Sometimes it’s possible to feel full but not satisfied after eating. Perhaps your stomach has no room left but you’re still craving something more — and the internal battle begins. I’ve been there many times before, wondering how to feel satisfied after eating without overeating…
Fullness and satisfaction are different. They often occur simultaneously, like after a great meal, but not every meal is great. While there is nothing wrong with this, many of us feel confused or edgy because we want fullness and satisfaction to coincide.
Fortunately, there are ways to bridge the gap. You’re about to learn why it’s possible to feel full but not satisfied after eating and how to address the pattern. It won’t work every time — because aiming for perfection with eating is rarely effective — but it’ll help you find balance.
Biological Triggers for Feeling Full but Not Satisfied After Eating
If you struggle with feeling full but unsatisfied after eating, there are two areas to explore: biology and psychology. Let’s explore biology first as it can override any attempts to address the psychology of overeating.
One possible biological trigger for feeling full but not satisfied after eating is leptin resistance. This condition impairs the body’s response to leptin, the “fullness” hormone that provides a sensation of satiety after eating.[1]
Typically, when you eat, fat cells release leptin, signaling to the brain that you’ve had enough food. However, with leptin resistance, this signal is muted or ignored. As a result, even though your stomach might be physically full, your brain doesn’t recognize this fullness, leading to a lack of satisfaction after meals.
Similarly, hypothyroidism impacts the feeling of satisfaction after eating, but through a different mechanism. A sluggish thyroid leads to a slower metabolism and slower “esophageal motility” (it takes longer for food to travel from the mouth to the stomach).[2] This means the body processes food at a reduced rate.
When metabolism is impaired with hypothyroidism, the energy derived from food is not efficiently used, often leading to a lingering sense of dissatisfaction or hunger after eating, despite having consumed enough food. Hypothyroidism also commonly occurs with depression, and both conditions can exacerbate feelings of dissatisfaction.[3]
These are two potential biological triggers for feeling full but unsatisfied after eating. Ask your doctor to test your thyroid and consider doing extra blood work to test your leptin levels if possible. If your bloodwork checks out, there are still plenty of steps you can take to increase feelings of satisfaction after eating.
Psychological Factors: How to Feel Satisfied After Eating
When biology is not the culprit of feeling full yet unsatisfied after eating, we can often find many clues in our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs — aka, our psychology. When your body is well-functioning but your relationship with food still feels unbalanced, eating psychology can help.
Here are some steps you can take to address the balance between fullness and satisfaction after eating:
1. Know the Difference Between Fullness and Satisfaction
Fullness is a physical sensation. It happens when your stomach reaches comfortable capacity. This sensation is often linked to stretch receptors in the stomach, which signal to the brain that it’s time to stop eating.[4]
Satisfaction is an emotion. It happens when you eat exactly what appeals to you when you’re hungry. If you’re craving something particular, and you eat the food you desire, you will end up feeling satisfied.
Many of us expect to feel satisfied once we’re full, but satisfaction and fullness don’t always overlap. If we aren’t careful, this can lead to “entitlement eating,” where we consume food out of a misguided sense of obligation instead of hunger or satisfaction.
In this case, entitlement eating would involve feeling entitled to satisfaction every single time you eat. Sometimes it’s appropriate to feel full but not satisfied after eating, especially if doing so means that you are honoring your body by stopping when you’re full — or doing your best to relearn how to stop eating when you’re full.
2. Pay Attention to “Aimless Hunger:” Not Knowing What Sounds Good
I like to call it Aimless Hunger when you’re hungry but nothing sounds good. You know your body needs nourishment and sustenance because you’re hungry, but you just can’t identify what you’re craving.
When this happens, it’s important to eat because your body is asking for nourishment. Try to opt for something simple that hits all your major macronutrients: carbs, fats, and protein. For example, you can make yourself an avocado-turkey sandwich or oatmeal sprinkled with nuts and seeds.
This is a simple, nutritious option, but it might have your brain grinding to a halt. It can trigger the familiar anxiety of eating and feeling unsatisfied; but again, sometimes it’s appropriate to feel full but not satisfied after eating.
Not every meal is meant to be perfect and satisfying. In fact, this can be an unhelpful pattern of perfectionism that gets in the way of healthy eating behaviors. We won’t always have the perfect thing available at the perfect time.
