Why Managing Hunger Is The Key To A Healthy Life

Why Managing Hunger Is The Key To A Healthy Life

By: Sanders Legendre

Why is it that we feel hungry two hours after we had a satisfying meal? Why do we get the urge to eat after we wake up in the middle of the night? It turns out that hunger is more complex than you would think it is.Having the ability to check your hunger will have a positive impact on your health. First off there are two types of hunger, hedonic hunger and homeostasis hunger. Homeostasis hunger is the hunger that we get when we need more energy and hedonic hunger is the hunger you feel when you really want to eat. Some of us live in a position where we can grab food whenever we want. But the downsides of that means that we deal with emotional issues such as stress and depression with food that has disastrous effects on our health. With obesity rates around the world it is important to become aware of your own hunger. In this post I will explain in depth what hunger is and why it is important for your health that you learn the ability to tell what your hunger is at any given time.

What is Hunger?

Hunger as defined by psychcentral.com is  “the painful sensation or state of weakness caused by need of food.” (https://psychcentral.com/lib/what-is-real-hunger/)

But we don’t really feel pain or weakness everytime we feel the need to eat, do we? I know I don’t.

The truth is that hunger as well as fullness exist along the same spectrum so your hunger is always there.

You only notice your hunger and your desire to eat once it comes to the front of your attention.

And once we begin to treat our emotional issues with food, especially highly processed, highly palpable, and highly addicting food, we feel the need to eat whenever those emotions arise.

There are two types of hunger, Homeostatic Hunger and Hedonic Hunger

Homeostatic hunger is defined by the process the brain and the body goes through to tell you that you need to eat for more energy.

The purpose of homeostatic hunger is strictly to get more calories because your body might be running low.

Hedonic hunger is defined by the urge to eat to relieve some type of discomfort or extracting pleasure from food.

Hedonic hunger is the hunger that you feel when you want to eat.

Hedonic hunger has become more prevalent given the number of highly pleasurable foods that exist in the world today.

This process describes both types of hunger well: "A person who hasn't eaten in 12 or more hours is experiencing homeostatic hunger, whereas a person who wants dessert after finishing a filling meal is experiencing hedonic hunger. But there isn't a specific point where someone could say their hunger has switched from being motivated by calories to being motivated purely by pleasure." (https://www.livescience.com/54248-controlling-your-hunger.html)

Why Is Know Hunger So Important?

Knowing what type of hunger you have and also what your hunger level is throughout the day has major implications for your health.

Eating is also used as a replacement for physical or emotional issues such as stress, lack of sleep, or depression.

Because of how pleasurable food has become today, the brain perceives certain foods as the solution to these issues even though eating is not a healthy way to deal with any of those issues.

It is hedonic hunger that causes us to eat to feel better because of the undying issues that we have.

But to the brain, both homeostatic hunger and hedonic hunger will feel exactly the same only when we are not aware that both types of hunger can exist.

"Even if a person can recognize whether their hunger is more of a hedonic hunger than a homeostatic hunger, hedonic hunger can still be a little harder to fight." (livescience).

That is why it is important for you to start becoming aware of what type of hunger that you have.

How Do You Check Your Hunger?

But when you eat because you need food not necessarily just because you want food, you will make better, healthier decisions about what you eat.

There are a list of reasons that you might say that you feel hungry:

But true hunger does not go away when you switch your attention to another activity.

The feeling that one will have when they feel like they are hungry will always be present. It will never go away.

Your brain might get triggered by the sight of food which will bring those slight feelings of discomfort to the front of your mind. But you have not realized that the discomfort was always there in the first place. It is something that you can manage.

When you are really hungry the feelings of hunger will be at the front of your mind and they won't disappear even if you start to focus on something else.

So if you want to know when you are truly hungry you need to feel those signs of hunger and those signs must linger in the front of your mind no matter what else you try to do.

How do you quantify hunger?

Doctors have used a hunger scale to quantify hunger on a sliding scale. Here is the scale below:

The scale shows you that hunger exists along a spectrum where extreme hunger and extreme fullness can be measured with common symptoms you might be experiencing.

You can quantify hunger by the symptoms that you are having.

The hunger scale works not only by saying the symptoms of hunger that you have but also have prevalent those feels are in the current moment.

For example, the level 10 has the description "So full you feel sick." Feeling sick is a very strong reaction that will probably overcome any other feeling you might be having at the time.

Now look at the description for level 5: "Satisfied, neither hunger nor full." Once you get to the point that you are no longer hungry, you won't be able to feel it anymore.

So once you get to the point that you should stop eating, you don't get a feeling that you should stop eating.

You only get the feelings that you no longer need to eat. It's important to study your hunger and how your body reacts to hunger because everyone will have a different experience.