162. Understanding The Different Types of Hunger

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 162 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, understanding the different types of hunger. Have you ever felt hungry? I know, stupid question. Of course, you have. We’ve all felt hungry. We all know exactly what hunger feels like. But did you know that not all hunger is quote unquote, real hunger?

Sometimes what you think is real hunger is just a mental or emotional response to your current situation. Stress, boredom, even certain social situations can cause you to feel the need to eat. But are you experiencing real hunger in those situations. So today, I’m going to break it all down for you and help you understand that there are different types of hunger so that you can take back control of how often and how much you eat. Because understanding the different types of hunger is key to you being able to lose weight and keep it off for good.

But first, if you’ve ever tried to lose weight in the past, then you probably know that most diets fail. They fail because diets are looked at as a temporary change in behavior. Even the saying I’m going on a diet implies that at some point in time, you’re going to be going off that diet, right? Diets are marketed to you as a short-term solution to get the weight off.

And then there’s this promise that you can kind of go back to doing what you’re doing before. This is a bunch of BS, and it just never ever works. Okay. In my coaching program, we do things differently. Instead of focusing on a diet, we focus on breaking old habits, and creating healthy new ones, you’ll learn exactly how to make healthy choices that can become your new way of life. Stop going on a diet and start making sustainable changes to your lifestyle.

If you want to learn more about this, you will learn exactly how to do this, you want some help with this. Just go to runningleancoaching.com/apply Learn more on apply for coaching that’s runningleancoaching.com/apply. I hope to see you in the Running Lean coaching project.

Okay, so let’s talk about this. Understanding the different types of hunger. why I’m bringing this up today is because I think there’s some misconceptions out there about what it means to be hungry. I talk to people every single day, who struggle sometimes with eating, and it feels very out of control. It feels very automatic. Like they don’t have control over their eating because they they’re feeling hungry. And they’ll tell me this all the time.

They say, well, you know, I was hungry, so I had to eat something. And I always challenge that with people, I always ask them, you know what was going on right before that? Why did they make that decision? Why did they feel like they were out of out of control in that moment, like what was going on around that?

And a lot of times we can get to kind of the root of why they were feeling hungry in that moment, or whether it was actual hunger or not real hunger versus these other types of hunger that I’m talking about today. This is important because you have to get good at differentiating these different types of hunger. You got to get good at this because you most likely need to change your relationship with.

If you’re like most people in the Western world, you have been conditioned over most of your life, to eat a lot and eat often during the day. And this is due to all kinds of situations and different reasons. And it’s different for different people. But for the most part, there’s like emotional reasons why we eat there’s social situations, situations where we eat, there’s peer pressure while we’re there, stress and that’s why we eat.

So, there’s a lot of conditioned eating that’s been going on in our lives, especially here in the United States, right? So, if you’re the kind of person that has just conditioned yourself to eat every time you feel this little urge this little nudge this little bit of hunger, then changing that is going to help you completely change your relationship with food. If you’re somebody that’s had a hard time losing weight in the past, it could be because your hunger signals are messing with you.

And you need to get good at understanding these different types of hunger so that you can start changing that whole way that you think and feel about food and nutrition and diet and all that stuff. Okay? So, instead of eating just because you feel hungry, every time you feel hungry, you need to understand that there are different types of hunger and there’s like a real hunger and then there’s like, kind of false hunger, right?

And there’s these times when, you know, we feel like we need to eat something, but it’s really just an automatic kind of learned behavior, right? And so this is like being on autopilot, when you just find yourself reaching for food and eating it sort of unconsciously, you got to change this autopilot behavior if you want to lose weight, and if you want to be able to keep it off for good.

So, it doesn’t matter so much what you do in the short term, days, weeks, months, but over the long term for years is what makes the biggest difference. And to learn the difference between real hunger and what’s you know, like false hunger, then this is going to go so far in you being able to sustain a healthy lifestyle to sustain a healthy relationship with food. Hunger is rarely ever an emergency.

We, human beings, we can go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. This is like the rule of threes. You learn this in like boy scouts or whatever, three weeks without food. So, for us here in the Western world, we eat every single day. The fact that you could literally go three weeks without food and be fine. This means that hunger for us is almost never ever an emergency. Just think about that for a minute. Okay?

I’m not saying you should go three weeks without, let’s make that very clear. In fact, I think there’s some benefit to some extended fasting, maybe for one to three days or something like that. But you know, beyond that, it’s really not necessary. I’ve done a three day fast in the past, and I never felt like I was going to die. I didn’t feel terrible.

I never felt like I was it was an emergency situation. I was thinking about food a bit towards the end. And that first meal when I broke my fast was pretty amazing. But I don’t think it’s necessary to go three days or four days or five days or three weeks without food. But what if you didn’t treat every time you got hungry as an emergency? How would that change your whole relationship with food?

