I have an actual fear of hunger. When I start to get hungry, I think the fear is more of an issue that the actual hunger. I have very mild hypoglycemia, but it's not so bad that I would pass out or get sick if I missed a meal, I would just be uncomfortable until I ate.
I think this is a childhood issue. My mom used to make sure that I ALWAYS ate enough at mealtimes. While I know some people's parents encouraged them to watch their weight as youngsters, and that has affected them as adults, mine used to always make sure that I was eating enough protein and big meals.
Is anyone else afraid of hunger? What have you done to overcome it? I eat 3 meals a day and was on Phentermine to help with this, but I would like to wean off Phentermine.
Plan a day where you are at home with time for yourself. Then, let yourself get hungry. And sit with it. Breathe into it. Really feel what it feels like for 5, 10, 15 minutes. Write about what it feels like in body, and then write what your mind is telling you about it.
That may look like "My body feels a sensation in my stomach. It is a level 3 on a scale of 1-10. My mind is telling me that this feeling is hunger. That it means I haven't eaten enough. My mind is telling me that this is very bad. My mind is telling me that this is hurting my body and my muscles are being consumed and I might pass out if I do this too long. My body still feels ok."
Then eat something, mindfully. Like an orange. Peel it. Look at it. Feel it in your hands. Eat it slowly and realize what it feels like as you eat it, as it goes into your stomach. What happens to the feeling you are calling "hunger"? Then sit some more after you've eaten the orange and just see what your body feels like.
I do understand! I've been in a few conversations here at 3FC talking about hunger. For years I could have sworn I didn't ever get really hungry. I knew it was time to eat or I felt munchy or I felt hypoglycemic ... but I never felt growling tummy hunger. I've felt uncomfortably over-full but not empty.
I like the idea of experimenting. Take a day to explore your body's response to hunger.
If you are worried about hypoglycemia, when you start to feel it, eat the orange like Seagirl recommends but keep something with fat and protein nearby. A scoop of peanutbutter, a piece of cheese ... When you feel better, go make yourself a nice (planned) meal.
If your stomach starts to rumble, experiment with what makes it stop. Fiber, fat, protein ... different things work for different people. Now that I've figured out that fat and protein work for me and keep my blood sugar from plummetting, I eat those.
Hope that helps.
I've had some of the same issues. It was completely normal for me, if I were hungry while making dinner (of course being hungry while cooking dinner is expected!) to have a snack while I'm cooking...I never realized how silly this is. An average person, just waits for dinner to be done. That why I'm making dinner! Its like I should never have to be hungry, or wait to eat when I am hungry...I don't know if that's that case...but that's how it seemed to me.
Then I realized its ok to be hungry. If I was out and heading home soon, and I was hungry, I used to stop somewhere and buy something to eat. Healthy, not healthy, it didnt matter, the point was I was hugnry and I didnt feel I should have to wait until I get home to make a meal.
I finally asked myself what would happen if I waited to eat, and didnt immediately satisfy my hunger?? The answer for me was NOTHING. I would make it to my next meal just fine. It was a strange thought for me, and took awhile to adjust to. Sometimes I still have to tell myself its ok to be hungry, and it just means I need to make some time to eat soon, BUT I don't have to drop everything and run for the nearest food. It definately takes a long time to get used too.
My turning point to being committed to this weight loss journey came about in response to hunger.
I was traveling and I got very very sick. I couldn't eat. Anything I ate came out the other end immediately. Drinking caused the same thing. But my body would still ask for food, because I wasn't eating. I was like this for 5 days until i was finally hospitalized for dehydration.
During the time that I couldn't eat, I would feel those hunger pangs and feel like I was going to pass out. Much like you, I would eat before I was hungry because I didn't want to feel hunger, I feared hunger, I feared the hypoglycemia I knew would come about. But I also knew that if I ate, I would spend the next 15 minutes in the bathroom feeling even worse. So I didn't eat. And I didn't die. I realized my body could survive days without eating (I was drinking, of course) and my world didn't end.
