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Where Hunger Comes From

Strategies and goals

hungryHunger is a widely misunderstood feeling: we tend to think that it’s our stomachs that are mainly responsible for making us feel hungry; that hunger is a signal that something’s wrong in the body and needs to be fixed; that hunger is painful; and that hunger means the body needs food. All of these can be true in some situations, but all can also be misleading or false.

In this article and its follow-up (“24 Ways to Stop Feeling Hungry”), I’ll be focusing on causes of and solutions to hunger, for those readers interested in improving health and promoting fitness.

Where hunger starts
The thing we call “hunger” is actually a variety of interrelated sensations and physiological processes. These include:

  • The familiar signals from an empty stomach
  • Low blood sugar levels, which can cause sugar cravings. Ironically, these can be caused by eating sugary foods (see the follow-up article on anti-hunger techniques for more on this)
  • Physiology, especially the hormone leptin, which appears to have more to do with hunger than either stomach signals or blood sugar levels
  • Emotions: habits of using food to distract ourselves from negative emotions (including eating “comfort foods”) and other kinds of emotional eating can cause us to desire food even when there are no signals in our bodies calling for it
  • Circadian rhythms: Our bodies are accustomed to eating at specific times during the day. If we eat at a particular time consistently for even a short while, our bodies will start reminding us each day of that being “feeding time”
  • Social factors: In many situations, it’s polite to eat when other people are eating, for instance when meeting someone at a restaurant. Often we eat during these times even if we have no need for food
  • Habits and unexamined reactions, for example eating a piece of cake whenever someone puts cake out at the office, eating snacks at parties (even if it’s not expected socially, as it often is), or snacking whenever sitting down to watch TV or a movie

The evolution of hunger
It can help put hunger in perspective to realize that throughout the great majority of human development, almost all of our diet was made up of fresh plant foods, meat, fish, and poultry. The occasional honeycomb or small harvest of wild grain would provide an unusual burst of carbs, but staples of our diet in modern times, like bread (especially white bread), soda, candy, pastries, ice cream, and so on are so far out of the norm of what the first humans of our kind had available to eat, it’s hard to imagine what they would even think of them. Add to this the comparative ease with which most of us can get our hands on as much food as we want (or at least much more than we need), and it’s not entirely surprising that we have so many problems around the world with obesity: the foods we tend to eat are very different from what we evolved to eat.

What do you mean, “hunger isn’t painful”?
While we’re used to thinking of hunger as physically painful, it generally isn’t. We do tend to think negatively about hunger sensations, but only in extreme circumstances does hunger actually result in actual pain signals. Hunger’s usual feelings are more like mild physical discomfort, which can become a stronger psychological discomfort when we tell ourselves that we need some food. Yet when we reflect on the many causes of hunger, it immediately becomes clear that hunger is not a direct signal telling us our body needs nutrition.

Separating hunger from a decision to eat
In order for a person to change long-standing eating habits, it’s necessary to separate feelings of hunger from a decision to eat. Regardless of hunger, it’s essential to get regular nutrition with protein, fiber, water, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and even some fat. Provided we have the minimum amounts of those we need–which we can achieve without excessive calories by eating highly nutritious foods–any other food we eat is unlikely to help us and fairly likely to harm our goals, if we’re pursuing weight loss.

In changing eating habits, it helps to lay down some rules. Tracking everything you eat is an excellent one to adopt, for reasons explained in this article. Another might be to eat only at designated times, and not at all after a certain time in the evening. Rules can be more helpful here than simple guidelines or intentions (see How Making Rules Can Improve Willpower). Another helpful mindset change is to try to think of eating in terms of the question “What food does my body need?” instead of the question “What can I get away with eating?”.

The follow-up article to this one lists 24 ways to stop feeling hungry, based on research and the real-life experience of successful weight controllers.

Photo by Gilmoth

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