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hunger

Can You Train And Tame Your Hunger?

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Physical – or real – hunger, the kind you feel when your stomach is growling, you’re irritable as all get-out, you’ve got zilch energy, and probably a throbbing headache, means you body needs food for fuel.

Info You Can Use About Hunger

  • Hunger is somewhat unpredictable.  Your actual hunger levels are not the same every day and can be affected by what your body needs and does — like activity, hormone levels, sickness, and other things.
  • Hunger doesn’t necessarily follow a time schedule.  You can adjust the types and amounts of your meals and snacks to influence the next time you will be hungry.  Eating just because the hands of the clock are at noon or 6PM – even though you’re not hungry – can lead to weight gain and unhealthy eating habits.
  • What you eat affects your hunger level.  Carbs, fat, and protein are digested at different rates.  Simple, refined carbs like soda and candy are digested rapidly. They give you quick energy from a surge in your blood sugar – which is followed by a rapid drop in your energy.  Protein foods give you the most sustained blood sugar levels and satiety without the blood sugar spikes.  Eating food that has a balance of nutrients is probably the best way to satisfy your hunger, keep you feeling fuller longer, and give your body the fuel it needs.
  • How much you ate at your last meal affects you hunger levels since larger meals take longer to digest.  Haven’t you ever eaten so much for dinner that you’re not hungry until lunch the next day?
  • You can put off eating for a while –occasionally ignoring your hunger won’t cause a long-term or significant drop in your metabolism. If you do postpone your hunger the urge to eat will come back and may be stronger when it does return.
  • Your stomach is about the size of your fist and can be filled by a palm full of food.  Of course, since your stomach is a muscle, it can also stretch.  When you stretch it out by putting in too much food you probably don’t feel so great (like overly stuffed at Thanksgiving).  When you eat small meals you’ll get hungry more often and perhaps fuel your body more efficiently.  This is the rationale for 5 or 6 small meals a day rather than two or three larger ones.
  • Your body is smart.  Have you noticed that sometimes you are hungry for a specific food?  It might be your body’s way of letting you know that it needs a particular nutrient.  Careful:  sometimes that hunger is head or emotional hunger that popped up because you just passed a bakery and the smell of just-baked chocolate chip cookies is acting like a trigger!
  • All kinds of foods can play a role in satisfying your hunger. Labeling food good or bad puts the food in charge. Depriving yourself of a particular food or attaching special meaning to it can set you up for cravings and overeating.  It gives the food power over you rather than vice versa. Allowing yourself to make good choices from all foods; eating when you’re hungry; and eating portions that satisfy and not stuff you, put you, not the food, in charge.

Next post

When Should I Eat:  a numbered scale to help you figure out how hungry you are and when to eat.

Head Hunger

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Have you ever followed an argument with a friend – or maybe with your Mom – with a trip to the bakery or the closest candy store?

You could already be stuffed to the gills. But, all you can think about is getting that cookie, or candy bar, or bag of pretzels and chowing down – even though you’re not hungry and may or may not actually enjoy what you’re eating.

There’s Real Hunger And There’s Head Hunger

Real hunger or physiological hunger is your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to eat food for nourishment.  It’s when you have that empty, rumbling feeling in your stomach, a headache, maybe some lightheadedness.  It usually occurs two to four hours after your last meal.

Head hunger or psychological hunger doesn’t have physical symptoms and can happen at any time. It can be triggered by emotional situations, habits — like watching TV, working on the computer or driving in the car — or by food cravings or as a form of procrastination.   Whatever triggers your head hunger can make you think you’re hungry when you’re really not.

Emotions:  Common Triggers For Eating

Emotions are common triggers for eating. Head hunger is emotional eating usually in response to gremlins like stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, or boredom.

Head hunger also serves as a distraction – the eating it provokes can be a way to distract yourself from difficult situations, projects, and encounters.

The thing is, these feelings and situations are a part of life and eating won’t make them go away.  Eating in response to head hunger often keeps you from figuring out what’s causing the feeling in the first place.

“I want chocolate” might really mean “I need comfort” or “I worked my tail off and I really need to be recognized for it.” Those trips back and forth to the fridge or the vending machine might be the ultimate form of procrastination – is there a project that needs to get done that you’re struggling with?

What To Do

Wouldn’t it be great if it was as simple as figuring out what’s causing your head hunger and dealing with it.  The fact is, that’s the answer. Eating can’t really satisfy your emotional needs, and left unmet, those needs will trigger your head hunger over and over.  So, you overeat, you mentally beat yourself up, you feel awful, and the whole process is triggered once again.

