Sherpamelissa, I am struggling with this right now too. I do the exact same thing: keep eating when I am not sure that I am full. In fact, if I am very strict on my food and lose weight for two weeks, then I get intense cravings and for lack of a better word "fall off the wagon" either by overeating paleo food or even eating something neolithic and gross that I do not want. Trying to learn "what does it feel like to be full" does not work for me, has not worked for me, so I am changing tactics. In other words I am going to quit expecting different results from doing the same thing! Ha ha novel concept right? That is insanity according to the popular quote (attributed to Einstein I think).

So my new approach is to try to LEARN WHAT REAL HUNGER IS (versus mental, social, clock hunger) instead of trying to learn what "full" feels like. This approach may not work for everyone, and I can see how it would be hard to do if you have small children and have to make sure they are eating three meals a day. But I am working on "not eating by the clock" (Stephen-Aegis suggestion) and really studied quite a bit of research on fasting (posted by Rob Sacks). A 16/8 fast did not work for me and in fact just made me more likely to over-eat during the 8 hour window. Completing a longer fast last week (75 hours) was not as hard as I thought it would be, and the first meal I actually ate a smaller amount than I had been eating, and this effect has still continued for the last few days. Don't get me wrong--although I want to lose some weight and get a more muscular body comp, I tried this extended fast as a new way to solve the "hungry/full" problem we are discussing, not as a crash attempt to get to a number on the scale. The difficult thing to do is to *avoid the family, social or clock pressure to eat when you are not hungry (versus learning to stop eating when paleo food tastes so good). In other words, don't be afraid to shake things up and do something different for a few weeks. Big deal if it doesnt work and you gain a few pounds, at least you tried a new tactic and learned something about yourself, you can always go back to counting calories.

If I say "I can't" then the outcome is already determined. Avoid that mind-set at all costs! This is what seems to be helping me right now, good luck to you whatever tactic you use!

To me, feeling full is mainly physical. It feels like my stomach is stretched and that if I eat any more, my stomach will actually hurt. But at the same time, is a very subtle feeling, and easy to ignore/over-ride. Its less a feeling of "I'VE had enough" and more of a feeling of there's enough in there. To me, it's a matter of feeling the feeling from my stomach's point of view and not MY point of view, if that makes any sense.

I never knew satiation before paleo. Before, even if my stomach felt stuffed, for some reason, my brain wanted more. Now, sometimes or often, I will feel too busy to listen to my stomach. Like right now, my stomach has been growling for an hour or more, but I keep saying, just one more email, just one more email.. SO the urge to eat only comes physically, not much mentally. Mentally, I am more interested in emailing. Later, I will get my steak and eat some, but I will lose interest faster. I may stop for another email, and forget to go back to it, and then later I will realize I haven't finished yet. Maybe I will eat a few more bites, but then it will be cold and not as tasty. I will then either pack it for lunch at work tomorrow, save it, or give it to the dog. (when saved meat starts to accumulate in the fridge, then doggy gets more snacks..) However, sometimes food will taste extra good and I will try to finish it. I keep eating past the point of satiation, until the act of eating gets less and less pleasant. Finally the unpleasantness is too strong. I don't want to eat anymore so I stop. The body wins in the end, but this happens mostly with meat. It's hard to eat a huge ton of meat all at once. Plus, overtime, the point where I get too stuffed to eat any more starts to happen with smaller and smaller portions. It was a gradual and very natural progresssion and I think this way is the healthiest. If you weigh a lot, then I don't think it's healthy to suddenly totally cut calories to be very low. Instead I think the healthy way is that over time, you eat less and less. Paleo did that for me naturally such that I really didnt have to think about it. All I had to think about was avoiding the occasional temptation at work where they often have tons of sugary snacks.

I'm the same way, but since I detest counting and think, for me, it's counterproductive (It's hard for me to look at a meal without subconsciously tallying calorie count). I tend to wait as long as I can, then eat as much as I want, the rest of the day is spare save for coffee and cream, which I seem to be able to ration without getting neurotic.

