WEEK 3 EXERCISE

Fullness and Stopping When Full

Practice 2 full days

Feeling Fullness (Exercise 6)

🔔 The goal of this exercise is to help you feel your inner fullness and become familiar with recognizing it. I’ve included a video below explaining this further, including your "fullness window."

I will share typical fullness signs, and then I want you to focus on 2-3 specific ones each day only, the exercise beloew. So we take it one step at a time and you can really experience and observe each fullness sign with confidence :)

— Fullness Signs —

  • Start to really focus on getting to know and feeling your fullness

  • I won’t give you tips like chewing a certain number of times or sitting at the table. Instead, pay attention to your fullness signals (mental and physical signs listed below) by stopping, checking in, and asking yourself the questions, answering honestly.

  • Why not the usual tips like sitting at the table or not watching TV? I want you to practice eating in your normal environment, not in an exceptional setting. Important is to pay attention to your signals, so as long as you do that, you can eat standing, watching your favorite show, etc. 😊

Exercise 1:

  • Physical: Focus on whether your eating pace slows down naturally. Pause occasionally and ask yourself: Am I still eating because I’m hungry, or is it out of habit?

  • Mental: Observe if your thoughts begin shifting to other things while eating. For example, do you start thinking about what to do after your meal?

Exercise 2:

  • Physical: Pay attention to the feeling of your stomach. Does it feel calm and comfortable as you eat, or do you notice any tightness or discomfort?

  • Mental: Notice if food begins to lose its appeal. Are the flavors less vibrant or exciting as you continue eating?

Exercise 3:

  • Physical: Check in to see if you’re pausing more often during your meal. Do you find yourself putting down your fork or spoon?

  • Mental: Focus on whether your attention is naturally drawn away from the food. Are you getting distracted by your surroundings or a thought?

Stop Eating when satisfied - Snacks (Exercise 7)

Now that you're truly starting to understand your fullness cues—both physical and mental—I want you to pay attention to your sense of satiation when it comes to snacking.

Snacks, chocolate, and all of that are allowed. You're no longer trying to control them, but let’s explore how it feels to stop when you’ve had enough, and practice recognizing that feeling in the first place—experiencing satiation and responding to it.

When you feel an appetite for something sweet, remember this…↓

A normal craving is calm and intentional, even if you're not physically hungry. It’s about enjoyment, without feelings of urgency or guilt.

A compulsive urge, on the other hand, often feels overwhelming or reactive, or out of hand/power driven by emotions or a habitual need.

1. Pause Mid-Bite to Check the Taste

While eating, pause for a moment, close your eyes, and focus fully on the taste and enjoyment of the food. Ask yourself:

  • "Am I enjoying this as much as I did with the first few bites?"

  • 👉🏽 If the enjoyment has decreased but you feel the need to continue eating, it might be more of a compulsive urge than appetite.

  • The beauty if those questions: you can be super honest with yourself, because you practice and there is no judgment to whatever answer :)

2. Notice Satisfaction Signals from Your Body

While eating, check in with how your body feels. Ask yourself:

  • "Do I feel physically/mentally satisfied yet?" (not necessarily full, but content).

  • "Am I eating slower and savoring this, or speeding up and zoning out?"

  • 👉🏽 If you find yourself speeding up or feeling disconnected, it’s often a sign of a compulsive urge rather than normal appetite.

3. Check for Guilt While Eating

Ask yourself:

  • "Am I continuing to eat because I feel guilty about stopping, wasting the food or eating unhealthy?"

  • If guilt is driving you to finish, remind yourself that stopping when you’re satisfied is not wasteful. Eating past satisfaction won’t make guilt go away—it usually makes it worse.

4. Notice the Shift from Enjoyment to Habit

Pay attention to when eating starts feeling automatic. Some signs of a compulsive urge include:

  • Eating faster.

  • Thinking less about the taste or texture and more about finishing.

  • Feeling like "I can’t stop now, I have to finish this."

  • If you notice this happening, try pausing, putting the spoon or snack down, and taking a few deep breaths. Then ask yourself: "Am I still eating for enjoyment, or has this become automatic eating?"

5. Remind yourself, that:

You are free to continue eating, but now you have awareness and no longer react — you respond to what your body actually needs ↓

❌ Reacting to a trained habit out of stress or guilt
✅ Stopping because you are allowed to enjoy all foods and feel satisfied

→ And lastly, this takes time. It may work a couple of times, then you eat past fullness — that’s normal. What matters is that you keep going. The practice is where the rewiring happens.

Emotional Eating (Exercise 8)

🔔 These exercises are to help you manage emotional eating urges by shifting your mindset and creating a sense of control over your emotions.

The goal is to break the habitual pattern in your brain, the false solution of using food to cope and replace it with healthier mental approaches. Each one helps reframe your emotional responses, giving you practical tools to manage the urges and not act on them.

01. Journaling: When you feel the urge to binge, take a moment to write down exactly what you're feeling. By putting your emotions into words, you externalize the stress and create some distance from it.

→ This helps you process and understand the root cause of your emotions instead of reacting impulsively.

02. Emotions Are Temporary: Remember that emotions come and go. The stress or pressure you’re feeling will pass, and you don’t need to act on it.

Great proof you have if you compare the past weeks to know, your nervous system feels more safe again. All our emotions come but also do go again (thank God! 🥲)

→ By acknowledging this, you can see the emotional eating urge as a fleeting reaction, rather than something that has power over you. Waiting out the storm helps diminish its intensity.

03. Food Is Not a Solution: Remind yourself that food is the wried wrong solution we want to erase. When you’re triggered by stress or pressure, recognize that eating won’t fix anything.

→ Shifting the belief that food offers comfort to the idea that food is for nourishment & taste, with true appetite will help disconnect emotional eating patterns.

04. You Are Not Your Emotions: Understand that your feelings of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm don’t define who you are. You may be experiencing these emotions, but they don’t control you.

→ By separating yourself from your emotions (or “it”), you reduce their power to influence your actions, particularly around food. You have the power :)

05. Empowerment Over Avoidance: Every time you resist the urge to react with sweets to stress, you’re reinforcing your strength and weaken the wire in your brain. Instead of seeing it as deprivation, view it as an empowering act: each time you don’t act, you are working on breaking the wire for good and thus erasing the urge altogether.

→ No perfection. Each small step is victory that rewires your brain toward healthier responses.