Even as I was hospitalized, they were afraid I was having a gall bladder attack (I wasn't!) so they didn't want me to eat any solid foods. I was only eating liquids. I still didn't die. I could laugh and joke with my friends and loved ones came by to visit. I could still work (my boyfriend brought me my laptop!) and I could watch TV and I could read and I could talk on the phone without having eaten for a week. Only liquids.
It was through this week that I realized that all my attempts at dieting in the past would fail because I was so afraid of what would happen if I felt hunger or if I didn't eat and I came to realize that even if I don't eat what I want, like those cookies and cakes and chocolate and soda and rice and pasta and steak and fries and whatever, I wouldn't die. I mean, here I was eating only liquids and I could still be me, I could still think, I could still do all the things I did before. Food didn't define me. Food didn't make me happy or sad or make me think better or worse.
Once I took this power out of food and the fear out of hunger, I was able to look at my diet and realize that I needed to change it in order to be healthy and that eliminating food from my diet permanently (like soda) wasn't the end of the world. My life didn't end.
It was an amazing discovery and it's what propelled me to make some radical changes in my life and make them a part of my new life, my new health.
Don't fear the hunger. The hunger doesn't have that much power, only you think it does. The world won't end if you feel hungry. It's just your body telling you that there is no longer food in the stomach. It's okay to not have food because you will feed it again. You are in control. You will dictate when you will eat, not your body.
I started to experiment with what I was really feeling and what response I made to those things. I am not sure if it is "taking it too far" but I started to test my blood glucose, cos my body had got confused about what was hypglycaemia and what wasn't. I'd have the full-on shakes and staggers and roaring hunger, headaches, etc. and test my BG at a perfectly normal level, the same level as I'd often have after a meal and I felt fine. That was part of what helped me to realise that the feelings were false, I had a proper, genuine reading right in front of me proving that what I felt was wrong.
I also tapped into things like eating a small amount and seeing if I felt less hungry. If you are truly hungry and you eat an apple or a tiny child's yoghurt then you will feel a bit better, but I usually felt worse, my appetite driven by taking on a small amount. I decided that if eating didn't make me less hungry then there was not a bit of point in repeating that action. When I look back on it now it does seem so silly, I'm hungry therefore I eat and I don't feel any better, I know, let's do the same thing again!
What I found out was that my feelings had got all mixed up, hunger is a mental interpretation of what is going on in the body, and the same physical feelings are often created by illness, stress, tiredness, etc. I was very poor at singling out which feeling I was having, and the go-to response was always to have some food. I am now much better at realising that if I have a snack and I don't feel better there's a good chance the problem is not hunger, and I see if I need to have a rest or something.
There is a real cultural issue here, though, people get very wound up if you don't eat for a while, even miss one meal and everyone crowds around going "oh but you must eat something" which is weird cos when I was young I was in hospital for months with a bowel condition and I had exclusively drips for weeks, then tube feeding. Not a jot of food passed my lips. I have a friend with a tube feed after having stomach cancer and although I'd not describe her as healthy given her post-cancer issues, none of the things that bother her are because she never eats. And I mean she NEVER eats, she has no stomach to eat with. We have been socially conditioned that 3 meals a day is correct somehow, and less than that will kill you swiftly.
Not sure if you have the same nonsense elsewhere, but in the UK we went through a rash of TV shows along the Supersize Me (Morgan Spurlock version) kind of lines but always with a TV doctor or "nutritionist" giving the "celebrity" a positively DIRE warning that with just one week of eating a slightly different diet they'd screw up their bloods and most probably die. Ludicrous, really. OK for preference there's a diet doctors woudl like us to eat, but look how far from that ideal over 99% of people are and they are ticking over. Some people are obese but otherwise they are alive. Some are very skinny but alive. Some people are normal weight but eat only cheese and soda. Some toddlers eat nothing but cereal and jelly for 2 years and they are fine. Humans are extremely resilient. Missing a single meal will do nothing to you unless you are a type 1 diabetic and you have taken your insulin, but we are conditioned to think it will have an immediate impact. It is all social.
Overcoming a Fear of Hunger