To break the pattern, first stop beating yourself up when you eat in response to head hunger — as opposed to eating because you’re starving and your stomach is growling like crazy. Devise a plan to figure out what caused you to eat in the first place. Try keeping a written record of what happened and how you felt before your head hunger took charge. Looking back at a series of entries might give you a clue.  Once you get a handle on your triggers, come up with a plan to deal with them and make a “go-to” list of ways to reward, calm, comfort, and/or distract yourself without eating.

 

What Do Crossing The Street And Eating Have in Common?

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Look Both Ways

Don’t you look both ways before you cross the street — or shouldn’t you?  That’s called being mindful of your surroundings and potential problems – like a car or bike speeding toward you.

Check In With Yourself

The same thing is true with eating:  check in with yourself and ask if you’re really hungry.  Is your stomach growling and your blood sugar low?  Or is it the wafting smell of the freshly baked bread coming from the open door of a bakery or the sight of just out of the oven chocolate chip cookies that creates an irresistable urge to eat  – even if you’ve just had a good sized and satisfying lunch.

There’s the rub: in situations like that you are eating in response to external cues (what you see, hear, smell, or even think) rather than checking in with your body and determining if you are actually hungry.

Be Mindful

It’s called mindful eating for good reason:  you are being mindful, or thoughtful, about whether you really need or want to eat versus eating because your emotions are sending you “feed me” messages.   You know, the kind of messages that make you scarf down the mini snickers bars and the Reese’s peanut butter cups (and then some)  from your kids’ Halloween candy or propel you to taste (big serving size tastes, of course) of all three pies Aunt Mary had for Thanksgiving.

Make Your Decision

Try to let your body talk to you – and then listen to it.  There will always be occasions — certain celebrations come to mind — when it may be important or the right thing to do to eat a piece of cake or a cookie or an ice cream cone.

Before the food starts its path to your mouth, stop and ask yourself if you are really hungry or if you have head hunger  — the urge rather than the need to eat because your emotions and external cues are telling you that you should. Answer the question and proceed accordingly.

Do You Eat Because You Are Hungry?

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Coney Island Boardwalk, Brooklyn, NY

Are You Really Hungry?

It’s summertime and the living is easy.  Picnics, barbecues, a sandwich at the beach are often the order of the day. And what about the ice cream cone, the beer with the burger, the peach pie, and the toasted almond from the Good Humor truck?  Vacation often means sun, sand, and eating – whenever. Living is easy, unstructured, and calorically dangerous.
Vacations and free and easy summer days spawn classic scenarios for mindless versus mindful eating.  Mindless eating often happens when there is no “structure” and a lack planning – when you give into “head hunger” as opposed to actual physical hunger.  When you’re faced with groaning buffet tables, holiday spreads with food on every flat surface, and endless passed hors d’oeuvres at an outdoor wedding, do you have a clue about how much – or even what — you have popped in your mouth?

Why Do You Mindlessly Eat?

Hunger doesn’t prompt most people to overeat. Instead, overeating situations are usually created by family, friends, plate size, packaging, lighting, candles, smells, distractions, environments, and feelings.  According to the Mindless Eating website, two studies show that the average person makes about 250 food decisions every day – like deciding between white or whole wheat; sandwich or salad; grilled chicken or tuna; half or whole; kitchen table or chair in front of the TV.  That’s about 250 daily opportunities to be mindful or mindless.

What’s Different About Mindful Eating?

Mindful eating means avoiding the shove it in your mouth, non-thinking kind of eating and encourages slower, more fully focused eating based on hunger and your body’s need for food.  Armed with a plan rather than attacking whatever is edible, you choose carefully, eat more slowly, and savor your food  — not gobbling it as part of multi-tasking, grab and go, or a race to the finish line.
Mindful eating doesn’t mean eating with your back straight, elbows off the table, using the correct fork.  It means being mindful:  conscious and aware of your choices and your food. You can eat anywhere and be mindful – mindfulness and a plan for what and how much you eat are not dependent on your kitchen table or a restaurant menu.  You can be mindful at the beach, at a street fair, and at the office, too.

Table Setting For Lunch, Tuscany, Italy

Stomach Versus Head Hunger

Mindless eating is often prompted by head hunger while mindful eating is largely associated with stomach hunger.
Head hunger is the compulsion to eat when your body isn’t physically hungry — often in response to a learned behavior:  i.e., it’s noontime so I have to eat, doesn’t matter how I feel or if I’m hungry. Head hunger comes on suddenly and often takes the form of cravings, eating when you’re not hungry, eating when you think you should be eating, and mindless snacking. It happens at any time, with no physical symptoms, and includes time cues and sensory triggers, like smell, taste, or texture.  Obsessing about food, habits (like watching TV, working on the computer, or driving), emotional or personal triggers, and cravings can make you think that you’re hungry when you’re really not.

