[toastedsmoke]

I have a question: what should hunger feel like? Is it in the stomach? Or is it a desire to taste something? Or is it a woozy feeling.

I don't think I know what hunger feels like but I also don't think my food problems necessarily stem from hunger. My personal preference used to be (and still is if I'm not making a special effort like I am now) 1-2 (large) meals per day. Not for dieting reasons but more because I'm the sort of person who likes food but is too lazy to prepare it/put something together more than 1ce or 2ce a day (If I have pre-prepared food, I'll binge on it whether I'm hungry or not just because it's there). I can go from morning till evening (and possibly a whole 24 hrs) without feeling/recognizing the pangs of hunger and even then my desire to eat is usually not related to any feeling in my stomach but more to a desire/craving for the taste of salt or sugar or to the pleasure/comfort my favourite foods give me when i chew or swallow or even sometimes just to the feeling that I should eat something because it's unhealthy to do otherwise.

[Trazey34]

No, I've not been afraid to feel hungry - it's not like there's not an easy cure for it LOL Actually, since i've stopped snacking at night, I'm some nights a teeeeny bit hungry when i go to bed, whereas before i'd have some toast & PB, or a bowl of cereal, I just don't now - and i like to that little bit of hunger makes me lose weight LOL probably not the case, but i like it! and it makes me look forward to breakfast now, whereas before i never ate it!

being hungry is good, makes you appreciate your food more yes?

[rockinrobin]

Originally Posted by Trazey34

being hungry is good, makes you appreciate your food more yes?

Being hungry is really not good *for me*. Any way that I look at it. What has really, REALLY made me appreciate my food more - counting my calories.

No, I've not been afraid to feel hungry - it's not like there's not an easy cure for it

Good point! I really should work on this irrational fear of mine........

[toastedsmoke]

Originally Posted by rockinrobin

Being hungry is really not good *for me*. Any way that I look at it. What has really, REALLY made me appreciate my food more - counting my calories.

Good point! The calorie counting is like a life-saver for me because its helping me with portion control, food selection and meal planning. It's kind of my template of what to eat whether or not I recognize that I'm hungry.

I'm still trying to figure out what the hungry feeling is (because when I haven't eaten for a long long while I get a sick feeling in my stomach that doesn't really inspire me to want to eat, but I don't usually notice the "hunger" feeling before that).

[Aclai4067]

Originally Posted by toastedsmoke

I have a question: what should hunger feel like? Is it in the stomach? Or is it a desire to taste something? Or is it a woozy feeling.

You feel hunger in the stomach. The woozy feeling could be low blood sugar? The desire to taste something would be a craving.

[toastedsmoke]

Originally Posted by Aclai4067

You feel hunger in the stomach. The woozy feeling could be low blood sugar? The desire to taste something would be a craving.

Ok then in the past I think I've gotten cravings when I don't eat all day, and then bypass hunger, then by the following morning get that sick feeling like an acid stomach.

[salsa chip]

Right now I'm dealing with lots of stress, so my appetite has dried up anyway (apparently that's how I deal with stress these days; I remember a time when I'd deal with stress by pigging out at the sweets drawer in my mother's kitchen).

But when I am hungry these days, I find I can just hold on til it's properly a meal time. Maybe I'm training myself to not snack inbetween meals? Somehow knowing I'm hungry and that I won't eat until a proper mealtime is a confidence booster for me.

Else I glug water

[Trazey34]

I'm a calorie counter too -- what I mean was, if I sit down to a meal that I've slaved over preparing, I'm glad I'm a bit hungry for it, it tastes soooo much better LOL BUT as a calorie counter, it's pre-portioned and on the plate (one plate! ha) to savour.

[mandalinn82]

For me, if I get OVERLY hungry (ravenous, not "I guess I could eat"), I make poor eating choices, so I try to avoid it.

That's not fear based, though. On the contrary! It's knowledge-based. The knowledge that when I am more hungry than usual, I tend to eat more than usual, and that isn't conducive to me staying on plan.

