By Theresa Stahl, RD, LDN 

Q: Ever since I started my new diet, I never feel full or satisfied, even after dinner. What should I do?

Q: It’s challenging to address your concern without knowing more about your health, your daily calorie needs, and your new diet.  All these factors play a role in your situation.

First of all, it’s possible that you may not be eating enough calories to feel satisfied, and that may be the reason you still feel hungry.  Many people eliminate too many calories when they diet and actually set themselves up for failure from the start.  You should meet with a registered dietitian (RD) who can calculate your actual calorie needs based on your age, height, gender, and activity level and also calculate your actual calorie intake to see if this could be the issue.  

On the other hand, many people have lost touch with their true feelings of hunger and fullness.  Honoring your hunger and fullness is one of the most important components of healthy eating habits. Consider a baby.  When a baby has had enough to eat or drink, he/she simply turns away and loses interest.  Babies have a built-in awareness of hunger and fullness, and they honor this.  But somewhere along the way, we learn to override these feelings. For example, because the food tastes so good we keep on eating, even though we aren’t hungry anymore.  Or we learn to turn to food for comfort after experiencing pain.  Or we eat because we’re bored or stressed. This is where the problem begins.

Satiety is the feeling of satisfaction that occurs after a meal and inhibits eating until the next meal. It takes about 20 minutes to sense fullness, so it’s important to eat slowly.  Also, it may take time to sharpen your awareness of hunger and fullness.

Try using a fullness discovery scale to rate your level of fullness after you finish a meal, rating your degree of fullness on a scale from 0 – 10 with 5 being neutral, 8 being full, 9 for stuffed, and 10 indicating sick. The book, Intuitive Eating, by registered dietitians Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch has an excellent fullness scale and discusses this issue in detail.  In their book, they point out that the longer you have been disconnected from your body’s sense of fullness, the longer it will take to identify this point. Other tips they offer to increase your consciousness of fullness include:

• Eat without distraction to help you enjoy your eating experience and focus on it. In other words, eat mindfully, paying attention to your meal.
• Reinforce your conscious decision to stop eating by putting your utensils down or putting your napkin on your plate or nudging your plate slightly forward.

Also, certain foods are more filling than others. Combining protein-rich foods such as fish, chicken, lean beef, and nuts with high fiber foods such as beans, whole grain breads, cereals, rice and pasta and adding high water and high fiber foods such as raw fruits and veggies, salads and soups also help increase satiety.  

If you continue to have problems with your feelings of fullness, you may find it best to use external signals such as weight to help you determine whether you are eating the right amount.