Real hunger or emotional hunger?
Who can’t feel when they’re hungry?
If there is anything intrinsically ingrained in our animal imprint, it is the ability to tell when we are hungry.
Pure instinct.
There’s no room for intellectual speculation or elevated theories when the stomach begins to roar and our mental focus, until now “laser-like,” begins to fade away.
Then we pause, sit down to enjoy our meal, feel full, recharge our batteries, and resume whatever we were doing.
[…]
Nice story, right?
If hunger signals are so clear and well established in our bodies, why do many of us spend our days jumping from bite to bite?
If the very nature of our bodies tells us so clearly when we are full, how come we keep munching, chewing, swallowing, and wandering around food so often, even if we just ate a short while before?
When Emotions “Season” Our Dish
What happens is that our physical hunger cues get overlapped and disrupted by other signals, distorting the initial message.
What signs distort our natural hunger and satiety processes?
Certain emotions and states of mind: sadness, anger, exhaustion, despair, joy, etc.
For each of these, food has a different meaning, but in all cases it is a mechanism that “alleviates” or (falsely) counteracts the initial, often discomforting, emotion.
Stress can also generate a lot of “noise,” altering the body’s initial hunger signals. In this case, food may act as a “natural tranquilizer.”
In any case, emotions and physiology intermingle, causing a signal mess in our body that’s hard to differentiate and interpret.
How can we distinguish physical hunger from emotional hunger?
The first step is to learn how to differentiate their distinctive features. The following are some of the most relevant:
Physical hunger
1) It emerges gradually: That familiar stomach discomfort that appears in the middle of a meeting just before lunchtime...
2) There is no need to satisfy it immediately: We can e-a-s-i-l-y wait until the meeting is over, send that overdue email before going to the canteen to have lunch, or pick up the kids from school and drive home before eating something…
3)You are open to different meal options: You look at what you have at home, or you scrutinize the restaurant menu with curiosity —you’re not scanning the food list searching for that cheeseburger or that spaghetti carbonara dish.
4) You stop eating when you feel full, i.e., you follow your body’s satiating signals naturally.
You know that you don’t need that dessert; you don’t feel like filling your plate several times at that free buffet…
5) You feel good when you finish eating. That sigh of “Ahhh, I finally ate!”
This is a key aspect of distinguishing between the two types of hunger.
Emotional hunger
1) It appears suddenly, out of the blue. You find yourself in front of that annoying email you have to send or that boring report you need to finish and bang! You crave those chocolate cookies, or those M&Ms that you stashed in your desk drawer.
2) You feel the urge to satisfy it i-m-m-e-d-i-a-t-e-l-y.
No. You cannot wait until you get home and prepare a meal; you grab those honey-coated peanuts from the vending machine.
You cannot wait those fifteen minutes until it’s time to have lunch with your colleagues; you grab those chocolates that someone placed in the common areas of your office (“Who came up with this brilliant idea?”)...
You cannot wait until you get home after a hard day at work and prepare your dinner; you stop by the nearest supermarket or coffee shop and buy something (sweet, salty, or crunchy) to munch on along the way...
You cannot wait until dinner is ready; you cook and snack at the same time.
3) You crave a specific type of food
We’re not talking about “I’m hungry” in general; we’re talking about:
“Where’s that chocolate croissant I left in the pantry yesterday?”
“My kingdom for those barbecue-flavored chips!”
“Where did I leave it that piece of cheese? And the honey-coated nuts?”
4) You keep eating even when you feel full
“Once you pop, you can’t stop,” claimed the motto of a well-known advertising campaign for chips. The marketing team certainly knew how our emotional brain works...
The physical satiety cues get suppressed by this “noise”: we don’t eat two cookies or a handful of chips; we finish the pack.
5) Feelings of guilt and shame appear once you finish eating
“I shouldn’t have eaten this. I have no willpower!”
“What’s wrong with me? That doesn’t happen to Ms. So and So!”
“Mr. Judgment” and “Miss Guilt” usually visit us, once the automatic pilot we were in until that moment gets deactivated.
This is a crucial aspect of differentiating types of hunger.
When dealing with emotional hunger, you feel the need to eat to satisfy or cope with something that is bothering you. And that something is oftentimes a hidden emotional conflict that you are struggling with, either consciously or unconsciously.
How to start managing emotional hunger
The first step to deconstructing this automatic process is to acknowledge and discern the signals explained above, i.e., those coming from physiological hunger versus emotional hunger.
We cannot manage what we cannot identify.
The second step is to implement some techniques that break the link between the stimulus (whatever scenario your brain interprets as an “invitation”) and the (re)action (taking those chips, that croissant or that chocolate muffin). I will talk about this step in subsequent posts.
The third is, of course, to explore the emotion(s) that “pulled the trigger” in the first place. It is about rowing “upstream,” searching for the root cause.
If you think that emotional hunger is in one way or another present in your life at this moment, and feel that it is undermining your well-being or your health goals, I invite you to find a quiet place where you can spend some minutes with yourself, asking the following questions:
Can I relate to some of the characteristics of emotional hunger?
If so, do I feel good about it, or do I get frequent visits from Mr. Judgment and Miss Guilt?
What situations/emotions trigger my behavior? Is it anxiety, exhaustion, boredom, sadness, pure habit...?
What are the foods that I turn to when I’m on “autopilot”?
How can I start listening more carefully to my body’s signals today?
Can I manage this myself, or should I seek some guidance?
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Both your body and mind deserve this special solo time and this self-care gesture ❤.
Do you have any particular questions about this topic? You can leave them in the comments below, or write to me directly at teresa@yourlifeonaplate.com
I will be glad to hear from you 😊.
A wholehearted hug.