After a few weeks of ZC, I get to the point where I start pushing food away when I'm done. But I'm not militant about it and will usually revert every few weeks for berries or tubers of some sort. For me, it comes down to deciding how rather I would lose/maintain weight. Either ZC forever with no counting or even consideration of limiting anything, or carbs and keeping "strict" with one meal a day. I usually fall somewhere in the middle, but the more carbs I eat, the more trouble I have with appetite, so I tend to stay closer to ZC for sanity sake. Yams are delicious, but they drive me crazy.

I recommend you look into books by Geneen Roth. Among other amazing and informative topics, she writes about the dangers of not trusting your instincts or your own body. The fear that if left to your own devices you would consume the world and continually gain weight fosters the notion that you must deprive yourself to remain "on-track" or sensible when it comes to what you consume, and the other side of deprivation is bingeing. Bingeing is usually inevitable when a person tries very hard to restrict herself/himself. This has certainly been my experience.

I can't recommend her books enough. I would start with Breaking Free from Emotional Eating. If you aren't listening to physical triggers and signs, then you are likely listening to emotional ones.

Oh, my switch is SO broken. The bad thing is, I don't ever recall HAVING that switch working effectively. In high school I only stayed trim by virtue of swimming two hours a day and counting calories. (Hey, I was taking things like an applesauce and two fun size candy bars for lunch, so it wasn't exactly quality food, but the lunches I packed were indeed low calorie) - so it was chronic cardio and sheer willpower then.

Starting a meal generates huge momentum for me, and I blow right by that satiation point, wherever it was, before I know it and just feel ughfull. As I've mentioned before, I know that I need some objective limits rather than subjective if I'm going to make progress - and maybe, maybe after reaching some big goals could I relax a bit, but I really doubt it - too dangerous to slip into my old limit-ignoring ways.

Closely journalling my food intake seems to be my most logical solution at this point. Unfortunately (not excusing, just explaining), being a mother of two kids aged 3 and 1, the painstaking work involved in measuring serving sizes, finding the stuff in an online database, etc. gets difficult to maintain pretty quickly - and I've actually tried it a few times without being able to keep at it longer than about a week.

I've been wondering about this! For me it's urge to binge - to physically fill my belly to the point of being stuffed. To cram my mouth full of something and swallow. I was lucky I wasn't outright obese or bulimic! And I might have been either/both if I had let it continue a few more years. OMG the stuff I ate when I once tried to diet, lost 20 lbs, then gained it all back again!

But it's interesting, in retrospect: my horrible binge food was (yikes this is still hard to confess) was this: I'd make a full sized batch of oatmeal raisin cookie dough - and eat it all with a spoon. I used to think it was a weird self punishment. But now I wonder: what if it wasn't the sugar I craved but the BUTTER?

One thing I've learned is to avoid fasting. That 'good' feeling of a hollow belly? That certain pride in having conquered a compulsion for a while? I now know it's a sign to RUN - not walk - to the nearest jar of coconut oil or slab of bacon and eat my fill. Intentional hunger is (for me) nothing to feel smug over and will almost always backfire. If it's a war between my will and my body, my body will win every time and with a vengeance. That said, if I accidentally miss a meal I don't sweat over it either. Maybe I'll try a bone broth fast one day, but not until my body feels safe from my phony pride...

I'm still binging a little - I eat far beyond satiety still, and still stuff my mouth with food. But it's all calmer now, less desperate. AND I've lost almost 30 lbs in spite of it.

Another thing: how big my belly feels has almost no relationship to my weight. I'll have breakfast and be 100% sure I've gained 10 lb but then the scale shows I've lost 3 lbs. Go figure.

I've been thinking of trying a FAT fast - only eat mostly saturated fats and drink water for a couple weeks. That should beat that 'hunger pride' feeling!

