your body’s needs, not another diet rule to follow.

So remember to use it with the lens of mindfulness! Look at it as gathering data and information that will ultimately help you understand and honor your needs. 

As I mentioned earlier in the post, this tool is more specific to physical (stomach) hunger, but remember there are many reasons we eat! There are times that despite knowing we may be filling up, we decide to eat a bit more for satisfaction. This is totally ok! 

I’ve included a free downloadable version of the mindful eating food journal we use in the Make Food Feel Good Program. Feel free to use if you’d like! It’s a great tool to help you explore what’s coming up with mindfulness and compassion. I will tell you right now, the insights that pop up are so empowering! 

I hope you found this useful! If you try using the hunger fullness scale, I’d love to hear how it goes for you! Tag me on Instagram @lindsaypleskot and share your wins—or let me know in the comments below! I love celebrating them with you! 

If you’re ready to really step into trusting your body and finding freedom and peace in your eating—and you want more support—join us in the Make Food Feel Good program. You will learn my step-by-step method to become the expert of your own body and the daily nourishment that works best for you—body, mind and soul. Plus, I’ll be there to support you every step of the way alongside an amazing community, all working towards the same mission! 

Looking for more support?

Looking for support to end the diet cycle, trust your body and learn the nutrition that feels amazing for YOU? Learn more about my Make Food Feel Good Program here where hundreds of women have found lasting success through my proven framework and step-by-step guided support. Let’s Chat!

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