Leave Food, Feel Deprived?

When I sense I've eaten enough and I contemplate ending my meal, while food remains on my plate, I often fear feeling deprived. I try to avoid those fears of deprivation by serving myself an amount that usually satisfies my physical hunger and makes me comfortably full. However, I sometimes feel comfortably full before I finish that portion. In order to stop eating at 'just enough', I tried to follow what Susie Orbach said in "On Eating":

"If you savor every mouthful, you won't feel cheated. The sense of fullness won't come too soon and you will be ready to stop eating ... Your body will send you a message that it is satisfied ... If you don't concentrate while you eat, your body may be telling you it's full but you may still be wanting more taste sensations in your mouth. You will be tempted to override the feeling of fullness because you have missed part of the enjoyment of the food. You can't affort to do that if you are trying to get your hunger and satisfaction signals to work accurately."

I tried eating slowly without distractions to thoroughly enjoy every bite, so that I wouldn't feel 'cheated' by getting full before I derive as much emotional satisfaction as possible from the meal. However, thoroughly enjoying every bite made me sometimes want to keep enjoying food until I received obvious signals from my stomach that I was uncomfortably full. I obviously 'overrode the feeling of fullness' even when I enjoyed every bite so that I could eat all the food I believed "I deserved" to eat. So I may have some 'entitlement' beliefs which motivate me to keep eating past 'just enough'. Because I try to serve myself the exact amount which will satisfy my hunger, I may believe I 'deserve' to eat what I serve myself.

I also don't want to stop at 'just enough' because I fear getting hungry before the next meal. Actually I fear low blood sugar signals (shakiness, light headedness, weakness, intense headaches, desperation and irritability) more than I fear feeling 'hungry'. Before I learned what foods gave me staying power and how to respond to moderate hunger before it became intense hunger, I often experienced those scarey low blood sugar symptoms. However, I rarely experience those symptoms now that I carefully choose foods with staying power and stop to prepare a meal when I feel comfortably hungry.

Nevertheless, I want to explore those fears of deprivation (when/if I stopped eating with food on my plate). So I considered what Susie Orbach wrote in "Fat is a Feminist Issue II":

"Try and sort out whether you ... would feel too deprived ... if you left (food still on your plate) ... If you imagine you would feel deprived, are you sure that in fact you would? If you've enjoyed the food, you could choose to have the same again another time. What exactly would you be missing out on if you didn't finish the food? What are you frightened of not getting? Perhaps you could get what you really want from the situation or the other people without having to stuff down all the food."

"Observe other people's eating habits. Look around you in cafes and restaurants and you will see how routinely people leave food on their plates. Nothing terrible happens to them. They survive till the next time they eat (and they do eat again!), and nobody else is really bothered one way or the other if there are leftovers."

I really can eat foods I enjoy at future meals. When I know I'll have the same breakfast the next morning, I don't need to overeat. I'm only 'frightened' of feeling deprived, like I felt as a small child, when I was restricted arbitrarily of eating foods my mother believed would make me 'fat'. I thought her restriction was unfair. So I still want to rebel against any restriction of what or how much I eat. I accept food allergy restrictions, because I know eating allergens causes painful reactions. However, I consider those few extra bites beyond 'just enough' as 'harmless'. After all I'm not overweight. What's the big deal?

I know the benefits of eating past 'comfortably full'. I recently posted about what I would miss if I stopped when I felt full. I avoid fears of future hunger, deprivation, wasting food, etc. (See "If I Never Ate Past Full" for that long list.) So I now want to consider the benefits of stopping at 'just enough', rather than eat until I'm obviously full. What do I 'deprive' myself of, when I eat those last few bites, after I'm already comfortably full?

(1) For me, 'obviously full' often is painfully full, for several hours after the meal. So I deprive myself of feeling comfortable after a meal.

(2) I need to take HCl to digest proteins and fats. If I overeat, I can easily reflux strong acid. So overeating causes reflux which deprives me of comfortfor several hours after a meal.

(3) I can't always predict how much food I need to feel satisfied by serving myself the amount which satisfied me yesterday. I certainly can't control restaurant serving sizes. I would like to learn to trust my 'just enough' sensations, rather than discount those sensations as irrelevant or impaired digestion (and therefore false alarms). So eating past 'full' deprives me of learning to trust that I will respond to 'satisfaction' stomach cues.

(4) In restaurants I assume I will take home some of my entree, because I have observed that most restaurant meals provide more food than I need to feel satisfied. I would like to leave my table at home feeling as comfortable as I do when I eat at restaurants. So overeating at home deprives me of self-confidence that I, not the portion size, control what I eat.

(5) I have not abstained from bingeing for longer than 3-5 months in the past few years. I suspect learning to consistently stop when I feel satisfied will help me completely eliminate binges, when I totally ignore 'full' sensations. Overeating deprives me of learning to obey 'full' cues and stop eating, instead of think "oh what the heck, I might as well binge."

Today I posted on the 'Food & Feelings' board a request for suggestions about my 'leave food, feel deprived' dilemma. I received several helpful suggestions. Meanwhile today I committed to leave at least small amounts of food at each meal. So far I threw away 2-3 spoonfuls of cereal and fruit at breakfast and 2 bites of bread crust at lunch, when I also put away slices of apple for another meal. I immediately noticed how comfortable I felt after the meal, which motivated me to continue my 'leave food' experiment indefinitely.

I suspect the following helped me stop when I felt satisfied:

(1) I ate the entire meal slowly without distractions;

(2) I planned an enjoyable post meal activity;

(3) I reminded myself how much better I would feel if I stop at 'just enough'.