I wonder if you're just psyching yourself out. You've been counting calories for a long time, I'm sure you have all the know-how to eat what works for you. Willpower is a curious thing. Sometimes you really have to test it to see what you're capable of.

I know you've said in the past that you gain weight if you don't count calories. How long have you gone not counting? Like everything else, there may be a transition period as you switch to trusting yourself instead of trusting the numbers.

I keep documentation too, so I understand the inclination to record everything. Sometimes it's a leap of faith though. If you give your body a fair chance to learn what satiety is you may find that it is possible for you. Don't sell yourself short. You've accomplished so much already.

This works, but not when it comes to carbohydrates. Keep strict control of carbs and then eat whatever else you want until you reach satiety. Carbs almost solely determine adiposity.

Edit: I'm of the opinion that adiposity is the intersection between carb intake, activity and BMR. All of these values can be modified, but it's easiest to alter carb intake, followed by activity and lastly BMR. BMR is only really affected by an increase in lean body mass, which takes a long time to change substantially. If you lower carbs from 50 to 30g a day, your overall hunger for the day will decrease and your body will count calories for you.

I use the "Steak Test". Imagine a big 14 oz steak with no seasonings or sauces, if you want to devour that steak, you are hungry! If not, well you may just be bored or craving, but hungry you are not!

My biggest issue is waste! I cook for a family of 3 and if there are enough leftovers I will eat them the next day, but if it's not enough for another meal I will just eat it whether I am hungry or not because food is like gold to me! I grew up with a mother that refused to let me leave the table until my plate was clean....so waste is a hard pill for me to swallow.

So to say the least, I tend to over eat for dinner because there is always a couple oz's of meat and veges left over.

so, ignorant question here...

for those of you who still have binge/overeating desires, do you cook most of your own food, and if you do, what are you using for salt and how much salt would you say you use, a conservative amount or a lot?

I don't know why this occurred to me and if it has any real relevance, but it occurred to me that sometimes I crave a little salt, and I will actually eat just a small pinch of salt now and again. I use a fair amount in my cooking, to taste but I am not shy about it. I use a high mineral content salt (it's Pink Himalayan salt that I bought at TJ Maxx for $5 but its awesome and i bought a lot). I was wondering if maybe there wasn't an underlying mineral craving that could be contributing to these desires. A vast majority of salt these days is pretty mineral poor. This could be a dumb idea, so consider this a curious informal survey.

When I did not eat paleo, I had this problem with often overeating. I think both wheat based products (pastries, croissants, pies...) and sugary items created that craving. After adopting paleo I did not need to count calories any more: I eat when I have to, I eat as much as want, I do not gain weight though. Perhaps physiological reasons explain this, hormone balances, etc. Also I believe that when you are under more personal stress you could be tempted to eat just to reduce the anxiety, even if you are not hungry...

As you already know, my hunger-o-meter is totally broken, so I don't have much to offer here in terms of answers.

I've managed to "hack" my counting, though, which is helping me slowly transition to IE. Part of my problem is accountability, and if I don't keep track, then I fly off the deep end of "I don't have to record this so it doesn't count" weight gain.

I've taken to weighing/measuring my portions and writing them down, but not actually tallying the final numbers. The mere effort of having to write it down keeps me from randomly shoving food into my mouth, but knowing if I WANTED to count it, I could, gives me a ton of relief. In the end, I don't know my macros/micros and I have no idea how many calories I did eat to the number, but I can glance at my sheet and sort of guesstimate if I'm within range and knowing that the opportunity to count does exist eases the OCD nagging in the back of my head.

I've been doing this for a little over a month now, and it allows me to dine out and eyeball my portions -- as long as I write them down as soon as I get home (as for knowing when to stop eating, I don't; I just cut my meal in half then save the rest for later). I'm hoping I can soon get to a point where I can just write down portions instead of weighing everything, then from there trust myself to not write down portions and actually IE completely, but I know I have a long road ahead of me in beating my COE/OCD.

