Honoring the Four Types of Hunger as an Intuitive Eater
The concept of eating intuitively supports tuning into your own body’s wisdom for nourishment rather than relying on external sources. One of the ten principles of IE is “honor your hunger”, which involves determining how much, what, why, and when to eat while also considering that hunger has different categories. Hunger involves more than just feeling a physical stomach emptiness; it also includes eating to meet one’s lifestyle, to satisfy a craving, or for different emotions like joy and sadness. There are four basic types of hunger: physical, emotional, practical, and taste. Curious about what these mean? Continue reading to learn more!
The first type of hunger, the one we typically think of, is physical hunger: eating to satisfy a certain body cue that tells us we need fuel. These cues range from subtle to extreme. Some physical sensations of hunger include:
heavy eyes that are harder to focus
dull headache
lightheadedness, and waiting longer may lead to dizziness
dry mouth
salivating
weakened extremities, maybe even cramping
slight stomach emptiness to cramping or nausea, then later growling
overall fatigue
feeling jittery
unsteady hands
losing focus, brain fog, and thinking about food
Earlier signs of hunger include tired eyes, starting to think about food, salivating, and a slight emptiness in your stomach, signaling that you are ready for a snack or to start making a meal. Later signs may involve a headache turning to lightheadedness or dizziness, stomach discomfort followed by growling, losing focus, and an increase in fatigue. Considering the hunger and fullness scale, a range of 1-10, where 1 stands for ravenous and 10 is extremely full, earlier signs of hunger mean someone is at a 3-5 and later signs are 1-3. It’s ideal to shoot for eating when you’re at 3-4/5 rather than waiting for later cues and ignoring the earlier ones. If you have a habit of ignoring your hunger, an active eating disorder or ongoing disordered eating, have a history of dieting, are taking medications that may affect your appetite, have a high caffeine intake, or have a high-stress lifestyle, you may need some support in recognizing your own individual cues and ensure you’re eating at the optimal level of hunger.
The second type of hunger is emotional hunger, and absolutely fits within a healthy relationship with food. Emotions can act in different ways on our hunger sensations: they may enhance a craving for food or decrease the overall enjoyment in food and appetite. For example, the emotion of stress may blunt hunger, or other times increase desire for food. In this specific example, recognizing your actions when you are stressed are helpful to tease apart the difference between physical and emotional hunger, how to listen to your body’s cues, and managing your emotions with kindness rather than food being the main outlet. Some questions to consider whether you’re eating for emotions intuitively rather than it being maladaptive include:
Are you able to still feel your fullness rather than getting too full?
Is bingeing, maybe along with purging and restricting, a present eating disorder behavior?
Did the sensation of hunger come on suddenly with a strong emotion?
Are you able to calm yourself down with tools other than food?
How often are emotions delegating what and how much food you eat?
The third type of hunger is practical hunger. This relates to eating based on the time of day and your schedule to support meeting your nutritional needs. For example, lacking physical hunger cues in eating disorder recovery is very common, so learning to create a routine with eating and trusting that your body needs food to take on daily tasks is an important part of the process. Another example of practical hunger is eating based on your day's schedule, eating when you have time, to reduce the chance of getting to extreme hunger.
The fourth type is taste hunger, and involves wanting food for the sensory enjoyment you'll achieve from it rather than, or in addition to, feeling physically hungry. Taste hunger is absolutely okay to honor and choose to eat because you want to enjoy the flavors. Maybe it's a food you don't have often and another helping will satisfy this. Or maybe you’re at a restaurant having just enjoyed an entree, leaving you physically satisfied, but dessert has arrived and you’re wanting to get a taste of something sweet. Having an understanding of your physical hunger and fullness cues can help with honoring taste hunger while reducing the chance of getting to a level of uncomfortable fullness.
Curious about how to implement the four types of hunger in your own intuitive eating journey? Reach out to us at Enhance Nutrition today for guidance and support each step of the way!