When we do manage that magic combination, we should relish the moment and savor it. But when we can’t get our hands on food that we crave, or if we don’t even know what we want, that’s okay.
3. Avoid Perfectionism in Eating
Setting the bar too high by expecting every meal to be satisfying can lead to feelings of defeat when a meal is inevitably unsatisfying. If you’re prone to overeating, those feelings of defeat can trigger emotional eating, which worsens the feeling of dissatisfaction.
Sometimes we end up in situations where we feel full but not satisfied after eating, and we feel like we’ve done something wrong. Remind yourself that this is perfectly fine. No one feels perfectly satisfied after every single meal (unless they can afford to have a personal chef on hand every second of the day).
What can you do, though, to improve your chances of feeling both full and satisfied after a meal? Without aiming for perfection, what can you do to feel more balanced more often? The answer is to eat what intuitively appeals to you.
4. Harness Your Intuition — A Key Ingredient for Feeling Satisfied After Eating
Intuitive eating is a great way to improve satisfaction from eating. At its core, intuitive eating involves eating what appeals to you when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. There’s more to it, but that’s the barebones framework.
If you have a history of dieting, however, you might not know what foods actually satisfy you, which can make it hard to feel both full and satisfied after a meal. Dieting trains you to ignore your body and listen to your brain. This is why I’m an advocate for giving up dieting and eating intuitively instead.
Studies have found that eating intuitively increases body satisfaction, decreases depression (a common side effect of chronic dieting), and even leads to eating healthier than dieting over the long-term.[5], [6], [7] Hopefully the clinical evidence behind intuitive eating is encouraging.
If you have been dieting for a long time, it may take time to develop and hone your intuition. Trust that your ability to listen to your intuition improves with practice. While dieting trains you to suppress your cravings, intuitive eating trains you to listen to them with compassion.
5. Relax Your Way to Feeling Satisfied After Meals
Here’s another compelling reason to stop dieting and eat intuitively instead: Studies have found that dieting increases the stress hormone cortisol.[8] Tracking what you eat and restricting your favorite foods not only increases stress but also makes you prone to depression — and neither emotion helps with feeling satisfied after eating.[3]
On the flip side of the coin, studies have shown that relaxation helps stimulate the production of digestive enzymes and keeps your body out of fight-or-flight mode.[9] This means that eating in a relaxed state helps you digest your food better — and you feel better, too.
This is why one of my favorite mottos is: “Relax and eat what you want to eat.” If you want pasta, eat pasta! If you want brownies, eat brownies! When you listen to your body and stop battling against your cravings, you’ll feel less stressed and more satisfied after eating.
6. Address Any Fears of Gaining Weight from Eating What You Crave
If you’re afraid of gaining weight from giving up dieting, you’re not alone. This fear keeps many well-meaning people from trying intuitive eating because it feels too risky.
Rest assured that reaching your natural set point weight without dieting is a well-trodden path. Studies have found that intuitive eaters are more likely to maintain their weight than those who diet.[10] This is likely because intuitive eating helps stop the restrict-binge cycle by cutting off the factor that triggers it: restriction.
Also, when you stop restricting the foods that you crave, you start to embrace all foods as equal. Instead of viewing foods in terms of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ or ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy,’ you view them all as potential sources of joy and nourishment.
This makes it less stressful to eat the foods that you crave, which enhances satisfaction from eating. Then, when you eat satisfying foods until comfortable fullness, you’ll be well on your way to reaching or maintaining your natural weight.
Stopping when you’re full can be the hardest part, and many of my other blog articles address this — particularly the Stop, Drop, & Feel method to stop binge eating. But for the sake of this article, I’m mostly focusing on the steps you can take to get the desired feeling of satisfaction after you eat.
7. Stop “Eating Around” and Eat What Satisfies You!
“Eating around” describes the domino effect of denying your cravings and overeating as a result. If you struggle with feeling full but not satisfied after eating, watch for this pattern.
For example, let’s say that you’re following a low-carb diet where pasta is off-limits. If you get hungry and crave pasta but force yourself to have something else instead, you’ll end up feeling full but not satisfied after eating.
Then, because you never got the feeling of satisfaction from your food, you’ll wander into the kitchen and browse for something else. Except, because you’re on a diet, you’re listening to your brain instead of your body. You opt for something “healthy” like hummus and cucumbers when what you really want is still that pasta.
