“how can you still be hungry?! you just ate!”
It can be super tempting to question your teens’ hunger levels, particularly if you have just watched them demolish 10 snacks. So, what’s the alternative? A helpful tool that you can use to help your teen feel more in touch with their body is to invite them to check in with the hunger and fullness scale.
If you haven’t heard of this scale before, it is basically a tool to determine how hungry or full we are at any given time. I’ve adapted mine based on the reading and research done by Dr Laura Thomas and Dietician Lyndi Cohen 👇
Acknowledging hunger and fullness cues, and honouring those, is part of intuitive eating. We need to teach our teens how to do this, and if they are no longer hungry and still want food, teach them to identify and meet that need in another way. Let’s start with understanding the scale.
understanding the scale
According to the research, we want to be eating when we feel ‘gentle hunger’. This might present as a light rumble in the tummy. This level of hunger allows us time to make ourselves a meal or a snack to satisfy our hunger. If we wait until we are ‘over hungry’, that is when we are more likely to eat every food in sight when we do get the opportunity to eat again.
After a meal we ideally want to feel ‘comfortably full’. This usually provides a feeling of contentment and satisfaction. It’s important that we remind teens when they experience this that food will be available to them later if they choose to pause at this stage. Often it is when we fear that food is going to be taken away that we tend to eat past comfortable fullness.
the reality
Often when we’re bored, excited, sad, or really enjoying a snack we can continue eating without pausing to check in with how our body is feeling. This is particularly common with teens for a couple of reasons.
1. When teens get home from school, they tend to be quite ravenous. They might not have eaten much during the day, they might have just played sport or they might be frantically re-fuelling so that they can study or go to sports training.
2. They’re experiencing an emotion that they don’t have the tools to cope with in that moment.
Let’s zoom in on the second one for a moment. Food can provide a lot of comfort. Loneliness, sadness, and boredom are all very understandable reasons to eat. We should never judge our teens for eating for these reasons. If you are noticing they are frequently eating as a way to move through difficult emotions, it might be worth having a conversation with them to identify other strategies that might be more supportive long term like going for a walk, asking for help, practicing self-compassion or calling a friend.
putting it into practice
Say it is after school and your teen has just finished their third snack and is asking you when dinner is going to be ready. Here are a few things you can say/do:
“I’ve noticed that you’ve been quite hungry since you got home from school. Do you feel like you had enough time today to eat?”
“I’m really glad that you’re enjoying the snacks we have at home, let’s pause for a moment to see how we’re feeling on the hunger and fullness scale.”
“I’m sorry that you’re not feeling satisfied by the snacks. Dinner is still a couple of hours away, would you like to help me prepare it so we can get it on the table sooner?”
lastly, continue to check in with your young person
It is worth continuing to check in with your teen if you’re noticing that the food they’re eating isn’t satisfying them. Have a conversation about the food they find most satisfying, what food they would like to have in the home to snack on, and remind them that they can always turn to you if there is something on their mind.
I hope you find these tips helpful and, remember, there is no pressure to get this right or to have this conversation every single time your teen is having a snack. There is always another opportunity to course correct and reframe what has been said.
To learn more about this scale, I would highly recommend reading Dr Laura Thomas’ book ‘Just Eat It’. Also, if you know someone who you think might benefit from reading this be sure to send it on! The more people we can empower with these strategies the more teens will take steps to building a joyful relationship with food and their body.
