Let’s face it. Very few people in our society use food strictly as fuel for their daily activities. We eat for flavors. We eat for entertainment. We eat to alleviate boredom, fatigue, excitement or heartache. We eat to be part of a social event. We eat because advertisers spend millions of dollars seducing us into equating their food products with happiness, sex, excitement and other wonderful things. It’s no wonder that we use food to soothe and satisfy a vast array of human needs – we hunger and crave lots of things that are not food.

Hunger is an incredibly complex phenomenon that we experience in many areas of our lives. We hunger in our relationships if our emotional needs are not being met. We hunger for physical energy or for sensory stimuli if we are bored and in need of entertainment. A craving or hunger for food is not always a physical need for caloric intake brought on by low blood sugar.

To get to the root of your hunger try this quick exercise. Pause for a few minutes before you eat and think about how you know you are hungry. Write down everything you are feeling at that moment to help give you clues to what you are really hungry for. Then, brainstorm non-food related activities that deal directly with what you are feeling. For example, if you if want to eat because you’re tired, consider taking a nap. If you’re eating because you’re lonely, call a friend. If you’re eating because you’re stressed, take a bath or try some relaxation techniques.

To lose weight, we must eat less. However, if the focus is shifted away from food restriction towards getting to know our hunger cues and our real reasons for seeking food, eating less slowly becomes more natural and much easier to handle.

An article recently published on BBC News discussed studies completed by the British Nutrition Foundation, which suggested that foods high in water help us to continue feeling full for longer. The theory suggests that when water or liquid is a key component of a meal, such as in dishes like soups, stews and rice, the food empties more slowly from the stomach than when compared with solid foods that are consumed with a glass of water, for example. As a result, these types of foods with high water content seem to keep us feeling full for longer, and help us to avoid over eating.

To read the full article, News.bbc.co.uk or Nutrition.org.uk.

An important step towards starting to get control over your eating habits, food intake and weight loss is being able to differentiate between having cravings and experiencing hunger.

When your body needs nutrients to keep going and for energy you experience hunger. You will typically experience some sort of physical cue as a signal that you are running low on “fuel”. You may experience drowsiness, headaches or a lightheaded feeling. Feeling irritable or having a short attention span can also be caused by hunger.

Basically your body is trying to tell you that you need to recharge with food and healthy nutrients to keep it going.

A craving, however, is more of a desire for a specific food or taste. When you feel like you need to have something to feel better or you won’t be satisfied until you have it, it more often that not is a craving. Cravings are most often created by emotional needs as well; you have a bad day- eating chocolate perks you up, you have a good day- eating chocolate is your reward, your having a normal day- eating chocolate will make it better!

Cravings are also almost always for foods that are really not that good for you but satisfy that naughty “sweet tooth” or “carb tooth” you are harbouring in your mouth.

It’s a reward-like result when you satisfy that craving, but almost always results in feelings of guilt or disappointment for having caved in.

So how do we start telling the difference between actual hunger and those demanding cravings?

Start by trying to have nutritionally balanced meals when you start to feel hunger, or a need to eat. Eat slowly so you recognize when your stomach is sending your brain those “I’m full” signals earlier and before you have over eaten and get that uncomfortable stuffed feeling. By eating a balanced meal you will be satisfying all of your body’s nutritional needs. Having met these needs you will start to experience less cravings.

Start cutting down on your craving snacks or indulgences. When you have let yourself cave into that sugar tooth, for example, your body eventually becomes adjusted to consuming higher amounts of sugar. If you stop indulging it you start to experience strong urges to eat anything sweet in order to fight off the sugar “withdrawal”. You can also try eating healthier sweet alternatives to satiate those needs by eating fruits, blueberries, etc. By cutting back and eventually eliminating them all together you will re-educate your body and start to have fewer cravings.

Ever thought it’d be possible to “crave” cherry tomatoes instead of cookies? It is! That’s why I brought some for lunch today J

~Rian