Eventually, after grazing snack after snack, you end up microwaving the leftover pasta in your fridge and eating the whole thing even though you’re well beyond fullness. Because you kept denying your cravings and eating unsatisfying foods, compulsion pushed you to finally eat what satisfies you — only at the expense of overeating because you kept denying your cravings.
This is why eating the foods that appeal to you helps stop overeating, not perpetuate it. When you crave pasta and you eat the pasta, you’re left feeling full and satisfied, which makes it easier to stop when you’re full and move on.
Finding Balance Between Fullness and Satisfaction
Some of the main culprits behind feeling full but not satisfied after eating are dieting, restriction, and stress — stress over dieting and restriction! By adopting a more intuitive approach and enjoying the foods you crave, you’ll feel both full and satisfied after your meals.
If you’re new to my blog and curious to learn more about my program, Psycho-Spiritual Wellness, you can get the deep-dive by signing up for my free ebook and free 5-day email course below:
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Excellent piece that hits on a major problem with weight maintenance and food cravings. Thank you!
Thanks for the comment Liz! 🙂
This is the first article I found that describes what I’ve been going through. Over the past few years I’ve discovered food allergies and intolerances and have had to change my diet drastically. I agree we don’t have to be satisfied by every meal, but I find myself at the verge of tears sometimes since I’m unsatisfied at almost every meal. Wheat, rice, potatoes, and milk are all foods that contribute to poor health for me, this includes their derivatives (starches, syrups, etc). My favorite foods that leave me feeling satisfied every time are sandwiches, pizza, and sushi. Notice all those have foods that do not work well with me. I’m so tired of having to spend hours every week making alternative foods with alternative grains, fats or proteins and spending so much money for commercial alternatives. I just want to eat normal food. I don’t want to look at food and see an ingredient list hovering over it of all the things I shouldn’t eat. I don’t want to keep having to turn down going out to eat with people because I’m sick of spending $15 for a salad I could make cheaper at home and still feel just as unsatisfied there (if I do go I have to explain over and over why I’m only drinking sparkling water). I’ve been working trying to find the underlying cause of these food intolerances, and it’s so slow going. I really can’t see why I have to be depressed while I’m trying to get myself better. This difficulty is compounded by the fact I’m trying also to manage my weight, and all the things I make as alternatives are very high calorie (oils, nut flours, and “grains”, like buckwheat, are responsible). I try to make lower calorie versions by reducing the quantity, but them I’m just still hungry and unsatisfied.
I know that’s a lot, but do you have any suggestions? Even if not, thanks for taking the time to read.
Hi C! Wow, I think every single person reading this feels for you. That sound so tough, and I get why it would make you feel depressed. Gosh, the only suggestion that comes to mind is, are you eating enough food? I know that sounds like a crazy question – so many of us that struggle with overeating believe that we eat too much – but you’d be surprised at how many people aren’t eating enough, and I’m wondering if giving yourself the grace of eating a proper amount of food will make things less intolerable?? That’s my only thought at the moment given the little that I know about you. Feel free to comment back with more insight, or email me. I’m happy to dig further.
Thank you for the reply! Admittedly, I do stop before I’m full because I’m just sick of eating what I’m eating, or I know I’ve eaten the allotted calories for that meal and don’t want to go over. When I do eat to fullness, I still want to eat more because I don’t feel like I’ve eaten something–I don’t feel the satisfactory emotion that comes with having a full meal. I try to just go about my evening, but I’ll often wonder through to kitchen hoping it sparks something that I can remember I can eat. Sometimes all the food I make is gone anyways, and I’m too tired to make something else. I don’t keep snacks around because I’m trying not to get extra calories in because more nutritious snacks (like nut mixes) are high in calories or not satisfying (like veggie chips, plus the commercial ones may have potato starch, one of intolerances I have).
Thanks again for the reply, I hope the above gives some more insight.