Penn Station, NYC

Physical hunger, or stomach hunger, comes on slowly and usually happens two to four hours after you’ve last eaten. With true stomach hunger you may have an empty or grumbling stomach, lightheadedness, hand tremors, fatigue, or a headache.  It’s your body’s way of telling you that it needs fuel and that it’s time to eat.  You’re usually satisfied with almost anything – unlike the frequent cravings for sugar, salt, fat that occur with head hunger.

SocialDieter Tip:

Head hunger will eventually go away if you ignore it.  Your body is not telling you it needs food for sustenance, rather, your head is talking to you, sometimes quite loudly. With head hunger, try to put off grabbing some food by distracting yourself and ignore it until it goes away.  Often a cup of tea or coffee or a glass of water will do the trick as well as some distracting behavior. If your head hunger is screaming at you it may be tough to ignore.  If you need to eat something ask yourself when you last ate.  If it’s approaching three hours you might be physically hungry in which case you can’t ignore it and it won’t lessen with time. When you eat mindfully you are aware of stomach (physical) hunger versus head (emotional) hunger.  You tune into your body’s signals about what, when, and how much to eat, and when to stop eating because you are approaching full and not because your plate its empty.

Why Do You Still Eat More . . . Even When You’re Stuffed?

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You’ve been eating all day.  Eating everything – a bagel for breakfast, a chesse Danish for a midmorning snack, lunch with some friends.  This is followed by  a latte in the afternoon – and why not a cute cupcake to go with – or perhaps it’s a workday and you amble down to the hall to the vending machine or the snack room.  Oh, and it’s someone’s birthday so there’s that delicious birthday cake sitting in the middle of the table.  A little nibble of some cheese around six.  Uh oh.  Dinner plans that night – how can you eat more?

Somehow There Always Seems To Be Room

Into the restaurant.  A darn good one.  Good company, too.  How can you not go for it?  The food is supposed to be phenomenal.  You’re not hungry, but you eat, and eat.  Appetizer, entrée, bread, salad, and then it’s time for dessert. But dessert sounds appealing. And the chocolate whatchamacallit is what this restaurant is known for. You order it and eat it – every last fork full.

What Gives (certainly not your waistband)?

Amazingly, the signal to stop eating is usually not because your stomach is full (except in some extreme cases), but, according to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of the book, Mindless Eating,  a combination of things like how much you taste, chew, swallow, how much you think about the food you are eating, and how long you’ve been eating.

Incredibly, the faster most people eat, the more they eat. Eating quickly doesn’t give your brain the chance to get the message that you’re not hungry any more.  Research shows that it takes up to 20 minutes for your body and brain to get the message — a satiation signal — and realize that you’re full.  Think how much you can eat in that time span of 20 minutes – a burger, fries, pie, pizza, ice cream.  This calorie fest is all in added time — the time after your stomach is full but your brain hasn’t gotten the message yet.

Twenty Minutes Or Less

Research has shown that Americans start and finish their meals — and clear the table — in less than 20 minutes.  A study published in the journal Appetite, found that people eating lunch by themselves in a fast food restaurant  finish in 11 minutes, they finish in13 minutes in a workplace cafeteria, and in 28 minutes at a moderately priced restaurant.  Eating with three other people takes about twice as long – which ends up still being a really short chunk of time.

SocialDieter Tip:

Slow down when you eat.  Give your brain a chance to catch up.  How many times have you devoured what you’ve made or bought for lunch and then, almost immediately, decided that you’re still hungry?  So, you eat a whole bunch more – once again in a short period of time.  Then, about half an hour later, as your belly feels like it’s going to explode and you can’t unbutton any more buttons on your pants – you realize that you should have stopped before the seconds.  With slower eating (and maybe as some research suggerst, more chewing) and better pacing, your brain has a chance to synch its signals with the messages generated by putting food in your stomach.  You can even make yourself get up from the table and do something else – and promise yourself if you’re still hungry in 20 minutes you can have more.  If you’re in a restaurant, it’s the perfect time to excuse yourself and go to the rest room.  In most cases, after the 20 or so minutes, your belly and brain are both happy and you won’t want more to eat. Calories and uncomfortably expanding stomach saved!