Dr. Smita Mehta, MD

Fighting hunger has taken on a whole different meaning in areas of the world where food and drink is plentiful. 

Of course, there are different kinds of hunger I may experience, such as emotional hunger and spiritual hunger. In this post, I’ll only discuss the kind of raging, ravenous hunger that forces me eat or drink uncontrollably even when I don’t need to eat or drink. I call this “runaway hunger” or “fake hunger”.

How is this fake runaway hunger different from “real hunger”? *Real* hunger is what I feel when I’m so hungry that I’ll eat any food. With real hunger, I’ll be willing to eat even that dreaded vegetable that I normally would prefer to avoid completely. This article is not about “real hunger”. It is instead about the other kinds of hunger that masquerade as an intense need to eat immediately and cause me to continue eating or drinking uncontrollably even when my logical mind orders me to stop. So what makes me eat/drink even when I’m not actually hungry for real sustenance? Here’s a brief overview of the different kinds of runaway, fake hunger:

1. Hormonal hunger: this is primarily due to a rapid insulin spike and is aided and abetted in its attack on me by other hormones such as ghrelin (there are several other hormones/molecules, of course, but this is only a brief introduction to the concept).

2. Habitual hunger: here ghrelin plays a bigger role, with a smaller part of the action by its trusty lieutenant, insulin.

3. Hedonistic hunger: this is caused by the deliberate crippling of the satiety center in my brain by my five senses and may be considered in its initial stage as “sensory” hunger.

4. Sensory hunger: caused by the inevitable contact of the five senses with the seductive world of sensations. As an example, the smell of cinnamon or that of french fries that drags me into the store and into consuming a calorie-bomb I wasn’t even interested in until my nose convinced me I needed to do it.

5. Mechanical hunger: here my stomach is empty, cramping, and out of sheer habit I rush to fill it so it can contentedly gnaw the bone I’ve just thrown it to buy myself some peace from its whiny noises.

All these forms of hunger are very much linked to each other. Every process that causes any of these five uncontrolled hungers is closely interconnected with another process causing a different type of runaway hunger.

What can I do to stop myself in my tracks when fake hunger threatens to overwhelm me? Here are some tips:

1. First, I absolutely need to build a really strong awareness of what exactly it is that I’m actually experiencing. Those of you who’re my patients know how passionately I advocate for mindfulness and meditative practices to build and strengthen the nervous system. These practices subdue the five senses and allow my intuition, the sixth sense, to flourish and start guiding me. The intuition’s guidance is reliable, unlike the wishy-washy impulsivity of the five senses. My personal favorite scientific meditative practices may be found at https://yogananda.org/a-beginners-meditation

In fact, the entire website (www.yogananda.org) is a treasure trove of scientific tips, from the simplest breathing exercises to reduce stress, all the way up to the hugely powerful practice of Kriya Yoga (and there are easy home-study lessons and even a free app to learn to your heart’s content). No matter what your belief system, no matter if you’re an atheist/agnostic, or if you only want to cultivate focus, or up your game in some way, you are sure to find something on the website or in the lessons that will help you in a definable way. The free app is totally awesome (https://yogananda.org/app-faq) — go for it!!

Everything generally becomes much easier and health outcomes improve that much more when we make mindfulness and meditation a cornerstone of our daily lives. Of course, strengthening the nervous system will always deliver a huge impact on managing impulses. I’m especially concerned here with the set of impulses that force me to eat or drink. So, my practice of meditative techniques becomes ever more useful in fighting hunger as time goes on. In my mind, there is no other investment of just a few minutes twice daily that delivers so much bang for my buck. I’ll circle back later to provide a link to a recent talk about the immense power of the mind in losing fat, and how to use a scientific affirmation to jumpstart the fat loss process. As the mind and the nervous system become stronger, my sense of self-worth increases and becomes my ally in fighting fake hunger, so there’s a double advantage from the get-go. Next, let’s discuss some tips to subdue hormonal hunger:

2. Sweet-tasting substances make my insulin level spike and the resulting lower blood sugar drives me to eat. This can be my mouthwash, baked goods, or an artificial sweetener that doesn’t even have calories. Artificial sweeteners are several orders of magnitude (aka exponentially) sweeter than even sugar. Needless to say, they compel me to feel several orders of magnitude more hungry than I do when I eat sugar in any form, despite them being “zero-calorie”. Avoiding sweet tastes and side-stepping anything sweet will thus help prevent any desire to eat from spiraling out of my control.

3. This ties in with mechanical hunger in a way all of us see daily. The stomach empties itself far more quickly when it is fed cold food/liquids. When I consume hot (temperature-wise) food, it stays in the stomach longer. So when I have a cold beverage with my meal, and my drink also happens to be sweet, I become ravenously hungry and stay that way despite having had a meal — *because* of the meal! This is why cutting out all cold and sweet-tasting beverages helps me shed fat so rapidly, regardless of the calorie content of the drink.

