6 Different Hunger And How They Affect Weight Gain & Health

So why do we eat? I mean, why do you eat? Do you eat because you're hungry? I want to suggest that we have a whole lot of reasons for eating and they actually often don't have much to do with hunger at all. In fact, there are six different reasons or six different hungers that drive our eating decisions. And some of them have very little to do with food at all. Take for example, thirst. Now, you might think I'm a little crazy at this point suggesting that thirst is a form of hunger, but it is. Because you see, for our ancestors, well, they didn't have water bottles and they didn't have plumbing, they didn't have access to water all the time. So they got a lot of their water from the food they ate. They would walk around, they would eat lots of food, and they would get a lot of their hydration. So guess what? When they started to feel a little dehydrated, their body would send a signal, go eat some food. They would eat the food, they would get the water and everything be fine. The challenge is today, most of our food has almost no water in. In fact, some of our food is basically negative quantities of water. When somebody eats a bag of potato chips, they need water to put process it. So guess what? They're a little dehydrated. They get a signal, go eat something. Then they eat something that doesn't give them any water and worse, robs water from them. Guess what? Now they're even more dehydrated. Guess what? Another signal to eat. What to do about that? Well, drink water and eat water rich foods to prevent yourself getting thirsty in the first place. You'd be surprised how much that can reduce your cravings. The second form of hunger does have to do with food. It's nutritional hunger, right? It's where you're empty of some nutrients. You're missing some vitamins, minerals, some fats, some proteins. You're missing those things. And so your body sends out a message. But here's the thing. Because our ancestors lived with Mother Nature and not grocery stores and uber eats, they couldn't simply go out and pick up something that they wanted. What they had to do instead was eat what was available. So when you feel nutritional hunger, at best, your body sends you out for something sweet or something salty or something fatty. But if you're having a hunger that's like for a specific brand, that's not nutritional hunger. That's another hunger that we'll talk about soon. What do you do about nutritional hunger? This is one of the greatest life hacks in the world. And that is you eat nutritionally dense food before you eat the other kinds of food. So that means that you eat really good quality food and you neutralize hunger before you get hungry, and therefore you don't feel as much hunger. The third kind of hunger, variety. Now, this is a fascinating thing. In our experience of the world these days, have you ever had this experience where you talk to a friend and go, hey, let's go get some sushi. And your friend goes, oh, no, I had sushi on Tuesday. Oh, yeah. And then you go, well, we could go for Italian. Oh, but I had Italian on Sunday. Like, we want variety on a daily basis. No, in fact, we want variety on our plate. We want to go to a buffet and have a little bit of everything. We want so much variety. But where does that come from? It comes from a very smart instinct that humans have, and this is the way it worked. Bear in mind that our ancestors lived in mother nature for the vast majority of our history, and that meant that the foods that were available were the ones that were out there seasonally available. And so if you were eating one plant, for example, because it was available and you're eating too much of it, you might be getting too much of what that plant delivers, but not enough of other things. And so your body would generate a desire for variety to make sure that you ate a variety of different things, to get all of your vitamins, minerals, proteins and fats solved. So what we get now is way too much variety. And here's one thing you can do about it. When you start feeling a need for new variety in terms of your food, you can recognize that variety is an emotional need. And so you can seek out other forms of variety in your life, other forms of entertainment and adventure, and satisfy that variety emotionally. And then you won't need to satisfy it on your plate. The next. Hunger is low blood sugar. Hungry. Here's how you can tell when somebody has it. They are hangry or fungry. Maybe you've heard this is where somebody's so hungry that they become a different human being. A Jekyll and Hyde experience. This is where temper tantrums can happen. Grumpiness or just low energy. What's happening here is not actually a form of hunger. It's a form of mismanaged energy. Let me explain. Your body can burn fat, it can burn protein, and it can burn sugar. When it burns sugar or carbohydrate foods, you can feel really, really good. But then when it's all gone, you can feel really, really bad. And so in that moment, what can happen is, is that you feel a crash, maybe you've called it a sugar crash. And in that moment, you're experiencing very low blood sugar. And so your body sends out an emergency signal. And often that emergency signal is for, guess what, more sugar. Because that's what you're burning. Next thing you know, you're having a craving for a chocolate bar or a candy or a donut, or maybe if you're really lucky, a carrot. But the point is you're craving a carbohydrate because you have crashed your blood sugar. What you can do about this is, first of all, make sure that you have a healthy relationship with carbohydrate foods, that they're not something that you necessarily are eating every single day. And the other one is undertake gentle cardiovascular movement. It's a truly amazing thing that if you're feeling a little bit of low blood sugar hunger, all you need to do sometimes is go outside, go for a 20 minute brisk walk, your body will start burning fat and release internal energy. And then you won't have low blood sugar anymore, and then you won't have to eat garbage. The next kind of hunger is also not an actual form of hunger at all. It's called empty stomach hunger. I know, I know you're probably thinking, well, yeah, but Eric, if my stomach is empty, I must be hungry. No, not the case at all. You could have all the vitamins, you could have all the minerals, you could have all the fats, all the proteins. You could be very well nourished, you could be super hydrated and your stomach could be empty. And that would be a good thing. The challenge is that in our world today, because we've bought into the three meals a day lie, and we've bought into way more food than we really need to eat, is that we've stretched out our stomachs. Do you know that your stomach is normally about the size of your fist, but when you eat a large meal, your stomach can stretch? The trouble is we eat so many large meals that our stomachs keep stretching and they stay big. And then what happens is when the stomach is empty and stretched like that, it feels bad. It doesn't feel very nice. Now, add one more problem, and that is the vast majority of people living in the developed world today are overfed energy, sugar