My fella is incredible at IE, and I'm trying to model myself after him. He once told me he stops eating when the food isn't really enjoyable anymore. Right now, he's sitting down with a tub of cookies in front of him and a half-eaten sandwich. He took the edge off his hunger with the sandwich, and the crust and a hunk of cheese remains and he doesn't enjoy that part, so he threw it away. However, he still has room in his tummy for a cookie. And now he's satisfied, and just threw away unwanted leftover food. My mind boggles; I would've eaten my entire plate, then ate the cookie as well. =P

It's almost like he picks over the "good" parts and eats them, then when he's no longer ravenous, throws away the "rubbish" bits (scraps of rice, corner bits of bread, straggly bits of potato, vegetables he doesn't really prefer), then tops off the tank with dessert.

Anyway. Sorry about my trailed-off rambling here. x)

Good luck to you! You're amazingly brilliant and smart and have accomplished so much over these years. You've figured out how to lose a commendable amount of weight and keep it off for years; transitioning to IE is the next step, I think, in your progress. I know you can figure it out and determine what works best for you. :) (And if you finally figure out how to IE, please tell me, because I could use the guidance and insight. xD)

<3

Maybe a behavioural change - just eat a small meal. Wait half an hour. You can eat again if you still feel hungry.

Also, remember the saying, "hunger is the best sauce". Eat plain food.

I would point those that do not received the satiety signal to a pod cast interview of Dr. Robert Lustig about satiety and obesity in which he explains at about minute 20 onward the role fiber plays in signaling satiety. http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2011/02/12/802-sugar-hazards/ It's the first interview on the page.

Basically fiber reduces the absorption of sugars into the bloodsteam and thus supresses the insulin response...thus more satiety. Second fiber assists in moving food through 22 feet of intestines quickly and when the food arrives at the end of the intestines, there is a hormone called PPY that is triggered and is absorbed into the blood and when PPY reaches the brain, it shuts off the desire for more food. The satiety signal. Thus Lustig says he advocates waiting 20 minutes before taking a second helping of food in order to let the food reach the end of the intestines so the PPY will be stimulated.

Also there is a lot of discussion of the role of fructose and what it does to the body. Not good.

My satiety meter was completely broken for the majority of my life until I started a high-fat, low-carb diet. I never really felt hungry, I never really felt full. There was a lot of "I guess it's time to eat" or "this sounds good." I initially started with Atkins several years ago and for the first time I woke up hungry, or rather, hunger woke me up. Craziness!

I fell off the wagon for a while, but have since climbed back onto the Paleo wagon. I welcome that hungry feeling now, it still feels novel. Full is harder, but I'm getting there. It's very subtle, and it's taken some trial and error to figure out what my body is telling me. My eyes are still much bigger than my stomach and after years of just eating whatever, it's a learning process that I'm slowly mastering. I used to be able to eat huge amounts of food (COE-style), and still feel hungry even though I was painfully full. Now, I can get to a point where I know I just don't need any more and can walk away from my plate with food still on it! I do notice that if I have a meal with any sugar, the feeling of "I WANT to keep eating this" very quickly overrides my "I don't need to eat any more."

I love this question and have often wondered the same thing. I notice I only feel satiety if I tend to under-eat a bit.

I use the same tactic as texasleah. I sometimes do a bone broth fast for a day or day and a half, not to lose weight but to decrease my stomach size and trigger a better satiety signal. I'm not sure what happens in my body but I do think there is a physiological effect where something kicks in and I'm able to go longer between meals without eating. I forget about food btw meals and feel sated.

This is the only way I've ever been able to lose weight successfully in the past. It's possible it's kickstarting me into ketosis--I'm not sure what this physical state is but it definitely feels biochemically different. The more I eat the more I seem to want to eat. Perhaps I tend to eat a bit more than I need sometimes and that leads to metabolic derangement? Not sure.