It totally does. It reminds me of one of my vegan friends. She goes hungry at night sometimes because she’s too tired to cook food that she can eat. It is definitely a lifestyle – and for her it was chosen, for you it is not, so again, I really feel you! I still wonder if you’re eating enough, and I wonder if my recent blog post about healing your metabolism might provide some good insight for you. Let me know! I’m glad you got back to me 🙂
Thank you for the link to the post! I’ve encountered similar information to this before, and I’m not sure what to make of it given my lifestyle and goals. Weight loss for me is simply to be comfortable. I’m so uncomfortable feeling like I’m encased in flesh. My size is such that if I don’t wear the right clothes, my thighs chafe. The times when I was able to lose weight, it had to do with my lifestyle at the time. For example, when I was college I ate two meals a day (a piece of fruit or granola bar for breakfast and a full dinner in the evening) and I walked around 3 mi. because the campus was spread about the city. I did this weighted as well since I carried around my 15lb laptop and books. Other scenarios where I was eating fewer high-calorie foods (like in college), or eating a lot of low-calorie foods (like a ‘raw food’ cleanse with 90% non-starchy veggies and fruits, no volume restrictions), plus moderate amounts of exercise, I was able to maintain or lose weight and not feel hungry or dissatisfied. This was all before I discovered these intolerances, allergies, etc. and my food choices were varied. Now, eating intuitively for me means eating all the foods that harm me because that’s always what I want. I may not have to be like this forever based on what my reading and my health practitioner have said. I might be able to add wheat back at least. But it’s making life very depressing and expensive in the meantime. I’ve been years at this. What weight I am losing recently I think is just because I don’t want to eat because it’s so much trouble, or the food is so dissatisfying. If I do get better, I don’t know how I could maintain eating as much as I wanted/needed while also meeting a weight that makes me feel comfortable in my own body. My lifestyle now is very sedentary (I work in an archive), and I’m not a driven person when it comes to exercise. All I can do is about 15 min. a day. All that is a long-winded way of saying I don’t know how to heal my metabolism, since the first step of intuitively eating seems unreachable right now.
Thank you again for replying to me. I know you don’t have to do this because it’s how you make a living. I would rather pay to get some help (I had a food therapist before when these allergies first were discovered), but I’m really not financially in the position right now, so it’s encouraging you’d even read what I have to say. Thank you again.
Thank you for putting this into words! How is it that my darn perfectionism is screwing with my eating habits?? Thanks for giving me the permission to eat to fullness, yet be ok with not being totally satisfied each time. I needed to hear that today.
Keep sharing, Kari! These are some huge things to ponder.
Thanks for the comment Allison!!! I also find huge relief when reminding myself it’s OK not to feel satisfied every single time 🙂 I relate to perfectionism too. I used to be pretty high strung and “Type A” back when I was still dieting. It’s almost like they both feed into each other: the rules heighten the perfectionism and the perfectionism heightens the rules!
I am having trouble reading my body cues about when I am actually full or satisfied. I can eat lots of food…more than I know I should, but I just never seem to get full. And if it’s something satisfying, I eat all of it because it tastes good. After years of dieting, I fear I have lost touch with what my body feels.
Hi Carrie! I completely understand the dilemma. Years of dieting can certainly make us doubt ourselves and whether or not we’re truly hungry or full. Time and practice will help. I also encourage you to take an objective look at how much you’re eating, because in my experience, 90% of my clients aren’t eating enough!!! Diet culture has taught us that starving ourselves is normal, and I wonder if that’s what’s happening for you. And if you truly are eating enough and can’t seem to get full, try talking to your doctor. I also wrote a piece on still feeling hungry after eating that I think you’ll find helpful.
I really needed this today! I ate lunch and still wanted more of something but I knew physically I ate enough, so I did Stop, Drop and Feel. I realized I definitely wasn’t hungry but the feeling of satisfaction was not there. I’m so glad I found this article. It cleared up questions for me and put me in the right state of mind to not dishonor my hunger and keep eating until I found satisfaction (which would only lead to dissatisfaction in the end!) Thank you so much!!!
Yeees Megan!!! This is amazing!! LOVE that you did the Stop, Drop, & Feel first. Amazing. And I’m glad this pieced together the rest 🙂 way to use your tools!
Great blog post. It really resonated. I definitely struggle with Aimless Hunger(now I have a name for it). It’s reassuring to know that sometimes just eating for nutrition is a good option, and not being so hung up on only eating what you craving, especially when you’re not even sure what that is.
I also really appreciated the breakdown of the differences between fullness and satisfaction.
I’m so glad you found this one helpful Cathy! It is so easy to get stuck in accidental perfectionism with eating. And letting go of the need for every meal to be spot-on is quite liberating. 🙂