Understanding Hunger Cues
There are many different reasons why people eat. The most obvious one is physical hunger, and the fact we need food to survive.
However, people often eat out of boredom, sadness, when celebrating, and so on.
Your body sends hunger cues and signals that can guide you to eat foods that the body needs in the right quantities, and understanding those hunger cues can help you decide when and how much to eat.
It can also help you be more mindful of what you eat, when, and how much, which will help you avoid overeating.
I’m dedicating a post to help you better understand hunger cues, recognize them, and fix them when necessary.
Understanding Hunger Cues
What Are Hunger Cues
Hunger cues are, simply put, cues that our body gives us to lets us know we need to eat something.
The way we get those cues is by hunger hormones: ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin sends a signal to our brain when our stomach is empty. Then, when we eat some food, leptin sends a signal that we can stop eating.
Some hunger cues you can pay attention to are:
An empty, growling stomach
Dizziness
Headache
Lower energy levels
These signals can help us see if we need to eat something.
They can also help us realize if we’re actually hungry, or if we want to eat out of boredom, or because we’re at a celebration and they’re a cake in front of us.
How To Recognize Hunger Cues
Ask yourself questions
The main way to recognize hunger cues is by paying attention to your desire to eat. Why do you desire food at that specific moment? Do you actually have feelings of hunger, or is there another reason why you’re reaching for food?
Ask yourself those questions when you want to grab some food.
How am I feeling right now? Am I sad, stressed, or happy?
Do I actually feel the hunger in my stomach, or am I just bored?
Am I actually hungry, or do I just want to eat because I’m at a celebration and others are eating?
Intuitive eating
To help implement the previous tip, you can practice intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is basically listening to your body, and eating only when your body gives you cues that you need food. That also means stopping when you feel full, and not when you eat everything off of your plate.
Oftentimes, we automatically want to finish everything on our plate, without even realizing we might have felt full after half of the plate.
That’s why we need to pay attention to hunger and fullness cues.
How To Fix Hunger Cues
Exercise More
Exercising isn’t only great for your physical health and overall health, but it can also help you understand your hunger cues better.
By exercising, you’re improving your metabolism, and that helps recognize your hunger cues effectively.
Drink Water Regularly
While our hunger cues may seem very obvious to us, they aren’t always that obvious. For example, when you’re dehydrated, your body sometimes confuses that with hunger, and it can send you misleading hunger cues.
So to avoid that, drink water regularly, so your body is never dehydrated (and you should do that not only to fix hunger cues, but because your body needs water).
Think About Portion Sizes
As mentioned above, people often tend to eat everything that’s on their plate. If you’re watching TV while eating for example, you’re not even stopping to see if you’re full - you just keep eating until you finish everything.
While that’s not a bad thing if you actually needed that amount, it’s important to give yourself time to see when you’re full.
To help with that, you can put smaller portions of food on your plate at first. Then, when you eat that, stop and think - do I need more? Am I still truly hungry? If the answer is yes, eat more. However, oftentimes when you stop to think about it, you’ll realize you don’t actually need more. It helps to take a break in-between refilling your plate - taking a break for a few minutes helps your body see if it actually needs more.