Most people cannot go a few hours without food because they feel like they’re going to die. And your brain is probably telling you in those moments that if we don’t need something right now we’re going to, you know, a murder somebody or die. And a lot of this has to do with the diet that people are eating the types of foods they’re eating, change the way certain hormones get expressed.

So processed foods, highly refined carbs, tons of sugar, this is going to really mess up your hunger signals. These foods are not satiating. In fact, they do the opposite. They make you feel really hungry all day long. Those foods high in refined carbs and sugars will suppress your satiating hormone like leptin, and they increase your hunger hormone ghrelin, which makes you feel more hungry, not feel satisfied with the food that you’re eating.

And so this is what kind of ramps up those hunger signals. That’s why eating a very high carbohydrate or a very high sugar diet is really hard to lose weight that way because you are super hungry all the time. So, if you get off of those types of foods and just start eating whole foods, more, you know protein, more fat and get off the sugars, then you’re going to do yourself a big favor and that’s going to go a long way in sort of resetting your, your hunger hormones and your satiety hormones back to baseline.

Okay, so that in itself is going to help you a lot. But just because you feel hungry does not mean that it’s an emergency. You don’t have to eat something. We look at hunger as a sign thing that we have to eat right now.

But what if you could just like be a little hungry for a couple of hours, or even like, a few minutes. Sometimes we can’t even go a few minutes; when we feel hungry, we just have to do something about it right away. But listen, when you get good at this, when you start to understand that there are different types of hunger, and you can really tell the difference between ‘Do I really need something right now? Or is this just like me being bored, you know?’. Then this is a game changer for you.

Because you no longer feel this urgent need to eat all the time, you’re no longer eating out of habit and doesn’t feel out of control anymore. You’re not eating because of emotions, or social cues, you’re back in control, and you’re eating like a healthy human being should. Okay, so let’s look at the different types of hunger. So you can start to recognize, you know, what each of these looks like, I think you’ve probably experienced all of these I think we all have.

And something I need to say here, everyone’s a little bit different. And for each of these different types of hunger, you know, we’re all going to experience these a little bit different. And there’s also some crossover here.

So sometimes you might be actually hungry, and you’re in a social situation, and you’re wanting a reward. So just understand that sometimes there’s a little bit of a crossover here, and that’s okay. But just start tuning in to your own body, your own thoughts, your own feelings. So you understand this whole picture and how it relates to you. And your goals. If you’re somebody that wants to lose weight, and you want to be able to keep it off, then understanding this is going to be super key for you to be successful with that. Okay.

So the first one I want to talk about is one that I’m calling withdrawal hunger. So withdrawal hunger is something that most people experience when they start to get off of certain types of foods, usually sugar. So when you cut out sugar, let’s say you just decide you’re going to stop eating sugar, your brain is going to miss the dopamine and all the you know all the oxytocin and the serotonin, all the good feeling hormones that you get when you eat these highly refined carbohydrates like sugar, your brain is going to miss that.
And so this is going to feel pretty terrible at first because your body has become kind of, you know, accustomed to eating sugar. And if you just stop eating sugar, you’re going to experience some withdrawal symptoms, okay? One of those things is like physical hunger. Right? So this is going to happen, when you get off foods that are high in sugar and carbs, especially the ultra processed and ultra refined carbs, you’re going to feel some withdrawal hunger, okay.

This usually just lasts a few days, maybe three to five days or something like that, until your hunger hormones start to calm down, the ghrelin starts to kind of normalize. But then something else kind of happens, it becomes more psychological in nature. So you’re going to still experience some of this, this hunger, you’ve probably gotten over the physical withdrawal, maybe after the first five to seven days.

But now there’s this like mental and emotional withdrawal that’s happening. So your brain is like, oh, yeah, like our body is fine. But our brain is like, oh, man, where’s that dopamine we used to get, you know? And so this kind of feels like real hunger, but it isn’t, okay. It’s just an imbalance of hormones. Again, it’s like ghrelin and leptin going crazy.

And this is kind of to be expected when you cut out those junk foods when you cut out all the sugars. And maybe you start out on a little bit of a lower carb way of eating. You’re going to experience some of this withdrawal, hunger, okay? Kind of feels like real hunger, but it’s really not. It’s just a withdrawal from sugar, all right?

So understand that you really don’t have to do much about that. Just understand that this is going to be part of the process. When I talk about embracing the suck of changing your diet. This is one of the things that we have to deal with. Okay, you’re gonna have some withdrawal symptoms, but you can get through it.

Alright, the second type of hunger is something you use, you’re going to know this one. This is a craving or an urge for something specific and you know that this is a craving or an urge because you are craving a certain specific food and maybe pizza or french fries or ice cream or like warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven.