4. Mechanical hunger and habitual hunger are related in that they are due to an empty stomach cramping, and ghrelin is implicated here. Ghrelin is generally produced at the same time that I ate the previous day. So if I eat at noon today, around this time tomorrow, my body will start producing ghrelin which causes the “ghrelin growlies” so many of you hear me mention. Insulin production also steps up a bit to lower my blood sugar (glucose) and the combination of these two hormonal actions reminds me it’s time to eat. This is how the habit of eating at the same time is set in motion. So what can I do to overcome this double sneak-attack by my own gut hormones? I could, for example, fool my stomach by somehow distending it. The stretch receptors will send a signal that I’m full, and I have just bought myself some time and can reset my “ghrelin-growly” time for tomorrow. To distend my stomach, I can drink plain water, warm broth, plain seltzer water (unflavored soda), or even have some psyllium husk, that great soluble fiber that becomes a gel in my stomach and fools it into thinking it has been fed. These tricks help me to shift my mealtime to one that I prefer, rather than being jerked around by my body into habitually jumping up and obeying its commands whenever it demands to be fed.

5. All these kinds of fake hunger can be subdued by doing a couple of minutes of high intensity interval exercises (aka HIIT exercise). I’ll discuss this form of exercise in a future post. It helps hugely with all kinds of hunger, both fake and real.

6. Hedonistic hunger is what I experience when I can’t stop eating an entire sleeve of cookies, despite my really, really wanting to stop. It’s the same mechanism as the frenzied rat wanting its dopamine fix even at the cost of losing sleep. The more I indulge in the hedonistic activity, the deeper ingrained it becomes into my brain’s pathways, and eventually, the habit becomes that much harder to quit. The phenomenon of neuroplasticity (brain remodeling) is what I’ll need to overcome this, and again, scientific yoga meditation as taught in the Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India’s home-study lessons is super helpful. Feel free to use what you need and what appeals to you, and tuck away for later reflection what doesn’t speak to you immediately. But do give it a try for a few weeks, to get started. It’s very helpful for all sorts of addictive behaviors, not just the ones related to eating and drinking.

7. Sensory hunger leads to hedonistic behaviors.  Paying attention to the texture of food/drink and carefully avoiding smoothness in food helps immeasurably. If I have a food item that has a silky-smooth texture, I could probably go on sipping/licking/eating it for a long time without being able to stop. The moment I introduce some interesting texture such as seeds, grains, or nuts (avoid your allergens, please!) — the taste buds on my tongue start to calm down and not bug me so much and this allows me to finally put that smoothie cup down. Ice creams often have very little of ingredients that may alter their smooth texture and therefore my tongue keeps “searching” for texture, increasing my intake. This seeking behavior of the tongue is easily suppressed by adding texture to food.

8. It’s difficult for me to eat fat by itself, or plain sugar by itself. When fat and sugar are combined, especially in a certain ratio, the two together induce hedonistic hunger. This explains the seeming magic of creamy food, certain baked goods, and even potato chips in inducing ravenous hunger (even though there is no “sugar”, potato chips behave as a simple carb and additionally have melt-in-mouth characteristics). The same goes for bread — even though the label on the loaf may say “100% whole grains” I need to keep reminding myself that it should read “100% whole grains once upon a time”. Now it’s made from a “100% smooth powdered flour” and I can be 100% sure there are no actual grains left in it’s current form. 

9. One last note about sensory hunger. If I’m having something that my tongue expects to be sweet, and it has a definite taste of salt in it, I’ll be unable to easily stop myself from eating it because my taste buds continue to search for sweetness. The same thing happens when I’m having what I expect to be salty food. If the salty taste is inadequate for my taste buds, I’ll have more of it as my taste buds keep searching for the saltiness. That’s why salted peanuts may have very little sodium added, whereas chocolate milk may contain more sodium than an ounce of cheese. This unexpectedly less or unexpectedly more of the opposite taste Is meant to make me consume more of the product by forcing my taste buds into seeking behaviors. And I need to remember that the buds in taste buds are not my buddies, nor will they ever be.

10. Making the tongue to repeatedly taste whatever I want to cultivate a taste for will train the taste buds to eventually like it. You’ve heard me compare my taste buds to a bunch of whiny toddlers. In fact, all the five senses are a bunch of relentlessly screaming two year-olds who make demands on me all day long. And that’s exactly why I need to sleep daily, because that’s the only time I get a break from their demands, likes, and dislikes (meditation is a form of deep rest where I get a break from my five senses without having to go to bed).

11. A good night’s sleep will suppress my appetite. The caffeine in my beverage will keep me up at night and make me eat more the next day (or even during the night).  I’ll post more soon about the rested body eating less, and the importance of being vigilant about hidden stimulants in commercial processed foods. 

12. Again, a scientific meditative practice helps rest the mind and body and really, really helps me subdue my senses, as do affirmations performed in a certain methodical way. The link I promised earlier is  below. It’s a free talk, but may need you to do a simple one-step registration. It’s worth it (and so are you!):

Lastly, I want to thank all of you who’ve expressed your appreciation for my efforts to help you in different ways, including this blog. I request you again to please NOT click on any of the advertisements that have started popping up in this blog. They’re not my doing. This blog is purely a public service for anyone interested in being healthier and happier. If you’d like to reciprocate, as so many of you have requested me, please consider a freewill donation to a wonderful charity: SRF Greenfield. The website is https://srfgreenfield.org

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