and underfed nutrients, which means they're starving just a little bit. They're a little low on vitamin C, they're a little low on vitamin D, they're A little low on these minerals and these fats and so forth, so they are actually hungry. Now, you combine that slightly starving feeling with an empty stomach and it starts to feel like a very powerful hunger. The truth is, is that your stomach being empty is actually really healthy. It's a good thing. That's when your body can do repair work, it can do cleansing work. And so I want to suggest to you that one of the best things you can do is actually plan for a day to let yourself get hungry. Go on a small fast and feel how your stomach feels when it's empty. Drink some water, notice how it feels when it fills up and then again when it's empty. And you'll begin to realize an empty stomach is actually a nice cleansing experience as long as you're eating well the rest of the time. What's the best cure for loneliness? Chocolate. What's the best cure for the end of a rough day? A glass of wine. What's the best cure for feeling a little bit sad, a little depressed? A bowl of ice cream. Now, I know that you know that I know that we all know that those are not cures for those emotional states at all. And yet. Yet guess what? We do it all the time. We eat food for emotional reasons. Have you ever done it? I certainly have. Emotional hunger is not a form of nutritional hunger at all. It has nothing to do with food. It has to do with an emotional pain that somebody's having or an emotional acceleration that somebody's having. And then they've learned to link that up to some food. Let me give you an example. Imagine that you were playing on a sports team, and your sports team lost the big championship. And everybody's quiet in the back of the van heading home after the tournament. And they're all sad. Maybe a few people even have tears. And the coach, the coach feels so bad for the kids that the coach wants them to feel better. And so the coach takes them for, let's go for pizza and soft drinks and ice cream. And so they go and have that. Now, what's crazy, those kids have learned something, that pizza, soft drinks, ice cream is like anesthetic. It helps them feel better when they're feeling sad. And so for the rest of their lives, if they've had a bad day, they'll lean toward, say, in this example, pizza, soft drinks and ice cream. Wait, what about the other version? What about the team that won? That team won. They're in the car, they're celebrating, they're singing songs. It's amazing. And the Coach wants to celebrate with them. They go to a different pizza place. They have pizza, soft drinks, and ice cream, too. But what they've learned is that they have to celebrate with those things. This happened to all of us in some form. You were running along, you skinned your knee, you looked up, you saw your mom was looking. Maybe you cried, you were in pain. Your mom would do anything to end the pain. And she brings you a cookie. And what do you learn in that moment? Cookies take away pain. So what takes away your pain from a food perspective? Does chocolate do it? Ice cream? Glass of wine? What takes away the pain? Well, what I want you to know is that it doesn't take away the pain at all. And in fact, what it does is it makes it worse. Not right away. You see, what happens is you're in that emotional pain, and then you eat that food, and for a moment, the pain doesn't go away. You're just distracted from it. You're distracted from it for a moment, but then it comes back. And then it'll even come back worse, because guess what? You just put some junk in your body, and so your body's going to start to feel gross, too. Now you're going to feel emotionally gross and physically gross. And the cycle repeats. And by the way, there's one more thing I want you to think about. If you're sad and depressed and you treat your sadness and depression with chocolate, then your body has just learned that all that fat and all that sugar and all that dopamine is available. If only your body could somehow trigger sadness and depression. Do you understand what's happening? It's incredibly important that you recognize that emotional hunger is not a form of hunger at all, but it is a path to addiction. And so here's the deal. If you are feeling lonely, take out a piece of paper, take out your phone, and write down 10 other ways to cure your loneliness that come before food. If you're feeling sad. If you're feeling depressed, write 10 different ways. I went through this exact experience. I was home one day. I was feeling really lonely, a little depressed, and I wanted to walk straight to the fridge. I knew there was ice cream in there. I knew there was. Now, it was the best quality ice cream I could get. I happened to choose. It was responsibly sweetened, and it didn't have milk in it. So I was justifying it. Have you ever justified. I was justifying. And then suddenly I realized, wait a second, now, how on earth is that ice cream going to make me feel less Lonely. I'm alone. I'm feeling lonely. I'm going to eat the ice cream alone and I'm still going to feel lonely. Except I'm also going to probably feel a little gross and lonely. And so I wrote down a list and you know what was on the top of that list? Call your son, call your mother, call your father. You know what's really interesting? A really loving heart to heart conversation cures loneliness a lot better than ice cream. And so anytime you're having an emotional low that you feel like you should treat with food, why don't you first try to treat it with something else and if that fails, you can go to the food later. Now these six hungers, the truth of it is is that no one of them is really all that dangerous. It really isn't. The trouble is, is when they gang up on you. So let's take a look. Let's say you're a little dehydrated, right? You're a little dehydrated and you've got that thirst hunger, it's going, hey, you gotta eat something, you gotta eat something. But then on top of that, maybe you had a bit of a rough day. Now you've got emotional hunger. Oh, oh. And then on top of that, on top of that, well, you got a little bit of low blood sugar hunger. Now all three of those hungers are ganging up on you. And you know what's really crazy? The hungrier you are or the hungrier you feel, the more flexible you will become about your food rules. Let me explain. Let's say you're trying to be good, okay? You're trying to be good. I'm not going to eat that. I'm being good. Well, have you ever been trying to be good but then suddenly your mind just rebels and says you're eating it anyway? Well, what's happened in that case is that too many of the hungers got activated and they ganged up on you. So one of the very best things that you can do is seek out to neutralize each of the hungers. So in the case of thirst, drink to prevent thirst instead of quenching it. Eat nourishing food to prevent nutritional hunger instead of nourishing it. When you feel these hungers, it's almost too late. So if you address them in advance, then they won't have power over you. Neutralize the six hungers and then you'll find yourself eating less, but more importantly, eating more good quality food as well.