How to Honor the 4 Types of Hunger
The good news: We are born intuitive eaters. Have you ever eaten with a toddler where they took two bites and then decided they didn’t want to eat anymore, only to ask for more food in an hour or so? This is an example of a person honoring their natural ability to eat intuitively and recognize their signs of hunger and fullness. It’s something we’re born with.
Source: Michal Jarmoluk/Pixabay
The not-so-good news: We live in a world full of schedules, deadlines, commutes, and food culture. The combination of all of these factors can sometimes interfere with our ability to eat intuitively, leaving us denying or ignoring our natural hunger cues.
Some background information: Intuitive Eating is an evidence-based anti-dieting framework developed by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in the late 1990s. Intuitive eating consists of ten principles:
- Reject diet mentality
- honor your hunger
- Make peace with food
- Challenge the food police
- Discover the satisfaction factor
- Feel your fullness
- Manage your feelings with kindness
- respect your body
- movement
- Honor your health with gentle eating
It’s important to note that intuitive eating may not be readily accessible to everyone due to a variety of factors including finance, geography, transportation, or other accessibility limitations. Despite its many benefits, the concept of intuitive eating is not without its flaws.
Now the fun part: did you know that you have four different types of hunger? Did you know that every kind of hunger deserves to be appreciated without judgement?
“Honor your hunger” is one of the ten principles of intuitive eating. Sometimes our busy lives and hectic schedules can make it difficult to satisfy our hunger and eat intuitively on a regular basis. However, with a little mindfulness, education, and understanding, we can try to incorporate intuitive eating and respecting our hunger into our daily lives.
In addition to the ten principles, the Intuitive Eating Framework also identifies four different types of hunger. Let’s dive into our different types of hunger and how we can try to honor them.
physical hunger
What is it: Simply put, physical hunger is what most people think of when they think of the word hunger. It can present as a growling stomach, headache, fainting, or a variety of other physical symptoms. It’s your body’s way of saying, “Please feed me!”
How to honor it: In a perfect world, we would honor physical hunger by eating as soon as we sense these hunger signals from our bodies. However, we live in a busy and chaotic world, and sometimes it’s not possible to eat at the exact moment we feel the hunger pangs. One way to combat this is to eat based on practical hunger (see below).
It might also be helpful to have a few quick, easy snacks on hand throughout the day. So if you get hungry during class or a meeting, you’ll have a quick snack that’s easily accessible and you can satisfy your hunger without too much disruption.
taste hunger
What is it: Craving for taste is exactly what it sounds like: it’s the feeling of craving a particular food based on its taste (or texture, temperature, etc.). In the words of RDN Rachel Helfferich, it’s eat what “sounds good”. It’s that moment when you’re in a dining room or food court with tons of different food options that you really think about what you’re craving at that moment, and then you choose that food option. Unfortunately, food culture sometimes gets in the way of honoring this type of hunger. When we engage in disordered behaviors, e.g. B. Placing a moral value on food (food is “good” or “bad”) or preoccupied with making the “healthiest” choices, we do not ignore and honor our hunger for taste.
How to honor it: When you’re faced with deciding what to eat, take a moment or two to stop, breathe, and check in with yourself. Consider all the food options available to you and imagine what it would be like to eat each and every one. You might get a “gut feeling” about imagining eating a certain food and have a moment where you say, “Ah, I wanted that.” If you have that moment, honor it. Try not to let diet culture or overthinking creep you in. Let your ability to eat intuitively guide you.
emotional hunger
What is it: Emotional hunger is eating to satisfy an emotional need. A classic example is that cliched movie scene where the main character reaches for a pint of Ben & Jerry’s after a bad breakup. Emotional hunger sometimes gets a bad rap. People tend to place a moral value on emotional hunger/eating (“I’m so bad for it”). However, eating to satisfy emotional needs is not inherently bad. It can be a way to deal with emotions in the short term. In addition, we can turn to food to satisfy ourselves positive emotions. Think of holidays like Thanksgiving, when food is an important part of the day and presented as a symbol of celebration and togetherness. Honoring emotional hunger is just as important to overall well-being as honoring any other type of hunger.
How to honor it: Allow yourself to temporarily/short-term use food as a means of self-soothing. Do not assign moral value to any type or amount of food, as this invites feelings of shame or embarrassment into the equation. Also, eliminate thoughts like “Uh, I’m so bad I have this” or “I have to go to the gym on Monday to fix this” from your vocabulary. We can eat for emotional reasons without feeling guilty or having to “catch up”.
However, if you feel that your relationship with emotional eating is problematic and you are looking for a greater repertoire of coping skills, please consult a psychologist who can conduct a more thorough assessment and provide additional help.
Practical hunger
What is it: Practical hunger is the act of eating even when there are no signs of hunger because you know you may not have an opportunity to eat again for a while. This is arguably the most important type of hunger for people with busy or rigid schedules (students, teachers, people in jobs with long meetings) to learn to honor as it protects us from becoming to hungry (and hungry!) on those days when time just ticks us off and we may not have the opportunity to eat at the precise moment our physical hunger strikes.
How to honor it: Let’s say you’re a therapist with back-to-back sessions from 5pm to 8pm. You might not be hungry for dinner at 4:30 p.m., but it’s the only chance you’ll have for the next few hours. So you have something to eat before your sessions, even if you don’t feel any physical signs of hunger and it may be earlier than a traditional dinner time.
With practical hunger, you can always check back with your hunger signs later and decide if you need more food when you get a chance to eat again, and then make a decision based on your intuitive self-assessment. However, by tapping into our practical hunger, we protect ourselves from becoming too hungry and feeling the ill effects of restriction or lack of food.
By regularly honoring our four different types of hunger, we communicate the words “I trust you” to our body, and in turn our body learns to trust us as well. This mutual trust in ourselves and our bodies is critical to maintaining a healthy relationship with food, our bodies, and our mental health. As I mentioned above, it’s important to note that intuitive eating isn’t always perfectly accessible to everyone. However, if we try to honor our hunger and respond appropriately as best we can, as best we can in that moment, the difference in our overall well-being will be invaluable.
A version of this article was also published on the Lukin Center for Psychotherapy website.