Eventually I tend to go back to eating more or have an emotional trigger but it works for a time. I try to do the broth fast with a friend so I have a partner and am more inspired to stick with it. I also make sure to have a good crockpot full of tasty homemade bone broth. It's surprisingly satisfying. I'll also drink nettle tea/infusion which is rich in calcium.

Sometimes I also think that my general sense is that food is infinitely abundant in America. I can so easily get more at any moment. I am sure this plays into my psychological relationship to food where knowing there is more out there somewhere, in the fridge, at the store, gives me a slight feeling of virtue for eating a little more as if I'm doing my share to move the merchandise. It's a very subtle inflection, but for me, not having too much food in the house is also quite helpful.

As a former morbidly obese woman I know for certain that my body's feedback loop is broken when it comes to hunger and I have to consciously restrict myself. I spent a couple of years as a Geneen Roth devotee and ended up 40lbs fatter. I went to the opposite end and did OA Grey sheet for a year when I ate only what I was told to eat (amounts and foods) and called it in to my sponsor every morning for her approval (the ultimate in not listening to ones own body) I did lose a bit of weight but also felt like I lost a bit of myself in the process.

Melissa I think the thing with people like us is that we have all the extra fat cells from our former obesity and I believe strongly that those cells still in us but now empty desperately want to be filled up again and that the scream for that on a daily basis. Our situations are unique I think and I believe that for people with bodies like ours we will never have the luxury of being guided by our bodies alone. Those empty cells are not benign and I know that for me I will have a daily fight with them where I must consciously decide they will not get their way. At least not that day. What I know for sure is that my body wants to be fat again and that I must consciously battle it's desire. I think this is not the case for most people but for morbidly obese or formerly so I think this is generally the case.

As someone struggling myself with fear of getting fat again (now even without exercise) I've come to think about your subject a lot.Most paleo people were once obese,so why wouldn't we/they all struggle with it?Could it be that our bodyfat% is actually higher or could it be that our minds are the culprits?It's the one telling us to fear get fat again. There's also John Gabriel,who claims the body wants to be thin,so maybe it's signalling to eat more so it can keep burning?I'm starting to believe that your body will guide you (how scary the combinations/proportions sometimes might seem) what to eat when you eat natural stuff,maybe it's the mind that needs to be shut down.

Melissa I just remembered something, from when I first started experimenting with the diet(s) that eventually resulted in paleo, at which point I stopped worrying about how much I ate (though I might revisit this question again once I have some mileage - maybe a year - on paleo): it's that there was a difference between belly hunger and mouth hunger. And that the belly LIED to me but my mouth told the truth! It'd work like this: I'd eat something, then need to wait an hour. But I'd feel hungrier so it took will power to resist for that hour and it was very distracting. But I discovered that if I imagined actually eating a food - physically chewing it up, pushing it around with my tongue and swallowing - that'd I'd feel a kind of aversion or even revulsion. My mouth was saying "no" even though my belly/body still had eating momentum and was saying "more!"

Makes some sense - the mouth is a kind of gateway to the body, and it might be easier to send a "time to stop eating!" signal to a single small gate then it is to 'the body' as a sluggish and abstract whole.

I found that I had much better sensitivity to 'asking my mouth' if I wanted more food than from 'asking my body.' The problem of course is that I was SO used to 'asking my body' that it took a lot of constant attention to switch gears.

Anyway, your question seemed to be 'what do you actually listen to when you listen to your body?' and I thought this might be an interesting twist.

I found this question looking for some support for the issue I'm facing. My switch used to be fine. I recently started hormonal birth control and I am not hungry. Ever. For a over week now. I'm afraid if I don't start eating at regular times and eating a set amount of food, I won't be eating enough. I also can't tell when I'm full, since I'm never hungry to begin with. I feel full all the time. This led to a bad episode of overeating this weekend that ended in disaster. I didn't realize I was eating too much. So I definitely need to work out a system for measuring my food until I get used to this. Thanks for asking this question and gathering these answers!