Like when you get yourself thinking about something like that. That’s a craving. Now, this is going to kind of start to create maybe some of that, you know, rumbling in your stomach and you’re going to be like, oh, I’m really hungry. I have to eat pizza right now. But you don’t have to eat pizza right now. It’s just something that you’re kind of mentally creating, you’re creating this, this desire in your mind for this specific food.

Here’s an example of this just this morning, totally out of the blue. I’m like in the shower. You know, and I just had this craving for pizza. And I’m just like, what the hell? This is like for a very specific type of pizza from a place here in Cincinnati called Dewey’s pizza, amazing pizza, by the way, and there’s a specific pizza there called the Don Corleone, red sauce, mozzarella, cheese, pepperoni, salami, ham, oregano, it’s oh, my God is like so amazing.

I had to look it up here just to kind of see is that the right name for it, and there’s a picture of it there. And that even increased my craving even more. But just out of the blue, I have this craving for this pizza. And this is not real hunger. This is like I’m recording this in the morning, I’m not hungry. I just got back from a run, I’m really not even feeling hungry right now. I’m not going to go and eat pizza, you know, in the morning here.

But this is just something that came to me as a thought: it was a mental craving, it’s a mental urge to go and eat some pizza. So urges and cravings, they kind of come on fast, they come on pretty quickly. It’s just like I experienced this morning standing in the shower, it’s like out of the blue, I have this thought, wouldn’t pizza be good right now?

And then they kind of leave just as fast, they don’t really stick around for very long, it’s just a thought that you have maybe creates that desire inside of you, but then it goes away. So just give it a few minutes. And usually that will go away. Okay, but if you’re having a specific craving or urge for a specific type of food, whether it’s ice cream, or you know, french fries or whatever, just know that not real hunger, and you don’t have to do anything about that. Okay, just let it go. Get back to what you were doing. Give it a few minutes, and chances are, it’s going to go away pretty quickly. Okay.

Now, another type of hunger. And this is a big one. This is one that we all can relate to. I’m sure this is called reward hunger or emotional hunger. And this is where we want to eat some food to feel better. So typically, this is in response to some emotional state that we’re in usually some kind of negative emotional state that we’re in, we might be feeling bored, or anxious, or tired, or lonely or stressed out. And you know what we want to do we want to go eat something because we know that if we eat something, we’re going to feel better.

We don’t have to feel as much of that stress or anger if we just eat something and kind of numb ourselves a little bit. And what do you go for when you’re looking for a reward? When you’re looking to solve that emotional problem, you don’t go for like some raw broccoli, I’m guessing you go for those highly refined carbohydrates. You want the pizza, you want the french fries, you want the cookies, the Oreos, the ice cream, the candy, right?

People don’t emotionally eat raw vegetables, typically, okay. So you’re looking for a reward, you want that dopamine hit, you’re looking for something to make you feel better. Your brain is doing what it does, naturally, which is seeking pleasure. And avoiding pain, the pain that you’re perceiving is this emotional state that you’re in, I’m stressed out about work, I’m bored here sitting at home working. really angry about the situation or whatever negative emotion it is.

And you just want to find something pleasurable to kind of replace that. This is not real hunger. This is one that you have got to get good at recognizing because we all do this. And it feels very automatic. It feels like you’re not in control. It feels like you just go to the fridge and you just start eating stuff and you don’t even think about it. You know, or you grab a bag of potato chips. And before you know it you’re like how did how to eat this whole bag of potato chips? I didn’t even realize I was doing this.

So reward, hunger, reward or emotional hunger is one of those things where you have to understand what’s happening in that moment. Understand why you’re doing that. And you got to get good at stopping that automatic behavior. And really, when you’re feeling that urge to eat something in that moment, you just don’t have to do anything. about it, you can just sit there and not eat anything and just feel the emotion.

Yeah, you can just be bored. You can just feel stressed, you can just be angry, doesn’t matter, you don’t have to eat to feel better. There are other ways of dealing with those emotions. There’s other ways of trying to soothe yourself or reward yourself that don’t involve, you know, eating junk food. Okay? This one is probably the one that we do most often. And a lot of times, people don’t even realize they realize that they’re doing it.

So this is what I want you to really start to notice within yourself, am I eating because I’m bored? Am I eating because I’m stressed out? Or I’m eating because I’m actually hungry?

Okay, another one, which is pretty interesting, I think is what I’m calling social hunger. So this is where you’re in a social situation. And you’re just eating because that’s what everybody else is doing. So I want to say like, maybe this would be peer pressure, but it’s not even people like telling you that you should eat something. Although that does happen sometimes in social situations where people are like, oh, you’re not eating anything here, try this, eat this. Come on, you know, they’re trying to push their food onto you. And you can just say, no, thank you in that situation.

