Intuitive Eating Tool: How to Use the Hunger-Fullness Scale
Understanding Hunger and Fullness Cues
The hunger and fullness scale is a fantastic tool for reconnecting with your body's natural cues, but it’s important to remember that these signals can be affected by a variety of factors. For some, hunger and fullness cues are clear and consistent, like a tap on the shoulder reminding you it’s time to eat or stop. But for others, these cues might feel muted, inconsistent, or even absent due to specific factors. If cues are absent during the day, work with a dietitian to explore next steps for you.
When you start tuning into hunger and fullness cues, it’s like reintroducing yourself to an old friend. You might find these cues adapting to your needs day by day, influenced by factors like sleep, hormones, and activity levels. Just as your body tells you when it’s time to rest or hydrate, it also knows when it needs fuel or when it’s had enough. Rebuilding trust with these cues is a key step in honoring your body’s unique rhythm.
How Dieting Disrupts Hunger and Fullness Cues
If hunger and fullness cues feel foreign or unreliable, you’re not alone. Dieting and restrictive eating patterns often disrupt the connection we have with our body's natural signals. Diet culture teaches us to ignore those gentle hunger cues and push through until we’re ravenously hungry—only to then feel out of control when we eat. Similarly, we may learn to override our fullness cues, stopping too early out of fear or eating until we’re uncomfortably full after a period of restriction. Over time, this can make hunger and fullness feel like extreme sensations rather than subtle nudges from your body.
The good news is that these cues are not broken forever—they’re just waiting for you to reconnect. By creating consistency with your eating patterns and practicing self-compassion, you can restore this connection and begin to trust your body again.
Think of your hunger and fullness cues as a friend who stopped reaching out because they weren’t being acknowledged. Rebuilding this relationship starts with showing up consistently—feeding yourself regularly and listening for the signals your body is sending. This often looks like eating satisfying meals or snacks every 2–4 hours, regardless of whether your hunger cues feel loud or quiet. Over time, these consistent actions signal to your body that it can trust you to meet its needs, and your cues will become more reliable as a result.
Regular check-ins with your body are key. Even if you don’t immediately feel hunger or fullness cues, simply pausing to notice physical sensations like stomach growling, lightheadedness, or comfort after eating can help you build a stronger connection. Over time, you’ll develop your own way of interpreting and honoring these signals in a way that feels natural and sustainable.
What is the Intuitive Eating Hunger Scale?
The hunger-fullness scale is an essential tool in intuitive eating, helping us reconnect with our body's natural hunger and fullness signals and fostering a deeper sense of trust and connection with our physical needs. By learning to identify where we fall on the scale, we can better respond to our body’s cues, avoiding extremes of both hunger and overfullness.
The hunger and fullness scale is ranked 1 to 10, providing a clear guide to gauge our internal sensations:
The lower end of the scale (1-4) indicates various levels of hunger, starting with mild hunger and progressing to more urgent or extreme hunger signals, such as dizziness, shakiness, or fatigue.
The higher end of the scale (6-10) represents increasing levels of fullness, ranging from comfortable satisfaction to uncomfortably full or stuffed.
In the middle of the hunger-fullness scale (5), we experience a neutral phase where we are neither hungry nor full—this is a state of balance, often a natural transition between meals or a starting point for mindful eating.
Using the hunger-fullness scale can help us eat more mindfully, honoring our body's energy needs and satisfaction levels. When we tune into these signals regularly, we can prevent patterns of extreme hunger (which may lead to overeating) or ignoring fullness (which can create discomfort). Over time, this practice not only improves our relationship with food but also strengthens our ability to nourish ourselves in ways that feel sustainable and supportive.
By paying attention to these cues, we begin to shift away from external rules or restrictive eating patterns and instead focus on what our body is asking for. This builds body trust, enhances satisfaction with meals, and helps us feel more grounded in our eating habits.
*The hunger and fullness scale is not for everyone, including those with sensory processing differences, trauma, dissociation, eating disorders, or medical conditions that may impact hunger and fullness cues. For some, following a flexible eating plan or structured meal support might be more helpful. While the scale can be adapted to different needs, this post provides a general overview rather than a tailored approach. If the hunger and fullness scale doesn’t resonate with you, that’s completely okay. You might find resources like RDs for Neurodiversity helpful in exploring alternatives that work for you. Listening to your body is a personal journey, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach!
How to use the Intuitive Eating Hunger-Fullness Scale
Click the Image to Download the Hunger Fullness Scale PDF!
Hunger (1 to 4)
When we initially experience hunger, we start at the higher end of the scale (around a 4). We probably notice our stomach growling, empty sensations, and hunger pangs present. From there, our hunger level will continue to "drop" on the scale, eventually getting to a one or "painfully hungry," which is the most severe hunger level. When we arrive at the more urgent level of hunger, we experience symptoms such as dizziness, shakiness, headache, loss of focus, changing mood, and nausea. This is because physiological changes happen in the body due to food deprivation. Therefore, it's crucial that we do not prolong our hunger and preferably prevent ourselves from getting to this point altogether. Honoring hunger when we initially experience it (between a 2-4) is essential in rebuilding trust with our bodies and creating an intuitive relationship with food (we will discuss this more below).
