Definitions of hunger and fullness among youth enrolled in a pediatric weight management program

The development and maintenance of obesity is multifactorial and involves the interplay of environmental, cultural, social, and biological influences. The purpose of the current paper was to describe hunger and fullness in a sample of pediatric patients seeking treatment for obesity. The goals of this study were to gain information about how youth with obesity describe their experience of being hungry and full and to explore common themes within these descriptions. Twenty-five patients entering a Stage 3 pediatric obesity program responded to the open-ended questions: "how do you know when you are hungry" and "how do you know when you are full?" The results found that the majority of youth used physical cues as a way to identify hunger and fullness cues. For identifying hunger, participants most frequently reported using cues such as their stomach growling or stomach pain as an indication that they are hungry. For identifying fullness, the majority of participants relied on discomfort. The current findings suggest that youth with obesity are able to attend to extreme physical cues (e.g., pain, sickness) of fullness but may not be aware of subtle cues that allow them to stop eating once they are satisfied.