Hunger Calls

What hunger could be calling forth in your life?

However, before we do get into the emotional aspect of hunger, let’s rewind to when we were babies. When we suddenly came into this colorful world of form as a body.

We don’t know we are this body at the beginning nor what all these physical senses mean, so we just go with the flow. When our body signals the need to poop, we just go; when we want to eat, we cry for food; and when we want to sleep, we sleep.

The mind has not fully developed, so we just naturally follow life’s rhythmic flow, and our parents or caregivers take care of everything else while we get acquainted with our body and its ever-changing needs.

Fast forward to becoming a teenager, where we are in the full-blown emotional body, with a whirlpool of emotions and transitions taking shape. This is the time when our physical form is moving away from childhood and developing into adulthood.

Our desires start to move toward choosing a career, finding love, seeking adventure, and ultimately moving away from parental guidance into a more independent state of being.

This path isn’t always linear for some of us, but if we look at nature, this is the natural progression of life.

This natural progression is what I believe fuels our hunger in a myriad of ways. Let me break down the varying hungers that we find within ourselves daily.

The first and most obvious is:

FOOD HUNGER

Today, we have supermarkets and food coming at us in all directions, in all colors, sizes, and flavors. We are inundated with different food choices, especially if you live in the Western world.

Food is in abundance right now, and part of me wonders if this is a good thing because we are riddled with eating disorders ranging from anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, orthorexia, and more.

We have an obesity epidemic, and this I believe is because our emotional hunger is being suppressed by food, among other things.

Food hunger was one of the first things to develop in us as babies; we needed food to grow, and that was it. We didn’t need it for anything else, and yet we have lost that ability to hear the subtle signals of the body and differentiate between our emotions and our need to refuel.

The drives of life are accelerating, and this constant busyness also disconnects us from the physical body and our ability to listen when we are hungry.

We’ve also dissected hunger into the following categories:

• Physical Hunger – This is when our body signals for food consumption as energy is low, and so we may feel fatigued or shaky if this hunger is not satisfied.
• Practical/Essential Hunger – Because of our busy lifestyles, often we eat out of necessity/time available and not when the body is ready to eat.
• Nutrient Hunger – The body needs certain nutrients to function at an optimal level. If you are craving chocolate, it could be a lack of magnesium that your body is actually after and not the chocolate alone.
• Taste Hunger – This is after tasting certain foods like sweet or salty foods, and we crave that taste once more. Ice cream, chocolate, crisps, or sodas can be some of the common cravings people seek.

All these pangs of hunger are for the functionality of the body, but the one I want to address next is emotional hunger.

EMOTIONAL HUNGER

• Comfort Eating: Life has become very chaotic, and many of us were raised by unconscious parents who were also raised by unconscious parents, so emotional neglect is part of our ancestral past. We crave love, a need to belong, to be held, and to have that connection with others, but sadly, it’s absent from many of our lives, and so food has become a great love substitute.

Chocolate, they say, is better than sex, and an ice cream sundae can soothe the soul like nothing else. These associations with food have become part of the norm in a fast-paced lifestyle with no time to waste in fulfilling the needs of others. We are running toward success and disconnecting from each other, and substitutes are filling the massive void that has opened up in our world of emotional deprivation.

The comfort we seek is to stop and listen to the heart, to the soul, and to reconnect with the self. The divine within us all is not outside of us but within. We must go inside and connect to the inner child we have neglected for years.

• Stress Eating: Work, work, work in all forms and fashions is the modern-day motto of society. We parent, we go to a job to earn money, we study, we clean the house, we run a business. We are a nation of doers, and the clock is always ticking down. The stress of everyday life is pushing us in all directions, and when time is always ticking, we are always running to meet its every counting second of authorship over us. This is when food becomes a necessity to debunk the mind into a numbness of pausing time. It is a complete illusion, but it gives us a conceived escape from this reality. The key to this doing-and-eating mentality is to stop and allow yourself time to pause without food—to take in the stillness of the breath and to count in a way that calms, not flusters, our physical system that is doing its best to keep up.

• Boredom Eating: What an oxymoron, from a hyper-busy world to one of boredom. Yes, even in the busiest of times, we can be bored and need to fill that gray space with food. A nice strawberry cake or a packet of crisps just to spark an endorphin high in the brain and allow us to feel something as opposed to this dull, deadening feeling that life is just passing us by minute by minute.

When we are bored, we have lost the luster in life. We have become a cog in a wheel, just going round and round, and we need some stimuli. The key here is to unlock our imaginations and our curiosity. Even in the grayest of situations, you can use your creativity to change things up. From a boring office job, turn it into a game. How many times can you get your manager to say, “———-?” (fill in the blank). Or if you are stuck on the roads, traveling a lot, how many red cars can you spot? These are just a couple of examples of how to change up your environmental boredom to one of interest and intrigue.

• Reward Eating: Oh, I did such a good job; I now deserve a slice of that carrot cake. We love to reward our efforts, especially if we don’t feel appreciated, and often the high of doing something good can trigger a compulsion toward a food that adds to this good vibe.

As children, many of us were often rewarded by our parents or caregivers with sweet foods for being such good little girls or boys. The key here is presence: be present with those good feelings and let them wash over you. Don’t try to add to them; just relish in the happiness that you are feeling and sense it throughout your body. This can be difficult for some, but with practice, you will start to stop and be still as a reward instead of running to the sweet shop or cupboards for your stashed goodies.

• Social Eating: Yes, eating out is such a cultural thing, and we love to chat over a nice meal with our friends, family, or business associates. It engages us in an activity to keep us occupied and also provides a topic of conversation. We get to try out a new location, we are served food by others, and we feel good, plus it adds to the experience of life.

Social eating isn’t necessarily a bad thing that needs correcting unless you are overindulging while out and it’s become a problem in your life. This is when you would need to restrict yourself and plan for set outings in a way that is safe for you. If you have a fear of food, as many anorexics do, then this place is not a source of enjoyment and you would rather avoid it at all costs, which leads me into the final category.

• Control Eating: This is when we dominate food by controlling it. It gives us a sense of power. We restrict as a way to state we are healthy or in control of our lives and bodily functions. Instead of working in harmony, we are the domineers, and this can be a challenging way to live. It takes up a lot of time and energy when life itself is already time-consuming and energy-depleting.

Again, this sense of control is an illusion, as life is always moving and the body is always changing. You are trying to maintain a certain size and look, which, with age, is going to deplete and eventually die. I am not saying you should just let go in a way that has you consuming everything in sight; instead, it’s all about intuition and learning to eat intuitively as opposed to ritually and rigidly. You are in a relationship with your body, so listen to it and allow it to become your friend, not your foe.

The journey of understanding hunger—both physical and emotional—is complex and multifaceted. By acknowledging the various types of hunger we experience, we can begin to unravel the deeper emotional triggers that often lead us to food for comfort.

Rather than allowing emotional hunger to control us, we can cultivate self-awareness, reconnect with our inner selves, and learn to listen to our bodies. In doing so, we pave the way for a healthier relationship with food, fulfilling our physical and emotional needs with authenticity and balance.