But a lot of times we’re eating because everybody else is eating. Right? How many social events have you been to where there’s no food, right? Zero, everything we do involves food at some point, right? Pretty much. So this is a situation where people are eating around you. And because we, as human beings are essentially herd animals, you know, we like to do what everybody else is doing.

We don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to be the weird one at the party. You know, we just want to do what everyone else is doing. We see everybody else eating. And so we want to fit in. And we do this so automatically. And it’s so much like engrained and kind of in our DNA. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. But we may not even be hungry. But we’re just sitting there eating around the snack table just like everybody else, you know, just because that’s what everyone else is doing. Okay?

This isn’t real hunger. We’re just doing it to fit in. We’re doing it because everyone else is doing it. Have you ever noticed that like when you’re sitting at a table and somebody like grabs their phone, and they start looking at it, and you see everybody else at the table, grab their phones start looking at their phone, it’s like this, this like, cue, it’s a social cue when somebody picks up their phone that everybody else does.

And it’s the same thing with food in the social situations. If somebody starts eating something, then everybody else is kind of following along. And I hear this a lot when people talk about being at work. And there’ll be like, yeah, so I’m at work, and everybody’s snacking around me. So it’s really hard for me not to snap. But I want to encourage you to just like do your own thing.

Be the lone wolf in that situation. You don’t have to go along with the herd mentality here. Do your own thing, be an individual, take a stand, be different. It’s okay to be weird. It’s okay. Like, what everybody else is doing is nest is not necessarily good, right? what everybody else is doing is they’re eating unhealthy junk food, they’re overweight, they’re, they’re not going to live as long.

If you just look at the trends here in the United States, there’s a lot of unhealthy eating behaviors out there. There’s a lot of disease, a lot of obesity, there’s a lot of, you know, lifestyle diseases caused by you know, diet and lack of exercise and things like that. Don’t be normal, be different. Okay.

So and then the last type of hunger I want to talk about here is what is real hunger. So these other things I’ve talked about here are not necessarily real hunger. Now, you might be feeling actually hungry in a social situation, fine, whatever. But just understand that that’s not always the case. What is real hunger? Well, real hunger is when your body has this physiological need to replace fuel. Like you need fuel. Right?

It’s kind of like, you know, your car is running low on gas, like you got to put gas in that car. It’s not going to keep going anymore, right? But you know, having you know, three quarters of a tank doesn’t mean you got to fill up the tank, right? So it’s kind of the same way with food like when we’re when our gas gauge so to speak, dips low enough, then we actually need to replace that fuel. And real hunger comes on kind of slowly. It never feels urgent and never feels like a craving.

It doesn’t you know happen, you know in every situation It gradually increases that kind of comes on like a wave like a slow, gentle wave. And it happens a couple of times a day, typically once or twice a day. So we as humans, we’re not meant to eat all day long. Our systems are not designed to be digesting food and metabolizing food 24 hours a day, our systems are designed to metabolize food once or twice a day. And that’s plenty for most people.

I think that, you know, there’s probably some outliers that need a little bit more often, but for the most part, we can do just fine on eating once or twice a day. That means that you should be naturally really hungry a couple times a day. Not all day long. You know, and you’ll know that it’s real hunger, because you could sit down and eat a meal, you feel like eating some chicken and a salad and some broccoli, like not just a couple of cookies, or a handful of nuts. That’s not real hunger. If a handful of nuts sounds good to you, that’s just emotional. You know, that’s just a reward type of hunger. That is not the need to eat a meal, that is not the need to refuel.

So you might do a hard workout and you get hungry afterwards. That’s your body sending signals to replace spent fuel. And you got to like replace the fuel totally fine. That’s real hunger. Interestingly, a lot of people do not get hungry right after a workout. So working out, exercise, can act as an appetite suppressant in a lot of people. And this is definitely true for me, I usually do not feel hungry right after a workout, a long run, or a hard workout at the gym.

I usually need to wait a couple of hours after that exercise session in order to, you know, kind of feel like I’m ready to eat. Right. So even you know, when you work out, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to eat like right away. I know that. Back in the day, people used to say like, Oh, you got to eat right after you workout right after every run, you got to eat something right away. And you just don’t have to do that.

And I’ve gotten really good at just kind of understanding my body and my hunger signals. And what I need and what works for me, and waiting a couple hours after I work out is is what works for me feels great if I do that. Okay, so I want you to get good at recognizing the difference between real hunger and these other types of hunger, these false hungers so that you can take back control of how often and how much you eat, you’ll completely change your relationship with food, and you’ll be able to lose weight and keep it off for good without all the struggling without all the suffering. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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