Filling Up On Salad: The Fallacy of Volume Fullness
We’ve become a nation of volume eaters, chasing that feeling of fullness while avoiding calories. We focus on lower calorie foods with more bulk such as salads and broccoli – foods that promise to help us feel satisfied without breaking the calorie bank.
On the surface, this approach makes sense. A giant salad with light dressing appears much larger than a burger, so logically, it should keep us fuller for longer, right?
But here’s the thing—fullness isn’t just about volume.
The Science of Fullness: It’s More Than Just Space
Satiety, or the feeling of fullness, isn’t determined by food volume alone. The stomach pressure that comes from volume fullness is just one of many ways your body signals you that you’ve consumed enough fuel.
While a huge plate of lettuce might fill your stomach, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll stay satisfied for long. Why? Because volume without enough fuel often leads to hunger creeping back sooner than expected.
Think about this: Have you ever eaten a large salad, only to find yourself craving something else an hour later? That’s because while your stomach may have been physically full, your body didn’t get the energy it needed to keep hunger at bay.
Yet Weight Management Programs Recommend Volume Eating
Volume eating is one of the most recommended weight management tips. Experts have been telling us for decades that we can eat more food while eating less calories, not feel hungry and lose weight.
In other words, you can have your cake and eat it too.
Or rather, you can have your rice cake and eat it too.
You can eat four rice cakes rather than ½ cup of rice — both are 90 calories, but you get more volume with the rice cakes. So you should feel more satisfied and full eating the rice cake.
Have you tried that? Did it work?
Why Volume Eating Can Backfire
The problem with relying on volume eating is that fullness isn’t just about stomach pressure. Your body has multiple signals to tell you when you’ve had enough to eat, and volume is only one of them. When you focus too much on volume, you begin to lose touch with other, more accurate cues of satiety—such as the food not tasting as good, a sense of cellular repletion, or losing interest in eating.
Here’s what happens when you become dependent on volume eating:
You lose touch with real hunger and fullness signals. Over time, you stop recognizing when you’re actually satisfied because you’re only looking for the feeling of a full stomach.
Your body may still need more fuel. Just because your stomach feels full doesn’t mean you’ve given your body the energy it needs. This can lead to feeling unsatisfied and craving more food later.
You train yourself to need large amounts of food to feel full. When you constantly rely on volume, you reinforce the habit of eating larger portions. Then, when you do eat higher-calorie foods, you feel the need to consume larger amounts to reach that same level of volume fullness — which means you end up eating more calories.
You lose the ability to easily stop eating. Focusing on volume fullness means you will lose touch with other, more amazing ways your body helps you stop eating when satisfied. One of my favorites is when you naturally lose interest in food as you become satisfied. Volume fullness will make it harder to stop eating in the long run.
You lose the ability to know you’ve eaten something higher in calories. Intuitive eaters naturally eat less when they eat foods that are higher in calories. But volume eaters do not eat less. In fact, they often tell me they do not feel fuller after eating foods such as sweets, and sometimes feel even hungrier (which can be very confusing).
Desserts and Sweets Should Make You Feel Fuller
Think about it. Hunger is a signal you need fuel (calories). When you have consumed enough fuel, hunger should go away, right?
If fullness is the result of the fuel you have consumed, then eating something with a lot of fuel should register as you have consumed a lot of fuel, right?
This means that if you’ve eaten 3 cups worth of cake, your body should register that you have consumed A LOT of fuel. If you’ve eaten 3 cups of lettuce, your body should register that you have consumed VERY LITTLE little fuel.
But when you eat for volume, you no longer pay attention to what happens when you eat something small that is high in calories. You will not notice as you fill up because the “volume” pressure is not there. And you will not notice that you may stay fuller for a longer time.
However, your body knows. Your body knows you are filling up when you eat a concentrated source of calories such as a candy bar. And it keeps trying to tell you, but you are so busy looking for volume pressure that you miss the signals.
Let’s take a closer look at what happens.
