Easy Fitness – Hunger Versus Appetite
If people only ate when they were truly hungry.
Except for the tiny fraction of us who actually have glandular problems, we would all be as slim as whippets. Unfortunately, for us and our bellies, we eat for all sorts of reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with hunger.
We eat because we are happy, sad, angry, lonely, worried, nervous, frustrated, tired and bored.
We eat because our brains, like the brains of pigeons, have been shaped by conditioning. Regardless of whether we are hungry, our mothers always made us clean our plates. So to this day our brains command us to clean our entire plate.
We eat to reward ourselves. Whenever we were very good, our parents would buy us an ice-cream. Now every time we think that we deserve a reward, the voice in our head says “Have yourself some ice-cream”.
We eat to punish ourselves. “Look at yourself, you fat hog,” we say in our darkest moments. “You fell off the wagon again by eating that bowl of ice-cream. Might as well finish the whole carton.”
We eat for not particular reason at all. Simply because our mouths and something to put in them happen to find themselves in the same room at the same time.
A Hunger Primer
All of these reasons for eating can be lumped together under the heading Appetite. The should not be, though they often are, confused with hunger. Hunger is pure physiology, the product of various conversations between our brain and our gut.
Researchers still don’t understand exactly how these conversations work, but they do know that your sense of hunger is less a product of an empty stomach than an empty small intestine.
We seem to be designed to eat every 3 to 4 hours, which is about how long it takes your stomach to slice, dice, chop, puree, and liquefy a meal and for your small intestine to absorb it. When there’s nothing left to absorb, receptors in your small intestine put out the call for another delivery. And you get on the phone to the pizza shop.
Of course, we’re simplifying the picture here, but the point is just that there is a physiological thing called hunger.
Hunger , as opposed to appetite, expresses itself in many ways that are easy to recognize. Sometimes people are physically hungry and their stomachs are growling . Other times they have low blood sugar and feel tired or irritable. Sometimes they feel sleepy.
You need to tune in to your body to figure out what your personal hunger signs are, and be able to distinguish them from the vagaries of appetite.
There are many ways hunger gets expressed, and it varies from person to person, but it’s important to learn your body’s clues for hunger, because appetite’s just a desire to eat , and that doesn’t always mean that your body needs calories.
Roberto Garcia (Health & Fitness Specialist)
http://www.newhealthandfitnessdvds.co.uk
Specialist provider of Health and Fitness information and products including Fitness DVDs, Health & Fitness Books and Specialist Health & Fitness Supplements.
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