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Diet and Nutrition

How does a normal person know they are hungry

09/23/2009

Question:

I have been overweight for all my life, more than 50 years. I have tried every diet, program, lifestyle change, etc., in the book, literally, and not just fad diets either - diets and programs and comprehensive lifestyle changes at major medical centers directed by teams of nutritionists and behavior modification people and doctors and nurses, etc., etc. I am still overweight.

My problem is that I FEEL hungry when my scientifically calculated schedule says I am not hungry, cannot be hungry, should not be hungry, must not be hungry, must be imagining that I am hungry or mistaking another emotion for hunger, etc. So I want to know is: how do normal people FEEL when they are hungry? I don`t mean after spending 2 weeks adrift on a lifeboat. I mean, normally, three times a day, how does a normal person FEEL that tells them how much to eat to satisfy their hunger?

Answer:

Thanks for your question.  I am sorry to hear you've struggled with being overweight all your life and have not had success controlling your hunger and/or appetite.

As all of us are different, it's difficult to define what is hunger for a 'normal' person.  For most people, it is the uncomfortable feeling, lack of energy or pain caused by a prolonged lack of food.  Most people would correlate hunger with their stomach growling, feeling fatigued and having a poor attention span.  Many experts define hunger as being more physiologic and appetite being more psychologic.  Both are related to a desire to eat, but appetite also takes into account the psychological experience of food such as sight, smell, memory, etc.

How much we eat or how hungry we are may be based on habit.  Our stomachs do stretch when we overeat, so if you've been a big eater all your life, you may tend to feel hungrier despite eating a 'normal' portion of food.  In a sense, you have to train yourself to be satisfied with less food and ignore the feeling of hunger in order to lose weight.

The article below may shed some light on what happens when we overeat.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112102938.html

Best of luck.

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Response by:

University of Cincinnati Lisa Cicciarello Andrews, MEd, RD, LD
Adjunct Faculty
University of Cincinnati
Lisa Cicciarello Andrews, MEd, RD, LD