What is hunger?

We grow up thinking that hunger is our body’s way of telling us that we need food, but that isn’t usually the case for most of us. Very few of us are so fit, or have so little body fat, or are so active that our bodies start calling for energy if we miss lunch.

We feel hunger when we haven’t eaten for a while. We may feel hunger if the food looks good; or if we are in a social situation in which eating is going on; or because we think it’s time to eat.

We tend to identify a feeling that comes along with eating behavior as the cause of the behavior. But “hungry” only means we are in a situation in which we are used to eating. It doesn’t mean that feeling hungry will make us eat, or, more important, that we have to eat.

 Hunger is a sign that we are used to eating in a particular time or situation. We are not required to answer the signal.

Some of us are familiar with the statement: “We eat too much because we are fat.” Currently, there’s a strong tendency to think of hunger in terms of hormones, emphasizing the body regulates hunger like it regulates body temperature. While there is truth in this concept, thinking like this can lead to confusion because … ultimately, Behavior trumps hormones. The hormonal causation analogy isn’t really all that helpful, because we humans don’t regulate our temperature merely by hormonally means. Our major control of the body’s temperature is behavioral. We put on clothes, and we hide in caves.

It has become popular to focus on an error in the statement: “a calorie is a calorie.” A critique of the energy balance model is: 

             dietary carbohydrate = insulin = +other hormones = increased appetite = greater consumption.

This explanation is limited because it mixes up metabolism with behavior, and implicitly accepts the idea that the effect of macronutrients on one’s body affects how much we choose to eat. Specific macronutrients clearly have different effects on satiety. However, no matter what our hormonal state, if there is NO food, we will not increase consumption. Although we have no choice in our genetics, and the way our metabolism functions is not within our control, our eating Behaviors are ultimately still a matter of personal choice.

It is helpful to figure out what kind of hunger we’re talking about.
Behavioral psychology stresses the difference between “tastes good” and “hunger” which really only means that eating good-tasting food increases the probability that we will eat more of it than the body needs.

No matter what our calorie eating allowance is when we are working toward weight-loss, it seems like bad advice to eat if we aren’t hungry. We frequently hear nutritionists say that “everyone needs to have a good breakfast”. Why we would specifically want to have a “good” anything if we are trying to lose weight is not easy to answer.

Nutritionists say that this is true because this will cause us to eat too much at the next meal ….
 as if, in the morning, we can make a rational decision to eat breakfast in the face of not wanting to eat  but, at noon, we are suddenly under the inexorable influence of urges beyond our control.   It would be more reasonable to add the condition … “if you find that you eat too much at lunch when you don’t eat breakfast…,” Many people have the opposite reaction to eating breakfast -- sometimes food can be more reinforcing than satiating.

Semantics … the words that are used to present a diet concept tend to influence our food choice behaviors. For example, nutritionists like to say that diets are high in fat, but alternatively, say that they are rich in whole grains. Portion Control actually means “don’t eat too much”, but the term is used by nutritionists as though it was a great new scientific principle.

 Hunger is a feeling or a signal. We get to choose how we respond to it.

It’s simple, but not easy.

Christmas Gifts:

To your Enemy: .... Forgiveness
To an Opponent: .... Tolerance
To a Friend: .... your Heart
To All: .... Kindness
To Yourself: ... Respect

There is hope for all.
Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.

My recently adopted 5-month-old kitten, Layla.

What to do during this Holiday Season?

How can we manage to engage in a way of eating that will help lose weight, or keep us from gaining weight?  I, personally, have never found  a workable solution to this problem, but here's some advice that we may, ... or may not, ...  find helpful.

This Holiday Season,
 Stop the Wrist Slaps and Write-Offs

                    By Yoni Freedhoff, M.D.    December  2012.

I've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of people go through the holiday season hoping to manage their weight. I've seen large gains, small gains, the status quo, and even some losses. But one thing's for sure: As far as long-term likelihood of success goes, extremes are bad omens.

In categorizing holiday strategies, there are really only two possible extreme holiday behaviors—the wrist-slappers and the write-offers.

The wrist-slappers are the folks who feel that their own weight management supersedes humanity's cultural and time-immemorial use of food in celebration. Consequently, they spend the bulk of their holidays slapping their wrists rather than enjoying indulgent fare.The write-offers are the folks who decide that celebratory eating trumps thoughtfulness and that holidays represent the carte blanche of caloric indulgence.

The wrist-slappers will often lose weight over the holiday season, while the write-offers often gain substantially. But in the end, both tend to fail at long-term weight management.

Wrist-slappers fail in the long run, because the human condition prevents people from perpetually denying themselves the ability to derive pleasure from food, and without a middle ground, these all-or-nothing people regularly go from strict periods of "nothing" right back to "all." These are the folks who rapidly lose huge amounts of weight and then, often just as rapidly, gain it back again.

Write-offers fail in the long run because the human condition is such that regularly giving oneself inches generally leads to regularly giving oneself miles. What might begin as holiday write-offs more often than not will devolve into vacation write-offs, illness write-offs, times-of-higher-stress write-offs, weekend write-offs, and eventually just all-the-time write-offs.

Given the calories in our indulgent holiday fare, given the role of food in celebration and social gathering, and given the human condition, my experience has taught me that gaining 1 or 2 pounds over last two weeks of the year is par for a thoughtfully navigated course and nothing to be too worried about.

This holiday season, instead of wrist slaps or write offs, why not live a life of thoughtful reduction? No blind restrictions, but also no blind consumptions. Ask yourself whether or not something's worth its calories and how much you need of it to be happily satisfied. Remember, too, that what's worth it on Christmas Eve, might not be worth it on just plain Tuesday, and that the healthiest life you can enjoy over the holidays, when seen through the lens of our shared human condition, ought to include some thoughtful indulgence.

 Yoni Freedhoff, MD, is an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, where he's the founder and medical director of the Bariatric Medical Institute—dedicated to non-surgical weight management since 2004. Dr. Freedhoff's book "Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work" will be published by Simon & Schuster's Free Press in April 2013.