Why are you hungry?

Nation's Business, May, 1989 by Donna Freedman

Why Are You Hungry?

What does it really mean to feel hungry? Do you need food for physical nourishment--or for some other reason? Many people are unaware that their hunger often has no physiological basis.

Physical symptoms--stomach pangs or feelings of emptiness--generally accompany physiological hunger. Prolonged hunger often can lead to light-headedness, headaches, or crankiness. Almost any form of food should alleviate these symptoms.

Psychological hunger, on the other hand, typically involves cravings for specific foods and is usually not accompanied by physical symptoms. It is triggered by internal or external stimuli that have nothing to do with the body's need for food. These stimuli can include emotions, stress, psychological problems, and the sight or smell of food.

Some people who think they are physically hungry have in fact learned to desire food in response to such stimuli. With psychological hunger, one can eat and eat without being satisfied. Such binging is an urgent attempt to make up for what is missing in some part of one's life. It is a signal that something is wrong.

The inability to distinguish physiological from psychological hunger can often be traced to infancy and childhood. If children are fed only to satisfy their need for nourishment, they generally will be able to distinguish between the kinds of hunger as they grow to adulthood.

Unfortunately, many children are fed for reasons that have nothing to do with physical sustenance. Often, when children cry because they are wet, unhappy, or restless, they are fed to keep them calm or quiet. Food also may be given to children as a reward or withheld as punishment. Turning the tables, some children learn to control adults, or to defy them, by eating to excess or refusing to eat. The pattern continues into adulthood. These children grow up unable to distinguish between psychological and physiological hunger.

In adulthood, such people may use food to provide emotional release from situations that are difficult for them to handle. They may eat to calm themselves when they feel angry, frustrated, or depressed. Their excessive weight in effect shields them from their fears of dealing with intimate relationships or career opportunities.

Unfortunately, these people often attempt to regain control of their weight (and symbolically their lives) by manipulating food, through dieting, fasting, or purging. They suffer from the mistaken belief that thinness equals control, which in turn equals happiness.

When people turn to diets for these reasons, they ultimately fail, unless simultaneously they implement long-term lifestyle changes. How many people do you know who go on diets, lose weight, and then gradually add more weight than they originally lost? Each new failure lowers the dieter's self-esteem, so that he or she feels more depressed and stressed than before.

If you have problems like these, you can break out. The first step is to gain awareness. Listen to your body. Before you eat, ask yourself: Am I physically hungry? If you are truly physically hungry, drinking a noncaloric beverage or water or eating a food for which you feel no specific craving should satisfy your need.

If you know it is not physiological hunger that is driving you, try to remove yourself from the provoking stimuli and wait 20 to 30 minutes to see how you feel.

Try to understand what is upsetting you by thinking about the past 24 hours. Often, there is a delay between the original distress and the feeling of wanting food. Alternatively, your craving for food may be related to some anticipated distressing situation. If you can pinpoint the cause, you can work toward resolving the real issues.

Alone, or sometimes with professional help, people can learn to change their lifestyle patterns related to food. They can learn how to feel comfortable in their own bodies and how to recognize and respond correctly to their own cues and hungers.

PHOTO : Eating habits usually are formed in childhood. Children who are fed only for nourishment should, as adults, be able to distinguish physiological from psychological hunger.