How do I know I'm "satisfied?"
TLDR: I don't know what satiety cues are.
Hi y'all! I started Zepbound at the end of July and since then I've noticed I have no idea what it means to be satisfied.
Backstory (long, maybe this is also a therapy session, so thanks for reading to the end if you make it that far): I have always been the big girl (not "fat" when I was young, just overall bigger). I've always had more than average muscle mass for girls my age and my skeletal frame was wider. I lived a life with a lot of food scarcity and a ton of trauma. When I did get into places where food wasn't limited, I would sneak food whenever I could (I could destroy a pack of snack wells!). It didn't help that when we did have food I was always told to finish everything on my plate, whether I liked it or or was hungry or not. Once I became a teenager that started sneaking up on me, but really got me when I went to college and was able to control everything in my life. I gained significantly and kept that trend going until I was 25. At that time PCOS was destroying my ability to get pregnant and I worked really hard to lose weight. I lost some weight and had a successful pregnancy (yay!).
A few years after that I was determined to lose weight before turning 30. I worked out excessively, heavily restricted my calories, and suffered with BED. I did manage to lose a lot of weight in a year, but it slowly crept back on because that was obviously not sustainable. 10 years later I was sitting at 40 years old and heavier than I had ever been. I was put on meds for my depression and anxiety, which helped calm the food noise and BED some, allowing me to lose a little. But in the past 2 years, I have been restricting and working out with no additional movement on the scale. My CICO was way more than the suggested deficit, but still nothing.
I went to a local weight loss dr and got on Zep on July 30. Since then, I've tracked my calories and on average I'm consuming the same amount, but the scale has been showing a higher loss than I expected. I continue to track calories in because I want to make sure I'm actually eating enough. It's crazy to me that I'm eating the same as I have been for years and the weight is finally moving in the direction I want (although too fast in my opinion). I would like to eventually get away from tracking because that alone can mess with your metabolism.
All that to say that over my life I've eaten when not hungry, binged even when I was miserable, and restricted and never felt "satisfied" to the point that I have no idea what that actually means. I'm 42 years old and I have no idea how to tell when I've had enough food. I'm currently stopping my food intake either because I'm nauseous and can't eat or because I've weighed out the "right" number of calories for my plate and stop when that's gone. Before the medicine I typically left every meal still feeling hungry. Now I just sit there staring at my plate not knowing if I should stop or keep going.
So, what does "satiated" mean? How do I know when to stop eating? Like, should I feel the food in my stomach at all? I know about 20 minutes after I eat if I've overeaten because I feel miserable, but obviously want to stop before then. I read that once you have a burp you need to stop, but sometimes I burp early on and am still very hungry even after a hour of letting it settle. I'm just so confused. I've asked my family, my dr., my therapist, and my dietician and no one can tell me how I'm supposed to know. So, I'm hoping someone here can. Thanks for reading and for any tips/support you can offer.