Hunger is a beautiful sensation that ensures the survival of human beings and allows us to embody the experience in the physical realm. Being a basic and primal body response to the need of food, hunger is a very complex since it is linked to different aspects of our life and overlaps physical, emotional and mental mechanisms. As we know, we are complex beings that intermingle emotions and thought and therefore the body can become confused taking on extra stress with mismatched messages, adding to this the amount of information that we are bombarded with every second through all the media.
Our ancestors did not have this complexity of information, food, emotions and thinking process that we have nowadays. At the present, we are exposed to new food/food combinations, toxins, at emotional level, and also to high/different levels of stress and stressors. Our mind is also in a constant state of receiving information and images that impact our physiological mechanisms, hormones and more. Hunger is impacted by all these factors.
Understanding the complexity of HUNGER is important for us to become closer and more intimate with our body’s needs. When we gain more insights about how, when, why hunger is felt we are able to connect more with body intuition and equip ourselves with new tools towards having a healthier appetite, healthier body weight through harnessing different aspects that intermingle in our body physiology
The following description about the different hungers, can help us to understand our appetite and our cravings, and how to better listen to our body’s needs and act from body wisdom instead of reactive instinct.
1. THIRST: Our ancestors used to get plenty of water through food because it was mainly fresh fruit and veg which are water rich.. So our physiological body remembers that having food supplies us with good amount of water. Sometimes feeling hungry is not need for food but need for water.
The food that most of us consume at the present moment does not give us a good amount of water, the food is more processed and not as natural as it used to be, there fore we need to consume water and fluid by itself.
A good advice is: when we feel hungry in the first place, we can drink water or a healthy drink, it’s very possible that the hunger stops since what the body I slacking is fluid in the system.
2. VARIETY: Craving for a variety is an evolutionary protective mechanism against depending on only one small source/range of food, if our range of food is limited, it means that when that food is not available we won’t survive. Craving for variety is a normal and very important hunger for the body to get enough macro and micronutrients. A suggestion when hunger appears consistency when we are eating enough food, is to check if our diet is as wide as possible to ensure the body is getting enough of what it needs to function healthily.
3. LOW BLOOD SUGAR: This is very common now days since we have a diet based on quick release sugary food in the body, and it makes the body craving for more since it creates an in balance in the insulin function.
To avoid this kind of hunger we can replace or cut down down simple carbohydrates like: sugar and most grains and increase the intake of complex carbohydrates coming from vegetables, nuts and beans for example. They release slow into the body and make you feel full for longer periods of time.
4. EMOTIONAL HUNGER: This is the most common and dangerous cause of dysfunctional eating. It is link to many factors like the subconscious links that we have with food like: rewards, home, celebrations, consolation. When our emotional needs are not met and we are engaged with emotions like sadness, anger, home sickness, very often we turn into food as a way to compensate and fill that emptiness. Although it can be a strategy that helps, is not a long term solution. The food industry knows it well and plays with our emotional needs and lacks in order to sell and make profits. Many adverts and propaganda offer food as a solution to our unmet emotional needs.
A way to work with this type of hunger is to become more aware of our emotional needs and how we tend to eat in certain occasions depending on our mental estate and situations, in that way our body does not become a victim of our eating challenges and we are more able to find ways to meet physical and emotional needs.
5. EMPTY STOMACH HUNGER: This happens usually in the morning or after fasting for few hours. Although we associate empty stomach with hunger, this is not always the case. In the past, our ancestors had to wait for many hours to access food, food was not as available as it is now. Thy had to hunt, collect fruits, c gather the fire, collect the water, which meant time between one meal and the next one. Therefore they probably were with empty stomach for long whiles before eating. For us a t the present civilization, we always have available food, not having to wait long periods between meals. Listening to the body beyond the sensation of the empty stomach can free us of the urgency to eat with no need.
6. NUTRITIONAL HUNGER: It’s the only genuine kind of hunger. It occurs when the body is asking for specific type of nutrients that are lacking in the body, for example the body is not getting enough macro nutrients: Carbohydrates, Fats, proteins, or Micronutrients: minerals, vitamins or specific amino acids. The body feels hunger because the brain is not that clever to express specific nutrients that are lacking in the body. It can only feel hunger.
It is important to have a good variety of food and include macro and micronutrients in the diet, in that way we avoid cravings and may be binging on food that can be detrimental for our body.
From this succinct description, we can acknowledge hunger as a way for us to access body wisdom, to distinguish where the hunger sensation comes from, to recognize emotional needs that need to be met.
Being able to recognize physiological, emotional needs is a great opportunity for us to tap into our bodies in a more holistic way and to gain nutritional information that can facilitate a healthy and sustainable body weight.
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