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In order to identify hunger, you must first understand what
it is. This is not as easy as it seems. Many of you may never
have let yourself experience true hunger, only a feeling of
discomfort. Not knowing exactly what it was, you may have
been eating past hunger for such a long time you can no longer
differentiate between hunger and the feeling of anxiety, stress,
boredom, or any number of other emotional or circumstantial
stimuli. You haven’t allowed yourself to go without eating
for a long enough period of time to have felt true hunger;
you may not have experienced it since childhood.
Each of us is born with an innate sense of hunger. When you
were a baby and felt this sensation,  you
cried. Your mother or caregiver pacified you with a bottle
or breast, and when you were no longer hungry, you pushed
the food away. Before you could speak, you made yourself understood.
As a toddler beginning to eat baby food, you were still in
control of your food consumption. Your mother might have thought
you had to finish everything she served, but you had other
ideas. You might have clenched your little baby teeth and
not permitted one extra spoonful of anything to enter your
mouth. She might have pushed your chubby little cheeks together
trying to force you to open your mouth, but you would not.
If she did manage to insert some food, you spit it out, sometimes
on your bib, sometimes on mom. The message was clear. “No
more food, Mommy.”
As she persevered, you finally learned to please your mother
by finishing everything on your plate. You may have been told
that if you ate your vegetables, your reward would be dessert.
You were bribed with a lollipop if you’d stop crying. You
learned to eat all your food because it gave pleasure to others.
It didn’t seem to matter anymore whether you were hungry or
not. You were taught to ignore your feelings of hunger and
satiation just to please someone else. And you learned well.
Years later, you’re still keeping a friend company by sharing
a meal when you’re not hungry, or accepting an alcoholic beverage
just to be part of the crowd, or to please a hostess.
The dictionary describes hunger as “the painful sensation
or state of weakness caused by need of food.” Some people
become irritable, shaky, or disoriented if they are not fed
at their usual mealtime. Others experience hunger as feeling
lightheaded, empty, low, headachy, or hollow. At times a growling
stomach prompts an eating episode. Some eat when they get
depressed. Others lose their appetite when they get depressed.
External stimuli are abundant, as are emotional and physical
ones, yet few of these are hunger, just some other strain
on your nervous system.
Human beings have a built-in fight or flight mechanism that
helps them to survive. When your ancestors roamed the earth
and encountered a tiger who had leaped out of the bushes,
they would mobilize themselves to either fight the tiger or
flee from it. Years later, you still face the tigers. A death
in the family, loss of a job, or an illness may certainly
have the bite of a tiger. Your pulse quickens, your mouth
feels dry, your palms sweat and you revert to old behavior
and try to quell the anxiety by putting something into your
mouth. You also may be reacting to the fluctuations of daily
life – a waiter being inept, traffic inching along, a line
at the bank – that cause you to eat a box of cookies or ask
for a second helping of food. You might be misidentifying
a minor travail as a tiger when it is only a baby cub.
Have you had the experience of thinking you were hungry at
noontime only to become absorbed  in
a project or in a book, and have several hours pass before
you think about food again? True hunger cannot wait a few
hours. It demands to be fed. You were not hungry at noon but
were responding to a time of day stimulus, another reason
you’ve given yourself to eat. If you distract yourself with
some other activity, the urge usually passes within a few
minutes. Try to differentiate between your hungers and your
urges.
Food need not fill you up in order for you to feel satisfied.
A few bites of foods you don’t usually eat can be very satisfying
while baskets of bread, mugs of coffee, or liter bottles of
diet soda might leave you feeling hungry and unsatisfied.
It is not okay to eat when you are physically or emotionally
uncomfortable. Eat when you’re hungry. Stop eating when you
are no longer hungry, not when you are full or there is nothing
remaining on your plate. As your clothes get looser, you’ll
start to enjoy leaving food on your plate. It is a process
that takes time to achieve. Remember:
· Volume of non-nutritious food merely stuffs and bloats but
does not satisfy real hunger.
· Variety and texture along with nutrition satiates hunger.
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