I don't think there's anything wrong with knowing yourself and your limits, and acting to prevent the things that make it harder for you to stick with your goals. It's sort of like the "pantry cleanout" most people do at the beginning of a weight loss plan...it's a strategy to make it easier to make good choices and harder to make bad ones. Not letting myself get too hungry is one strategy that I employ to encourage good choices in my eating and exercise (just like keeping high-calorie foods outside of my home and keeping exercise equipment in my home and easily accessible...another way to make it easier to make the good choices and harder to make the less-good).

[rockinrobin]

Originally Posted by Trazey34

I'm a calorie counter too -- what I mean was, if I sit down to a meal that I've slaved over preparing, I'm glad I'm a bit hungry for it, it tastes soooo much better LOL BUT as a calorie counter, it's pre-portioned and on the plate (one plate! ha) to savour.

I pretty much knew what you were getting at Trazey. That ASIDE, I was just mentioning that calorie counting, really made me appreciate what I eat now.

Just like the kid, the spoiled kid who has sooo many toys, none of them have much meaning and he enjoys none of them. That was me. I ate everything - truly enjoyed - nothing. Now I that I"ve got a budget, now that I am MUCH more particular, it's not an open-ended all day eating fest - I really, really appreciate and ENJOY, thoroughly ENJOY everything that I eat.

[kaplods]

I think there's alot more variation in hunger signals than is often assumed. I don't think stomach hunger is always present or the most reliable. Even when I was eating only on weekends, I didn't always feel hunger in the stomach.

My youngest sister (thin all her life) also doesn't get stomach hunger, she says her first signal that she's hungry is that she starts thinking about food, and if she ignores the craving, she'll get a dull headache.

When I'm eating very low carb, I often don't notice hunger signals until it reaches a woozy stage. My husband notices before I do (apparantly irritiation and a hot temper preceed woozy).

Wikipedia has an interesting definition/description of hunger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger

I think it makes the point that there are several sources of hunger, and included cravings as a type of hunger. As is appetitie. Actual hunger pangs (which as wikipedia points out) don't occur generally occur until 12 to 24 hours without food, and some people may not experience them at all. I used to think that cravings were 100% mental (especially when I would feel them only a short time after eating, when my stomach was still full, sometimes obviously full), but when I found that on very low carb eating, cravings and all other desire for food is so diminished that when they do pop into my head, I can quickly change the mental "channel." That doesn't work when I'm eating high carb, every "channel" in my thoughts and on the tv become a food channel. When I'm eating low carb, even watching the food channel and recipe shows do not inspire a strong desire for eating.

I don't think everyone experiences hunger in the same way, and yes even that some of us may have been born with defective, or have destroyed through crash dieting, the natural hunger signals and the natural response to hunger.

I also think that the modern diet does not lend itself to a natural response to food. One can't rely on hunger when eating foods that are so removed from nature (and when our activity level is also so removed from the natural state as well - couch potatoes don't survive in the wild). Even fruits and vegetables are higher in sugar and starches than any of their wild ancestors from which we cultivated. Even zoos are finding that they have to change their formulas every few years for feeding the animals because a 2009 apple is so much sweeter (and more caloric) than an apple from only a few years ago. Animals were getting fat, and zoo staff didn't initially know why (I believe the trend was first noticed in the late 70's or early 80's).

I think that caloric monitoring is a much more reliable method of calorie restriction than decreasing one's sensitivity to hunger for many people. "Mindful eating," doesn't work very well for everyone (whether you mean responding to hunger at the first sign or at some delayed point of your choosing).

I think hunger works very well when you have to work to get your food. A craving and actual hunger are more easily distinguished, because "how badly do I want to work for it," comes into the equation. In the natural world, calories are fairly hard-won. The more calories in a food, the rarer or more work it requires to obtain. Non-grain plant foods are relatively easy to harvest and eat, and they're relatively low calorie (the sweetest are only available for a short time and there's lots of competition for them). Protein foods, particularly animal proteins require a lot more work to obtain.

If you can lose weight by choosing to eat at a different point in the hunger spectrum, more power to you. I think that caloric restriction is the more reliable path for most people, and that some have to go further and change what or how they eat to transform their hunger. If you can shrink physical and mental hunger, that makes caloric restriction that much more manageable, but bottom-line it's mostly the calorie restriction.

