I’m not sure where I first heard the phrase “flat belly full” but I’ve loved it ever since.

When we eat we often eat to the point of being overstuffed. Our feeling of “full” has been associated with being “stuffed.” But stuffed is not the same thing as full.

It is possible to be full and yet not feel stuffed.

It’s understandable to eat to the point of being stuffed however, it’s an evolutionary adaptation, but like many evolutionary adaptations we no longer live in an environment in which it’s necessary and in fact it’s now a disadvantage.

In the wild it was actually important to be able to eat until the point of being stuffed because in the wild your next meal was not guaranteed and there would be high variability between feeding times. Some times you might have been able to eat all day long, other times you might not eat for a few days in a row. Being able to get as much nutrition in at one time was important in case you wouldn’t have gotten another meal for a little while.

On top of that, we have the ability to override our sensation of feeling full when we change flavors, which further leads to overstuffing ourselves when we eat. As people often say, “there’s always room for dessert.” That ability to continue eating after fullness when the flavors change is also a mismatched evolutionary adaptation.

Again, in the wild this ability would have been important because if you had been eating low energy foods all day and were full, but yet your tribe mates managed to slay a kudu, it would have been advantageous for you to still be able to eat the animal. It is more energy dense but would not have lasted very long before spoiling, so eating it ASAP was necessary. If you were too full from the low energy foods you would not be able to eat the animal and that opportunity for greater energy density and nutrition would be lost.

The ability to continue eating past fullness when changing flavors is an adaptation to make sure that we get all the nutrition we can because in the wild a change in flavor would mean a change in nutritional composition of the food.

So now we understand why we can eat until overstuffed and that at one point in time it was an evolutionary advantage. But we don’t live in the wild anymore. Most of us in the US have constant access to food and have maybe missed a meal here or there but have never really had to go without food for a long period of time. We no longer have the natural check to our overeating – literally not having access to food.

We stuff ourselves because somewhere in our deeply ancestral brains and bodies we are trying to protect ourselves from starvation. The drive to overeat is wired into us. But that does not mean that we can’t do anything about it.

Now that you understand it, you can hit manual override. You can respect that desire and drive for what it is, something that was absolutely necessary for our survival but that is now mismatched with our environment. The current food environment is not changing anytime soon, so it’s up to you to change your behavior.

Know that you will have access to food in the future. Know that missing a meal is not the end of the world; you will survive and will eat again in the not too distant future.

Because we are so used to overstuffing ourselves, feeling overfull has become what we associate with feeling “full” period. So it can take some time and reorienting your body and brain to what feeling “full” should actually feel like. And it should feel like “flat belly full.” You are full without feeling distended or like you can’t fit in your pants any more or weighed down.

Here is the best way to start teaching your self how to feel “flat belly full”: begin by recognizing what it feels like to be hungry before eating, then when you start eating pay attention to how you feel, and be mindful of when you no longer have the feeling of hunger. This is not the same sensation as being full or stuffed. It is the absence of hunger and it usually happens much earlier in a meal than most of us are aware. This is the time in the meal to stop eating. You will probably have left overs, save them and eat again later, when you are hungry. Repeat the process.

It can take some time, but by understanding why you overeat and then focusing on eating mindfully to the point of not being hungry, you can start to feel “flat belly full” every time you eat.

(And it’s really easy be flat belly full when your diet consists primarily of real, whole, nutrient dense food like we cook with here at Paleo U!)

– Caitlin Allday, RDN
Nutrition Coach

Save

Save

The Plate Trick

You Are Not Starving

Evolutionary Nutrition

Spring Refocus

Nutrition Does Not Equal Weight Loss

Recommit, Don’t Resolve

Eat Before You Go

Make a Better Decision

Eating Around the Holidays (and any time of year)

Flat Belly Full