Hunger or Habit
23rd May 2021
The most common reason to give up on a diet or healthy eating habit is the hunger. Changing a diet and having a calorie deficit will make us thing of hunger. We do not like the feeling of hunger and if we don’t want to be hungry, we don’t like the change in our diet.
BUT with a good, well-balanced diet we shouldn’t be hungry. By the way….do you think that every time you feel hungry that is a real hunger? Can you recognise it if the feeling is real hunger or habit?
In the modern society food is available always : at home , fast food outlet, 24 hours supermarket.
We have moved from having 3 meals a day to eating 4 meals and having snack between the means. This is basically constant eating.
The availability of food and the habitual way of eating gives us the ability to distinguish between true hunger and eating for the sake of it.
Many of us find it difficult to tell if we are really hungry or just eating out of habit. We find it also difficult to recognise when we are full.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov-Russian physiologist- experimented with dogs where conditioned the dog to salivate to the sound of a bell. When the bell had rung, the dog was fed. The dog associated the bell with food, started the salivation and expected to receive food.
Pavlov’s experiment show us that eating is a response to certain stimuli and it is an easy habit to get into.
The stimuli can be:
Time of the day
People we are with
Emotional stimulates such as stress or boredom
Some of us see food purely as a fuel, but most of us have some sort of feeling about it. We associate food with reward, comfort, security, pleasure, satisfaction.
Many of us have our favourite comfort food that takes us back to a place where we feel safe and loved. Knowing our emotional relationship with food makes it easier to give the distance to eat differently.
Emotional eating can be tricky. We need to try to resolve the underlying issue whether that is stress, boredom or unhappiness.
We do need to recognise the problem and realise that food isn’t the solution for our issues.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you struggle with emotional eating habits : https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/support-services/helplines
Are you really hungry?
Normally we try to eat only when we are hungry. It sounds simple , but for lots of people it is difficult, because:
They may have forgotten exactly what a hunger stimulus feels like
They may think they are hungry but actual trigger could be something completely different
Practical reason to eat certain time, irrespective of their hunger level.
Stop for a second before you start eating and always ask yourself these questions: “Why do I want to eat? How am I feeling?”
Creating this habit is the first step to take control of your eating habit and recognise the habitual eating. Identifying feelings is the beginning of understanding our body. The next step is to start working on our triggers.
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