What is hunger?
 

Hi all!

I'm having a mid-afternoon "hunger" episode. I had a smaller lunch than usual (but a satisfying breakfast) and I'm trying to stop and investigate if I'm really hungry.
I'm at the point where I'm not so sure what being hungry is. I think my body is used to always having a little something in there and now that I'm having smaller portions, it's not happy. My stomach isn't rumbling, I had a glass of water to make sure it wasn't thirst and I don't have any cramps. It just feels...empty.

Do you sometimes feel this way? And for those in control of their hunger, will I get over this?

Thank you!!

There was an interesting thread similar to this not too long ago. Hope this is helpful to you! http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/weig...r-craving.html

Thank you!! I didn't see that one go by :)

Reply to Muguet :Re "Feeling Hungry vr Cravings"
 

Dear Muguet,
I am not sure I could give the perfect solution to your question of whether you have a real sense of hunger or a craving. I know that when I lost 65 Lbs over 1.5 yr period of time, my body felt Hungry most of the time.

I purchased a glucose test machine(glucometer), and tested my blood sugar levels when I felt a rumbling in my tummy. When my blood sugar reading was low, I would add some lite and low sugar snack like 1 apple and a few saltines. Also the water, I always drink water every hour, most of the day...

The body has a Set point where one has a "Comfort Zone" in weight loss. When I dropped to 169 Lbs, in spite of the fact that for my weight/height was supposed to be 140; I was constantly feeling hungry. My body had a favored appestat point which was from 170 Lbs and above.

So I learned to eat the same but exercise a bit more, and take the weight loss more slowly, since my body was fighting my heart in wanting to Not allow me to weigh below 170 lbs. So for me I had to remain 30 lbs above my height / weight standard to not Always feel hungry w/o artificial diet supplements to Numb out this hunger pain.

I had cravings too, because when I went under the 30 range my body allowed me to be at, I would go bizerk and go carb and dessert shopping. Those were out of control cravings induced by going under my "Comfort Zone" level cold turkey for more than a few days.

Exercise helped me to numb out the bad food craving and to just have an apple or fruit cocktail with some lite whip cream and then exercise, and not have any time in my schedule or energy left to even go junk food shopping.

I'm still way above my ideal ht/wt and it's Not acceptable for me. I know I should way between 140-170. But, I also know that my body is going to feel hungry more often if I go below 170 lbs.

My ideal weight is 30 lbs below that number, but due to this Set Point Weight Theory of weight loss, my body will go into hunger mode after any # below 170. It causes a lifetime of challenge, and haven't found the cure for that yet. And I think this is what many over weight persons experience, and the reason keeping off the weight is so hard w/o a dietitian to help.

When I first started Intuitive Eating I had no clue what real hunger was. I knew that I wanted to eat All. The. Time. Buy at the same time I was continuously unsatisfied. How is it possible to eat and eat and eat and feel so unsatisfied? Well, it turns out my hunger signals were haywire. There are many things that can mess up your hunger signals, but for me it was the excessive emotional eating I was doing. Also diets cause you to lose trust in yourself because they are always dictating what to eat, when to eat etc. with intuitive eatin I learned how to understand what my body felt like when it was experiencing true hunger and how to address all the other non-hunger related eating episodes that were causing me to gain weight.

At first, since I didn't really know what real hunger felt like, I let my self go without food for hours and hours at a time. Until my stomach was growling! I focused on identifying those physical sensations so that I could start to identify then sooner than starving. Then I incorporated mindful eating techniques to help me eat until I was comfortably full accurately without Overeating. Now I can easily tell you that I never snack, I eat 3 square meals a day and I'm losing weight and eating anything I want. More importantly, no binges in months.

Hunger is a gift that all animals are born with. Yet humans find a million reasons not to trust it.

PS - what you described to me, that empty feeling sounds like real hunger to me

1Bluerose68 Thank you for your advice, I'm also concerned with low blood sugar and "starvation mode". I might not be getting enough protein so I'll experiment with that in the next few days and see how it's going.

Wannabeskinny Thank you for your reply, IE is also something I want to achieve. It's just a little confusing at the moment since, like you experienced, I don't know what real hunger feels like. I hope to reach the point where you are right now. Snacking and binges are the reason why I'm here!

Sounds like you're actually hungry. Being hungry is a huge part of weight loss, so the path of least resistance is to make friends with the sensation of hunger and minimize the unpleasant effects of long term caloric deficits by making sure you eat satiating foods.

krampus Thank you, that was a really reassuring reply. I made it until dinner and I'm really happy I did! I hope that it'll get more manageable. I'll try to remind myself that it's part of the deal!

Sometimes I have trouble telling if i'm hungry or if i want to eat "just because". Usually when i'm actually hungry i'll feel my energy level drop and my stomach empty, maybe a bit noisy. My mother, who's always been thin, tells me she knows she is hungry when foods that are not salty, sugary or loaded with carbs sound delicious. So, if a salad sounds appealing, she's very likely experiencing hunger and not craving food. I've used this method at first when i began changing my eating habits and it was helpful. Nowadays i know my body signs a lot better and it's easier to tell if i'm actually hungry. Resisting cravings is still a challenge but i'm getting better at identifying them.

That's a really good tip! I usually tend to have pretty harsh sugar crashes which leads me to crave either carbs or fat. I'll apply your tip this week and see how it goes, hopefully by the end of the month I can have a clear idea of what hunger is.

If I'm eating pretty healthily, I don't get crashes - it's more of a slow building sensation that should be fed and results in weakness/reduced mental capacity if I don't eat, but this hunger isn't urgent, painful or unpleasant the way a sugar/carb crash feels. I'm sure you know the crash feeling - "I NEED TO EAT NOW OR SOMETHING AWFUL WILL HAPPEN"

I crave salads whether I have hunger or not. As far as the empty feeling I don't try to make it go away. I just sit through it. Otherwise, I get panicky about pushing any feeling back - I just deal with it like some rainy day or whatever - a lil downer but not bad at all.