One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when eating healthy is learning how to properly manage hunger.
If you can learn to manage your hunger properly, then you are well on your way to healthy eating.
Real Hunger
Real hunger refers to the actual feelings of hunger that you experience when your body truly needs food.
Real hunger refers to the feelings you get when you absolutely need food.
When you are suffering from real hunger, you will know it. You will likely get sharp hunger cramps. Your mind will be consumed with getting food and nothing else, you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else.
Because of how easy it is to get food and how much food is available to us, very few people ever truly experience real hunger anymore unless they are purposely denying themselves food as part of a fad diet.
The most effective method for managing real hunger is to practice mindful eating. Mindful eating is basically a strategy that relies on smart portion control (to avoid overeating) combined with slow eating.
Believe it or not, slow eating actually does manage to satisfy your hunger more than scoffing down your food.
Applying mindful eating is easily the most effective way to curb your feelings of real hunger.
Emotional Hunger
Emotional hunger refers to instances where you may feel hungry but isn’t because your body is demanding food, instead it’s because your mind is making you think that you need food.
Your mind is definitely powerful enough to make you think that you are hungry, even when you really aren’t in desperate need of food.
There are a variety of factors that can result in emotional hunger. By far the most common cause is boredom.
When you get bored, you may turn to food to try and alleviate your boredom. You may mistake the feelings of boredom for feelings of hunger and assume that you need to eat to cure your hunger.
Another common cause of emotional hunger is a habit. When you eat your meals at the same time every day, you may find yourself getting “hungry” around that time, even though your body isn’t actually craving food.
There are some telltale signs that you are suffering from emotional hunger and not real hunger.
The first sign is if you have eaten recently (within the last few hours). It takes your body a while to digest food, so if you are feeling hungry after having eaten recently, then it is unlikely to be real hunger.
Another sign is if you are just sitting around doing nothing and suddenly start feeling hungry. That is a good sign that you are suffering from boredom-induced hunger.
Finally, if you truly want to tell if you are suffering from emotional hunger, drink a glass of cold ice water and see if the hunger subsides. If it does, it is emotional hunger and not real hunger.
