4 Secrets of Hunger & What You Can Do About It: Part 1

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Hunger

Written by Richard L. Lipman M.D.

Tuesday, 17 February 2009 04:07

The feeling of hunger is the major reason people have difficulty losing and maintaining their weight loss. In this first of a four part series, you will learn to sort out the many causes of "hunger" ( or what is perceived as hunger) including thirst, cravings, boredom, anxiety, low blood sugar, depression and habit. It's much easier to control these feelings once they are recognized.

If you are hungry all day long, much of it is not real hunger. No one is hungry all day and all night. In obesity prone individuals the brain often confuses hunger with many other emotions and signals. Here are some simple guides to see if your feelings are hunger or some other emotion and what to do.

Causes of Hunger

Why Am I Always Hungry?

Hormones Make Us Hungry

Foods Make Us Hungry

Signals All Around Makes Us Hungry

Hunger check list

If you are hungry all day long, much of it is not real hunger. No one is hungry all day and all night. In obesity prone individuals the brain often confuses hunger with many other emotions. Here are some simple guides to see if your feelings are hunger or some other emotion and what to do.

Use the check sheet below to try to find the cause of your "hunger." The best guide is to divide the day into four time periods since hunger differs through the day.

Time of day	Likely cause	Best solution to the hunger
mid morning	Skip breakfast too small a breakfast high carb breakfast	Have some protein for breakfast, even a piece of cheese, shake or bar is better than nothing, stop high carb breakfasts
early afternoon	Skip lunch, high carb lunch, too small a lunch	Limit the carbs at lunch, make sure there is some protein
late afternoon	It's NORMAL, also low blood sugar, wrong or small lunch	Have lunch, make sure there is enough food, have protein snack
evening	Anxiety,depression, stress, habit, high carb dinner, alcohol, too small a dinner, eating dinner too early leaving a large gap between dinner & bedtime	Make sure there is no large gap between dinner and bedtime, get the "right" snacks here is the real problem trying to sort out the "real hunger" from emotions that feel like hunger.

Keeping in mind that the feelings that we interpret as hunger differ throughout the day, here is what should go through your mind if you feel hung:

1. Am I thirsty and not really hungry?
Always drink something first (a no calorie drink, of course)

2. Did I skip a meal?
Keep in mind that skipping a meal leads to loss of control, a low blood sugar and more eating latter. Eating regular meals interspersed with snacks does increase metabolism, it just keeps your blood sugar even thru the day.

3. Did the meal have a lot of rapidly absorbed carbs,
Examples include like sugar, bagels, donuts, rice, pasta, potatoes, sugary cereals raise your blood sugar. This sugar spike is followed by a drop as the sugar turns to fat, and more hunger is produced.

4. Was the meal too small?
A single piece of toast or cheese for breakfast or a can of tuna fish for lunch is not enough food. One
would expect to be hungry if the meal was so small.

5. It's normal to be hungry
Hunger in the morning or late in the afternoon is normal. It's not normal to feel hunger 30 minutes after eating.

6. Is the feeling not really hunger at all?
Many emotions masquerade as hunger. How do you know if boredom, anxiety or depression is fooling you into thinking your hungry? It's simple, if you have feelings of hunger soon after eating, and you eat something and 20 minutes latter you want more, that is usually not hunger. The underlying emotion has not changed with eating and you end back where you started feeling guilty but still not able to do much about it.

7. Is the feeling a craving rather than hunger?
Cravings are different than hunger. This intense, irrational need for food often occurs when we are not hungry at all.

Use these 7 guidelines to help you decipher true hungry from feelings that are not hunger at all. Here is what my patients also do to prevent loss of control and even more eating when they are hungry?

Weight loss maintainers who have kept their weight off for years often go to extremes not to be hungry:

They carry snacks with them, keep them in the office and even in their cars for the drive home after work.
Their experience is that the most dangerous time is around 4-6 pm, when the shift is made from the day to the evening
Men rushing home hungry pick something from the refrigerator or a snack from the kitchen cupboard
Women are sampling while they are preparing the evening meal.