What Can Happen When A Volume Eater Eats a Higher Calorie Food
Let’s say you are at a party and partake in cake and ice cream. Because the amount is much smaller than your usual giant salad, or pile of veggies with broiled fish, the ever so slight pressure in your belly seems inconsequential, certainly not enough to signal you are fueled up. You decide you are not full, so you have more.
The fact that your body recognizes that you consumed, say, 500 calories of cake and ice cream, and is trying to let you know, is irrelevant. You are too focused on that habituated level of pressure.
So you have another serving, which is when you begin feeling the pressure in your belly, but by now you have consumed more like 1000 calories.
If you were used to noticing other bodily signals of satisfaction and fullness, you would have stopped at one serving. You would have felt full, even with minimal volume, and would not want to eat again for 3 to 5 hours - at which time your body would have burned off that cake and ice cream and you would begin feeling hungry again.
But, because you were focused on volume, you over ate.
What Can Happen When a Volume Eater Eats Lower Calorie Foods
In another example, let's say you are used to eating 8 cups of salad fixings for lunch, for a total of 400 calories. Based on the pressure in your belly, you feel full.
But what if your body needs 525 calories for lunch that day? You are, in fact, NOT full.
Your body knows it needs more fuel, so it does NOT send you signals to stop eating. In fact, it is actually asking for a bit more fuel. You sense this 'wanting,' and it makes you feel out-of-control. You believe you are full due to pressure but still want more. You end up believing you can't trust your body, or yourself.
If you do eat more, you may believe you’ve blown it – which can push you to eat even more. (And you may end up overeating.)
A Hypothetical Situation to Make a Point
Let's say that on that day you needed 525 calories, instead of eating 8 cups of salad, you ate 1 cup of Haagen Dazs ice cream for lunch, consuming 533 calories. (I know, I know. But stay with me, this is hypothetical.)
Technically, you should feel SIGNIFICANTLY FULLER consuming 533 calories then when you consume 350 calories, right? But you won't, because the signal you rely on, pressure in the belly from a larger quantity of food, is absent. You will not notice all the other subtle, and accurate, fullness signals.
Also, you should have a sense that you consumed the amount of fuel your body needed (yes, even ice cream calories can be utilized by the body). You should feel done, and move on. But you won’t, because you will not have volume in your belly. (And, of course, if you beat yourself up for eating the ice cream, you may give up and eat more, but that is a different topic.)
Using Your Body’s Eating Wisdom
It’s scary when that much ice cream seems to do little in terms of filling you up, or worse, leaves you wanting more food. You may have heard that sweets won’t fill you up, or that they have empty calories and therefore leave you feeling empty.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Your body knows when a food has more calories. And it wants to tell you all about it!
Are you ready to listen?
Your eating wisdom knows that when you consume a food higher in calories. It will signal you to quit eating. And it will wait longer to tell you it needs food again.
This is amazingly good news for so many reasons.
You do NOT have to be concerned that a sauce has extra calories.
You do NOT have to worry when someone else cooks.
You DON’T have to freak out when you are not sure of the calorie count of a food.
You DON’T have to fret when you go out to eat that the food might have more oil than you realized.
Your body knows, and makes adjustments for it.
So, try not to focus on volume when you eat. It is one of many signals — and a minor one at that — that together help you know you've had enough.
In this way, it is just one of the many tools in your toolbox to help you easily and naturally stop eating when satisfied.
Note: We’ve talk about hunger and fullness above, check out the Hunger Fullness Scale. Download it for free.
About Eating Wisdom and Drs Karin and Hannah
We are two PhD level Registered and Licensed Nutritionists whose passion is to help others escape diet culture and to learn to use their natural, innate Eating Wisdom to, finally, find peace with food, eating and weight.
Check out our course, Intuitive Eating: How to Escape Diet Culture and Become an Empowered Eater,. plus we have lots of info and handouts (including the original Hunger Fullness Scale) at our website, www.EatingWisdom.com. We also offer 1:1 nutrition therapy. Take advantage of our combined 40+ years of experience and reach out today!
© 2021 Karin Kratina, PhD, RD, LDN