At the same time that overeaters are highly sensitive to the pleasure of taste, we are much less sensitive to feelings of stomach fullness. The painfully stuffed feeling doesn’t register until it is far too late. Normal feelings of fullness bring on a secure, contented feeling, but being stuffed is miserable. Do we habitually ignore our fullness signals? Are the signs of fullness simply too weak in overeaters? Do we refuse to remember how miserable it is to feel stuffed as we keep repeating the same mistake?
Normal eaters eat when they are hungry and stop eating when they are full. They are not tempted to snack between meals because they still feel satisfied from the previous meal. Conversely, they are hungry at regular mealtimes because they haven’t been snacking. No matter how delicious a mealtime food is, they stop eating when their body signals it’s time to stop.
Normal eaters have a strong sense of fullness. In some cases, they literally can’t eat another bite even after they have consumed a moderate amount of food. I’ve watched someone who has never gained an ounce look longingly at a piece of pumpkin pie after dinner, but the sense of fullness was so strong that even lifting her fork for a taste seemed painful. Some normal eaters simply can’t eat beyond a certain point, almost feeling ill at the thought of more food.
I’ve tried to monitor the fullness sensation in myself. It registers very faintly after a moderate amount of food, but if I keep eating, it goes away entirely. Curiously, I sometimes felt a bloating of the lips or face rather than the stomach signal that I expected. Sometimes I would feel a closure at the back of the mouth or a weakness in the limbs. The gut discomfort of fullness comes at least a half hour after I’ve stopped eating, too late to be of help. If I eat to the point of satisfaction, I will feel full a half an hour later. If I eat to the point of fullness, I will feel painfully stuffed later. How I wish that stuffed feeling would come before it’s too late!
I realized something else that was disturbing. The painfully stuffed feeling is alleviated by—starting to eat again! A normal eater would never think of beginning to eat again if they felt uncomfortably full. But the overeater turns to food in the face of any discomfort, even the discomfort brought on by feeling stuffed. The more I overeat a meal, the more likely it is that I will start snacking.
It’s a health disaster when someone has a strong taste urge coupled with a weak fullness signal. In addition, when the pain of fullness kicks in, it can be alleviated with more eating. Science can tell us more about the physical symptoms of fullness and why some people have such a hard time feeling them. If obesity runs in families, perhaps this weak fullness signal, plus the misreading of taste-thirst cues, is due, in part, to heredity. When I was toying around with these ideas, our family had two guinea pigs as pets. One continually ran to the water bottle for a drink during the day. The other returned repeatedly to the food dish. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you which guinea pig was overweight. Was it a genetic predisposition that made one guinea pig crave water and the other food?
I like the non-diet idea of eating anything so long as you only eat when you’re hungry and stop eating when you’re full. This sensible idea is simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, I just couldn’t make it work for me. I felt almost panicky as I tried to be mindful of hunger and fullness. I knew I was going to need a bit more help in order to make that idea work.
