Ideally this is of course the only thing which we should be eating in response to – as opposed to emotional hunger, boredom, habit, and so on. The more we eat in response to these other factors, the more we lose touch with real physiological hunger. To reverse this, some of my clients have found it useful to create a simple rating scale of how full their stomachs feel. For example on a scale of 0 – 10, ‘0’ might represent totally emptiness, while ‘10’ could represent absolute maximum fullness (think Mony Python’s Mr Creosote!) Somewhere between these two extremes is a point of maximum comfort – let’s call it a ‘6’ on the scale. Anything beyond ‘6’ then means that you are becoming increasingly bloated and uncomfortable. The idea is that for a limited period you eat only in response to this scale – ie before you put something into your mouth, stop to pay attention to how hungry you really are. Rest your hand on your stomach, close your eyes if it helps, and then rate the emptiness or fullness of your stomach on the scale. If the score is lower than ‘6’, eat. But eat slowly, so that you can stop now and then to re-check your hunger levels. Once you get to ‘6’, stop eating. Typically after a week or two people of using this scale, people find that they have become much more tuned into their (true) physiological hunger levels again. Once you have achieved this, you can go back to your normal eating plan, but this time with a greater level of self-awareness.