The document discusses hunger and its phases. It defines hunger, appetite, and satiety. It describes the differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly, feels urgent, and can leave one feeling guilty after eating. Physical hunger develops gradually and does not typically cause guilt. The document also lists eight traits each of emotional and physical hunger to help distinguish between the two types. It provides tips for managing hunger while losing weight or dieting, such as eating foods with protein/fat, vegetables, and snacking preventatively.

1. H
U
N
G
ER
G
A
M
ES
PHASES
OF HUNGER

2. WHAT IS HUNGER??
Hunger is a sensation experienced when
one feels the physiological need to eat food. In
contrast, satiety is the absence of hunger; it is
the sensation of feeling full.
Appetite is another sensation experienced
with eating; it is the desire to eat food.

3. PHASES OF HUNGER
emotional hunger
• Emotional hunger comes on suddenly.
• Emotional hunger feels like it needs to be satisfied instantly with
the food you crave.
• Emotional eating can leave behind feelings of guilt.
Physical Hunger
• Physical hunger occurs gradually.
• Physical hunger can wait.
• Physically hunger does not leave behind feelings of guilt.

4. Emotional and physical hunger can
feel identical, unless you’ve learned to
identify their distinguishing
characteristics.
The next time you feel voraciously
hungry, look for these signals that
your appetite may be based on emotions
rather than true physical need.
This awareness may head off an
emotional over-eating episode.

5. THE 8 TRAITS OF EMOTIONAL HUNGER
1. Is sudden. One minute you’re not thinking about food, the next
minute you’re starving. Your hunger goes from 0-60 with in a short
period of time.
2. Is for a specific food. Your cravings are for one specific type of food,
such as chocolate, pasta, or a cheeseburger. With emotional eating,
you feel you need to eat that particular food. No substitute will do!
3. Is “above the neck”. An emotionally based craving begins in the
mouth and mind. You mouth wants to taste the pizza or chocolate
doughnut. Your mind whirls with thoughts about your desired food.
4. Is urgent. Emotional hunger urges you to eat NOW to instantly ease
emotional pain with food.

6. 5. Is paired with an upsetting emotion. Your boss yelled at you. Your
child is in trouble at school. Your spouse is in a bad mood.
Emotional hunger occurs in conjunction with an upsetting
situation.
6. Involves automatic or absent-minded eating. Emotional eating can
feel as if someone else’s hand is scooping up the ice cream and
putting it into your mouth (“automatic eating”). You may not
notice that you’ve eaten a bag of cookies (absent-minded eating).
7. Does not notice, or stop eating, in response to fullness. Emotional
overeating stems from a desire to cover up painful feelings. The
person stuffs her/him self to deaden troubling emotions and will
eat second and third helpings, even though his/her stomach may
hurt from over-fullness.
8. Feels guilty about eating. The paradox of emotional overeating is
that the person eats to feel better and ends up beating him/her
self for eating cookies, cakes, or cheeseburgers. She/he promises
atonements to him/ her self (“I’ll start my diet tomorrow.”)

7. THE 8 TRAITS OF PHYSICAL HUNGER
1. Is gradual. Your stomach rumbles. One hour later, it growls.
Physical hunger gives you steadily progressive clues that it’s time to
eat.
2. Is open to different foods. With physical hunger, you have many
food preferences, but they are flexible. You are open to alternative
choices
3. Is based in the stomach. Physical hunger is recognizable by stomach
sensations. You feel gnawing, rumbling, emptiness, and even pain in
your stomach with physical hunger.
4. Is patient. Physical hunger would prefer that you ate soon, but
doesn’t command you to eat at that instant.

8. 5. Occurs out of physical need. Physical hunger occurs because it has
been four or five hours since your last meal. You may experience
light-headedness or low energy if overly hungry.
6. Involves deliberate choices and awareness of the eating. With
physical hunger, you are aware of the food on your fork, in your
mouth, and in your stomach. You consciously choose whether to
eat half your sandwich or the whole thing.
7. Stops when full. Physical hunger stems from a desire to fuel and
nourish the body. As soon as that intention is fulfilled, the person
stops eating.
8. Realizes eating is necessary. When the intent behind eating is based
in physical hunger, there is no guilt or shame. The person realizes
that eating food, like breathing oxygen, is a necessary behavior.

9. HUNGER MANAGEMENT
Some people have learned to eat “by the clock”, and eat
on a schedule whether they are hungry or not. Others eat in
response to mood - boredom, anger, anxiety, depression,
even happiness. Still others eat to avoid doing something
else, to fill a need (safety, love, acceptance), or just to be
social.
These triggers are types of psychological hunger, and
they can be very powerful cues to eat, and to overeat.

10. The caloric deficit can make you hungry throughout the day, but
with some planning, it will be easier to manage. Besides weight loss or
weight maintenance, your diet plan is designed for optimum long term
health, so the eating plan is low in fat and saturated fat. With regard to
hunger, fat in food provides a feeling of fullness, or “satiety”, so when you
eat a lower fat diet, the food gets digested faster, and you can get hungry
more quickly than if you were eating a lot of fatty foods.
If you were just trying to maintain your weight, I would advise you to
eat more often, and to eat larger quantities of the lower fat foods.
However, for weight loss, you still need to control your total food intake,
even the low fat foods, so here are some important tips to avoid getting
too hungry:
Be sure to have some foods that contain protein or fat at every meal
or major snack. Examples of low fat protein foods are low fat cottage
cheese, low fat cheese, low fat yogurt, skim milk, fish, poultry without the
skin, and eggs (avoid too many yolks). Include a little fat throughout the
day as well. As an example, instead of just air-popped popcorn or fat-free
chips, have a few nuts or seeds as a snack. These foods will help you stay
satisfied longer, and instead of eating more fat-free foods to fill up, you
will feel satisfied with less.

11. MANAGING HUNGER IS ANOTHER GREAT
REASON TO EAT MORE VEGETABLES.
Vegetables provide fiber and have a high water content, so they are
filling without a lot of calories. Include vegetables as a snack and eat them
throughout the day, not just at lunch or dinner.
Something that is nice about a lower fat diet is that it allows for a
pretty fair quantity of food. Low fat foods are bulky, not dense, so the
quantity of food can be very satisfying, and this can really help with
hunger.
If you are going to be in a situation that usually causes you to
overeat, then eat before you get to that point. Here’s an example. For
many people, the time right after work is a difficult time to control
overeating, especially if you have to cook dinner and you’re hungry when
you get home! Instead, eat a piece of fruit or have some low-fat yogurt on
the way home. It takes about fifteen minutes to raise blood sugar, so wait
and see if that satisfies you before eating any more. Chances are this
“preventive” eating will help you control your need to eat more than you
intended to. This same practice can also work before you go out to dinner,
or to a party where there is a lot of temptation to eat too much.

12. Often, people eat when they are too hungry
and continue to eat well beyond a comfortable
feeling of fullness. This pattern repeated over
time leads to weight gain. Instead, learn to
know your comfort zone for hunger.