Hunger...

I've been thinking a lot recently about my personal experience of hunger. Being of the education level and socioeconomic class that I am, it is unlikely that I will ever be in a position to be unwillingly hungry. I have spent my life in the company of abundance... not necessarily financial abundance, but I was definitely never without food. Because of this my experience of hunger is incredibly limited. I am familiar with the general sensation of hunger, and I am well aware of how my body processes satiety and even over-indulgence... but I don't know that I REALLY understand what its like, how it feels, to be hungry.

Weight loss "experts" would have you believe that when trying to lose weight you should never allow yourself to feel hungry. Eat before you get hungry, but eat just enough to keep you from that feeling of hunger for another couple of hours. Metabolically this is a good strategy. The prolonged sensation of hunger turns the metabolism down... and reduces your overal caloric expenditure in an effort to conserve in case of true famine. But I think what people do is mis-interpret the idea that "not being hungry" really means "feeling full." These are, unfortunately COMPLETELY different things. The sensation of NOT being hungry is not synonamous with the sensation of being full. Feeling full is really a metabolically disasterous place to be. If you FEEL full you have over consumed and are training your body to be able to consume more than you need on a repeated basis.

In the last few weeks I have been trying to find ways to experience the sensation of hunger without dammaging my metabolism. Its probably not working... but I believe, for me, that its important that I understand the difference between "not hungry" and "full." So to find that place I have been allowing myself to get hungry. Sometimes very hungry... and while this will NEVER replicate TRUE hunger (in a global sense) it is making me MUCH more aware of how much I really need to eat to get to the point of being not hungry. This morning, for breakfast, I ordered scrambled eggs with french-toast and bacon. I was hungry, I was breaking my nightly fast... and yet... to feel full, I ate less than 1/3 of the food I ordered. I started with the eggs, and that alone nearly took the hunger completely away. 1/2 of a piece of french toast and I was no longer hungry. 1 and 1/2 pieces and 4 pieces of bacon remained on my plate. I could have eaten it all, and probably would have gotten to the point of feeling "full." Not wanting to get there, i stopped eating. This was at 8:45a. I am not yet hungry again. Yet, if i had eaten everything... I would probably be hungry again at about the same time I will be, even having only eaten enough to satisfy the hunger.

I don't understand, really, why feeling hunger is such a bad thing. I can understand that often, because we live with such abundance, the feeling of hunger will trigger over-consumption in so many people... but I also believe that there is a marked lack of education in our society about the inner workings of the human body and the difference between eating to the point of not being hungry and eating to the point of feeling full. I never learned anything about this until I decided to do some research on my own... and now I believe that if I never allow myself to feel hungry, I will probably chronically over-eat. I have to FEEL Hunger to know when the sensation has abated... when I've eaten enough to satisfy the sensation and yet NOT gorge and over-stuff my stomach to the point of stretching. I don't know that human beings are EVER supposed to feel "Full." I think if we could change that one perception, alone, the obesity epidemic could be curbed significantly.

Give it a shot... let yourself feel hunger... and let it last 30 minutes to an hour. Feel the sensation, examine it, analyze it and figure out just how minor or intense it is for you. Really listen to your body to hear what it's telling you that it wants... and THEN only eat as much as you need to no longer feel hungry. You'll probably need to eat really slowly to make sure you don't over-eat... or eat past the point of no longer being hungry. How long are you able to keep from being hungry again on that ammount of food? How much difference is there between the ammount you ate to not feel hungry and how much it would take to feel full? I'm going to hazard to guess that the differences in ammounts are profound... but the differences in length of satiety will be quite small.

I guess I'd better do my homework now...

Posted by Lexy at September 9, 2006 10:02 AM