One of the ways we help our daughter stay involved with food without over-eating is by playing with food. Here she is 'cooking' rice, flour and water.
In our extensive adoption parenting research, we came across information about children who had known true hunger in their short lives and how to help them overcome food issues such as hording, sneaking food, over-eating, not knowing when they are hungry or full, and the emotional effects of starvation. One of the only issues our little girl has come away from the orphanage with so far is food issues. Fortunately we do not believe that she went truly hungry! We believe that the institutional environment was extremely boring for her and one of the only things she had to look forward to day-to-day was mealtimes and the occasional day of playing outdoors. We know for sure she was force-fed 
I have not been able to find much information about how to help a child overcome this. We always figured we would not overly regulate food and we’re really trying to stick to that philosophy to try to help her self-regulate.
During her first week home, we did not regulate what she was eating at all – she had enough new things to deal with and food was her obvious security. She ate A Lot. Fortunately she makes really good choices. Her favorite things to eat are hummus, whole grain bread, cheese, apples and bananas. Her second week home, we guided her food choices a bit more (mostly related to the quantity of food to consume), now that she knew there was going to be a fridge continuously full of food. If she wanted to eat a 3rd cheese stick, we tried to balance it toward a different food group and offered a protein instead (for example). That was working really well for us all and we were making progress. It was very important for us to not say “no, you can’t eat that.” By the third week, we had a bit more language so we could start talking to her about “feeling full” and “feeling hungry”. She still doesn’t understand the concept, but at least we have introduced it and will continue to work on that. Helping her find other things to do beside raid the fridge has become the big tool during her third week home. Here is what she is dealing with at the moment:
Playing with fake fruit.
She eats when she is bored. She doesn’t have much interest in toys and does not play independently for more than 10 minutes. So if I sit down, she generally goes right into the fridge (even if she just finished eating a big meal).
Food is her love/security. We are trying to transfer this emotion away from food and on to us, her parents. When she is feeling insecure, she goes straight to the fridge rather then come to us for some attention/affection. Feeding her helps, although we probably haven’t been doing that often enough.
What we are trying to do about the above 2 scenarios, is distract her when we see her getting in to the fridge (when we are sure she is not hungry) and engage her in an activity with us. We aim for 15 minutes of undivided attention together. We hope that in the long term, this will help her to realize how to choose something other than food, such as connecting with someone or doing some other activity. However, if we do not intervene quickly enough and she has already grabbed something to eat, we do not discourage her, berate her, make her feel guilty about eating, etc. We do not want her to feel she needs to hide this from us. Like I mentioned, she makes healthy choices and gets lots of physical activity.
If it’s shortly before lunch/dinner and she grabs something, we are now able to communicate with her that we will all be eating together soon. If she insists on the cheese stick/piece of bread/etc, we say “yes, you can have that after dinner” and she carries it around with her. Sometimes she just likes to have food within eyesight or hold it or play with it. It is extremely important not to deny food to children who rely on it to feel secure – she is still learning that her needs will always be met here.
She does leave food on her plate, so that’s good. Occasionally we will notice her chewing something for a long time and unable to swallow it because she it too full. We encourage her to spit it out and put the rest of the food away. Other times we’ll notice her losing interest in whatever food she is eating and she starts wandering from the table and we can clear the table. If we don’t clear it fast enough, she’ll continue eating whatever is out, just because it’s there. It has occurred to me that this might be manipulative but I’m hoping it will help her to not have that “too full” feeling on a daily basis. Once that happens, she will (hopefully) be able to notice when she is “too full” because it won’t be the norm.
Here she is playing in the fridge with one of her play pans filled with real flour and a toy egg. Her play plates & tea party stuff is all ceramic such as this plate.
Other things that seem to help her is playing/cooking with fake food or playing/cooking with real food. We recently made individual banana breads together in these mini bundt pans and they came out SO delicious!
We are familiar with unschooling/de-schooling philosophy and we believe that this will just be a matter of time for her to heal and recover her innate ability to self-regulate.