Neutral (5)
Neutrality with hunger and fullness cues between meals or snacks usually feels neither hungry nor full. However, when we eat a meal or snack, we can arrive here after experiencing hunger but before feeling fullness. This is important because as we honor hunger by choosing to eat, we also want to ensure that we are listening for fullness by reaching a point of satisfaction and contentment with our food. On the other hand, we have not honored our fullness if we stop eating because we no longer feel hungry or are at a place of neutrality. Practicing mindful eating can help us honor satisfaction.
Fullness (6 to 10)
We start experiencing fullness at the lower end of this range (around a 6). Between 7 and 8, we typically experience a level of fullness and satisfaction that feels comfortable. This is when we are likely ready to stop eating before feeling uncomfortably full (between 9-10). Just as we discussed the importance of honoring hunger above, it is equally important to honor our fullness. To do that, we need to eat enough food to reach a point of being comfortably full. We can identify fullness not only by noticing how we feel physically from food but also by whether or not the volume or types of food we eat will last us for the next 2 to 4 hours.
Why Listen to Hunger and Fullness Cues?
Physiological Benefits
When we experience extreme hunger, our blood sugar and blood pressure drop and our bodies start signaling a decline in function. There are expected changes in our hormone and neurotransmitter production, so we are likely to experience the effects of deprivation as physical symptoms. These may include feeling tired, dizzy, shaky, moody, and nauseous. Can you recall a time when you went without eating and felt this way? Now you have a new understanding of why and maybe a new respect for how much your body does to protect you and get its needs met!
Adequate intake and Energy Balance
Our hunger and fullness cues assist us in meeting our individualized daily energy needs. Our bodies are our best indicators of how much food we need daily, communicated through hunger and fullness. When we do not meet our energy needs, our body also sends us signals - which may be increased hunger and specific cravings, perhaps towards sweets. If we continue to nourish our bodies inadequately, our hunger cues become less reliable.
Rebuilding Body Trust
It will be very challenging to eat intuitively if you are not trusting your body, and your body is, therefore, unable to depend on you. It is possible to lose the sense of hunger or fullness because we have not listened to or honored our body's signals. This is likely to happen when restriction with food (either intentional or not) has taken place, and we "push off" hunger. We need to re-establish that trust to regain a felt sense of our body's cues. How? By regularly feeding our bodies when we notice hunger (between 2-4) and giving ourselves time to notice fullness (between 7-8), at which time it feels natural to stop eating. By doing this, we listen to our body's cues and build trust in working/communicating in unison.
Positive Relationship with food
The relationship we create with food is also essential to hunger and fullness. Sometimes, honoring your hunger and fullness cues will likely mean choosing foods you once felt or still feel like are "off limits." Diving deeper into these beliefs with food and creating more permission with food is necessary to honestly and adequately honor your hunger and fullness. Creating a more positive relationship with food and tuning into your body allows a deeper understanding of your food needs or desires.
Listening to your body is not about perfection—it’s about creating a relationship built on trust, respect, and care. Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to intuitive eating, and that’s part of what makes this journey so personal and empowering.
So how can we attend more to our hunger and fullness cues? It starts with being more mindful and aware of them. Do you notice hunger or fullness cues throughout the day? Do they only show up for you at a particular time of day? Are you honoring them when they show up or ignoring them? Are you permitting yourself to foods that will satisfy and content you? Practicing more mindfulness while eating and throughout the day will provide more insight into how you can better meet your body's needs. The team at CV Wellbeing is here to help you in your Intuitive Eating journey!
Written by Lauren Hebert, MS, RDN, LD, Dietitian at CV Wellbeing
FAQs about the Hunger-Fullness Scale
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The hunger-fullness scale is a tool ranked from 1 to 10 that helps you identify and respond to your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals. The lower numbers (1-4) indicate hunger, the middle (5) represents a neutral phase, and the higher numbers (6-10) signal increasing fullness.
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You can use the scale to guide your eating habits by:
Eating when hunger falls between 2-4 (mild to moderate hunger).
Stopping when fullness reaches 7-8 (comfortable satisfaction).
This practice helps you honor your body’s needs without waiting until you’re overly hungry or uncomfortably full.
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Ignoring hunger for too long (letting it drop to 1) can lead to physical symptoms like dizziness, shakiness, fatigue, and irritability. Prolonged food deprivation can also make it harder to recognize hunger cues over time and may lead to eating past fullness later.
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Yes, the scale can help prevent overeating by encouraging you to tune into your body’s fullness cues. By stopping at a 7-8 rather than continuing to 9-10 (uncomfortably full), you can feel satisfied without discomfort.
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If hunger or fullness cues feel unreliable, it may be due to food restriction, irregular eating patterns, or a disconnection from your body’s signals. Rebuilding trust takes time. Consider seeing a dietitian to help you build hunger cues back.