Managing Gnawing Hunger

(This started as a reply on another thread, but as I typed the info, I felt like maybe it deserved to be a thread of it's own. So some of this is lifted from my reply to another thread and some of it is new)

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Sometimes when our bodies are deficient in a given thing (protein, carbs, macronutrients, etc) we get cravings for that nutrient and we interpret it as hunger. Unfortunately, if we eat the wrong thing (not the thing our body is craving and sending the hunger signals for) then we get hungry again shortly after we eat. The more severe the deficiency gets in our body, the more gnawing that hunger feels until it can actually control us.

Here is the thing...we will be deficient in different things at different points in our lives and the thing we need to "satisfy" that gnawing hunger can change as our body chemistry changes. My first exposure to that was atkins...I was protein deficient and carb overloaded and switching to a high protein diet solved my intense hunger problems...for a season. Then they came back because I'd managed to macronutrient deprive myself by not getting enough of the vitamins etc that were in fruits, veggies, etc. (or is that "micronutrient"? I get the terms confused) Anyhow, the hungrier I got, the more I would cut back on non-protein...and the more out of control my hunger would get because the thing I was using to attempt to satisfy my hunger wasn't what my body was craving. Then I tripped across peer trainer and the emphasis on vegetables and fruits. For a season that satisfied me. But one of the groups I was in was composed mostly of raw vegan vegetarians (not the intent of the group, just how it happened to work out) and that influenced me. I cut my protein down to only having 4 oz of meat about once or twice a week. For a season it was great but over time (about 6 months) I got a protein deficiency and the gnawing hunger returned. It took me a long time to go back to eating meat because I'd become mentally prejudiced against it. But that helped curb that gnawing hunger. Then my most recent "issue" was something related to dairy products, which had been out of my diet for over a year. My hunger got so out of control that I was desperate and a nutritionist suggested eating greek yogurt with whole grain cereal for breakfast. It took me two weeks to warm up to that solution, but when I did, my gnawing hunger went away in a couple of days.

Your story might be different in terms of what sets off the gnawing hunger for you the first time. (For me it was protein deficiency). Maybe you have plenty of lean protein in your diet and are lacking in some other area, and your body is trying to signal you to give it more of what it lacks. And until we figure out what our body is asking us for, it feels like this all-consuming out of control hunger.

So what is the lesson to take away from all of this? It is balance. We need to keep our body balanced nutrient-wise. If we choose a diet that eliminates (or greatly reduces) something our body needs, eventually our body is going to begin using intense hunger to begin signaling us to give it what it is missing. So the key is to try to have an eating life-style that gives your body what it needs and also (hopefully) doesn't give it a bunch of stuff that is bad for it (refined sugars, white flours, tons of fat, etc).

However, when we are diffident in something and get that gnawing hunger, we need to sort out what we are diffident in. We may need to eat larger portions of that item for a season...but we need to realize that item is not "the answer" for all our future eating...it simply the nutrient our body is craving at the moment. There are probably other things (medical ones) that can cause intense hunger, but I think that most of the time it is caused cuz our body is deficient in a nutrient and is trying to signal us to consume that nutrient. So we need to figure out what the current difficiency is and add that into our regular eating plan. Once we get "balanced" and no more hunger cravings, we should try to maintain that by eating balanced so that we don't introduce new deficiencies into our system and have another bout with that gnawing hunger.

(and no...the body doesn't get deficient in chocolate cake or doughnuts or macadamia nut cookies...those things are more like "cravings" that have to be managed...sorry about that. Smile)

Wed. Mar 17, 11:41am

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