The 6 Human Hungers Driving Your Food Choices | Eric Edmeades

Have you ever wondered why you eat? Okay, look at a core reason. You eat because you have nutritional requirements, right? You eat because your body needs things, it needs energy, it needs building blocks. That's sort of why you eat. But have you ever really wondered why you eat what you eat? That's a fascinating conversation. Because once you begin to understand why you make your food decisions the way you do, you begin to take a step toward food freedom. And by food freedom, what I mean is eating what you want, when you want as much as you want, in a functional and healthy way. And we have determined, having helped thousands of people in over 20 countries around the world change the relationship with food, that there are six primary hungers that drive the eating decision. And when you begin to understand what those six hungers are, when they come up, you know what to do about them. And sometimes eating isn't the thing to do about them. I'll give you a perfect example. Thirst. Thirst is one of the six hungers. That may sound a little bit odd to you, but bear with me, the reason that thirst is one of the six hungers is that for the vast majority of our ancestors history, they didn't have pottery and they didn't have sports bottles to walk around with. So that meant that they weren't able to carry water. And so a lot of the water, a lot of the hydration that our ancestors got came from the food they ate. They ate a huge amount of water based foods. And so here's the challenge. What that created is a communication system within the human body that says that when you begin to start to feel a little dehydrated, the body knows that one of the best sources for water is water based foods. So it sends a message that says, I'm hungry, eat something. But what it's really saying is, go get me some hydration. The challenge is that it's lost in translation. And so now what happens is you go, alright, I'm hungry, eat something. And maybe what do you go eat? Maybe a bag of chips. How much water is there in that? Not so much. And so your body's like, dude, did you not hear the message? We need some water, go and eat something. And so maybe you eat the next thing and then you eat the next thing. And so thirst, when you begin to recognize that it shows up as hunger, is incredibly powerful because all you really need to do is stay hydrated. And by hydrated what I mean is drinking water, you know, drinking coffee and coke and that kind of stuff is not going to keep you hydrated. It means drinking water. And when you handle that one hunger, about 16 of your motivation to eat will go away. A huge number of the food decisions that people make are about emotions to change the way they feel. Look, I want you to really think about something. Do you have some foods that if you're feeling really down, that you really want to go to those foods, or do you have some foods that when you're really up and you're wanting to celebrate, that you want to go to those foods? How did that happen? How did that get created? How did those linkages happen? I want to tell you, it was like a Pavlovian's dog response. And ultimately what happened is that you were having peak emotional states, up or down, and then you were given those foods during those times, and now you've linked them up. And so sometimes when you're feeling a little low, maybe a little lonely, a little on your own, wouldn't chocolate help? But when you begin to recognize that pattern, you can start to notice that there are certain emotions that if you deal with those emotions functionally, you won't need to deal with them through food. Another one is variety. Variety is a very important need from a human perspective because, you know, our ancestors would often be faced with the situation where one type of food was in regular abundance, but in order to get all of the nutritional needs met, they would kind of need to get bored of that one food and be driven to go get another one. A great example would be if there's a lot of plant based foods around and they're just lying around, well, you just eat them. Why would you risk your life and go hunting when all this food is lying around? Unless, of course, a powerful drive came in for variety for something different. The challenge is that that drive, which once served our species so very well, is now in overwhelm because we can have variety not even on a daily basis, but on a meal by meal basis. And not even on a meal by meal basis. We can have variety in one meal. We can have five or six different types of food on the plate at the same time. And so our need for variety is causing all kinds of challenges. Because what we really need to recognize is that we don't need nearly as much variety as we get currently. What we do need to do is make sure we're getting a variety of the right healthy foods coming in. And then have you ever had that feeling, you know, 2 o', clock, 3 o', clock, 4 o' clock in the afternoon, where you start to flag a little you get a little tired, maybe you're yawning a bit, your eyes feel a bit heavy. Well, guess what's going on. Low blood sugar. Humans