I do seem to lose weight more rapidly on the same number of low-carb calories than high-carb calories, which to me doesn't say that calories don't matter. Rather, only that the source of the calories may somehow affect the equation, but it still boils down, not to hunger, but to calories burned and calories consumed. That I find (for myself) that lower carb eating reduces cravings, appetite and all aspects of hunger, and may increase metabolism or reduce water-retention is just "bonus."

If you can use hunger as a tool, then do so, but if it doesn't work so well for you, there are plenty of other tools at your desposal.

[dragonwoman64]

for me food tastes better when I'm hungry for it, the working up an appetite. funny, I've used the word starving, but from a real definition of that word I can safely say I never truly have been starving!!

I've never forgotten to eat, and doubt I ever will.

and for me, there's some psychological satisfaction that effects hunger when the food is more tasty. when I eat something that I don't really like, or is a disappointment, or gross, it's so unsatisfying. (I love my mother, but she was an awful cook and hated doing it; we'd eat so much of it too, so the experience was eating a large volume of food that tasted pretty bleck.)

I think for me it's going to have to be give & take & a LOT of planning to not be hungry. Mandalinn82 is a great inspiration for this. She decided she wanted to lose weight but not be hungry, so she researched good recipes that are healthful. She's still my inspiration. suchaprettyface

I've been having this same thought, I love how she's embraced making her calories be such an enjoyable experience. I want to do this more, and I think it would help me with the extra eating that I struggle with.

I really, really appreciate and ENJOY, thoroughly ENJOY everything that I eat. --rr
just read this: one of my goals, and I think it's important for me

the above is less to the point of Kira's original Q, which I really like. but I'm so chatty I couldn't resist putting it in

one last thing for anyone who was hearty enough to make it through this tome of a post, when I first went on WW as a teen, it felt like torture going to bed after not eating once I'd finished dinner. I was HUNGRY. This was going on a 1200 calorie diet after having a regular diet of I wouldn't even be able to guess how many calories (think big number). that had to shape how I looked at hunger (probably for decades to come). hunger was deprivation, physical discomfort, and beyond discomfort, it had moments when it felt seriously distressing, since food had become something that mentally made me feel better.

some of us struggle with things that bounce off of other people.

well, as rr and other very smart ladies here have said, you work through whatever it is, and find a solution.

[Onederchic]

I was first gonna post that I probably have never felt real hunger but then I remembered this -

Scott picked me up in Tennessee on a sunday. I didn't eat anything from the moment he picked me up until tuesday night when we got to his house in New York and I had a single serve veggie tray from a grocery store. I was rather hungry, I believe. Did it scare me? To an extent because I was afraid I would shove my head in a vat of grease filled yummies and never been seen again . But that didn't happen

[dragonwoman64]

Originally Posted by kaplods

I don't think everyone experiences hunger in the same way, and yes even that some of us may have been born with defective, or have destroyed through crash dieting, the natural hunger signals and the natural response to hunger.
.....
I think that caloric monitoring is a much more reliable method of calorie restriction than decreasing one's sensitivity to hunger for many people. "Mindful eating," doesn't work very well for everyone (whether you mean responding to hunger at the first sign or at some delayed point of your choosing).

yes, I think all my binge/overeating and dieting totally threw out of whack the hunger/full dynamic. I can mindfully eat, so to speak, and pay attention to the hunger/full, but I still have to calorie monitor. part of that is all the urges, cravings stuff, part is I think I just would "naturally" eat more, and more foods of higher calories that are less physically filling (ie goodies).

plus, calorie restriction means eating fewer calories than my body "requires" because I'm trying to lose lbs. there's a certain amount of constant "hunger" I feel like I have to deal with because of that.

[CJZee]

I eat more frequently now. I used to easily go all day without eating and be ravenous around 4 p.m., willing to eat ANYTHING to make the shakiness go away. I think it was low blood sugar.

I am not diabetic, but I read somewhere if a diabetic's blood sugar dips too low to eat a small pack of raisins as the sugar goes pretty directly into the blood stream. Now when I get that really shaky, jittery feeling I have a small pack of raisins (which I keep in my purse) and "poof" it goes away. It is like magic.

I am not at all afraid of being hungry. Hunger is not my trigger to eat. Food is my trigger to eat.