have two primary energy sources. One is fat and one is sugar. And when you have your body predominantly burning sugar, what's going to happen is that you're going to have ups and downs of your energy. When somebody trains their body to predominantly burn fat, then they have this steady, slow burn. They can run for ages and ages. That's why you now have these people, ultra marathoners, who can run multiple marathons in a day. When the prevailing wisdom of the old used to be that you'd hit the wall at 17 miles and you had to be so tough and use your willpower to get through that. That's because low blood sugar kicks in. And so the problem is, the minute somebody starts to feel low blood sugar, they want to go out and eat something with what? With high sugar, with a high GI count, they want to go eat something with sugar in. It gives them a craving for carbs. And so when you begin to recognize that you can change your metabolism and get yourself to a place where you have a steady form of energy, then you'll eliminate a huge reason for snacking and a huge reason for eating dysfunctional foods. Have you ever felt empty? You know, your stomach's growling a little and you want to fill up. What I want to tell you is that's actually not a form of hunger at all. That is simply a physical sensation. Your stomach is empty, and you feel more comfortable with food in your stomach. The challenge is, is that most people in the developed world today are constantly starving. What I mean is, is that they're eating a lot of food, but the food is so low on nutrition that they are actually feeling like they're starving. And the problem is that then when their stomach is empty while they're starving, those things get linked up and become incredibly powerful. And. And so now when somebody's stomach is empty, they feel like they have to fill it. Absolutely not the case. Your stomach, in normal condition is about the size of your fist. Go ahead, make a fist and take a look. How much food do you think it takes to fill that up? And your stomach is like a transformer. It's designed to be able to expand into a large sack for times of serious opportunity. Suddenly there's fruit on all the trees. You need to be able to eat a lot of it because it won't be there tomorrow. Or your clan has suddenly been very successful and had a great hunt. Or, well, without refrigeration, we gotta eat as much of the meat as we can right now. And so then the stomach can expand. But the problem in the developed world is that most of us, our stomachs are expanded like that all the time. And so then when it feels empty, it takes so much more food to fill it. When we begin to recognize that an empty stomach is simply a sensation and not an indication of hunger at all, we can really begin to make some change. And then we can deal with the only true hunger, nutritional hunger. The rest of them are illusionary. Nutritional hunger is the only real hunger. And the problem is that it's not very clear. You see, it's not very clear because our ancestors didn't have a grocery store to go to. So, in other words, Mother Nature ultimately drove what was nutritionally available. And so as the body said, wow, I need this vitamin, I need this mineral, I need these fats, I need these proteins. The body didn't say, well, go and get this brand. It said, eat something. Because if you simply did that every day, if you simply ate what was available around you in nature every day over the course of the year, you would get your nutritional needs met. The challenge we have today is that most of us are not getting our core nutritional needs met. And so we are walking around with a permanent state as a permanent feeling of hunger. The simplest way to neutralize this one is to make sure that you follow one of our very, very core principles at Wildfit, and that is that your health is far more determined by you getting enough of the good stuff than it is even by you eliminating the bad stuff. If you focus on, on getting enough of the plants that you need to be eating enough of the healthy proteins that you need to be eating enough of the hydration and water that you need, if you focus on that, then you're going to reduce your nutritional hunger dramatically. And then all of a sudden, you're going to have a great deal more power to deal with emotional hunger when it comes up and to deal. And you won't have the low blood sugar issues. By getting your nutritional needs met, you'll change your relationship with food forever. And by understanding all these hungers and paying attention to them, by slowing time down and asking yourself, really, really, why are you eating this thing? You can make some change. Spend three months with us. If you spend three months with us, we'll take you through a process where we incrementally change your nutritional relationship, your food, your relationship with food, and your psychology over a steady period of time so that over time, your relationship will be changed permanently. This is not a situation where you're going to go on a program and get short term results and then boomerang back. This is how we will change your health trajectory forever, Sam.