If you aren’t sure whether you want to eat because you’re truly hungry or because your emotions need calming and soothing, do a quick self-check before starting to eat. Ask yourself if any of the following statements describe your hunger. Then add up how many times you agree with these statements. Observe whether you agree with more statements under emotional hunger or belly hunger.

Emotional Hunger

Emotional hunger is characterized by some or all of the following behaviors:

• Your desire to eat comes on quickly and intensely like an on/off switch. Your degree of hunger can go from zero to ten in a matter of moments.
  
  
• You are very open to suggestion (for example, a coworker says she’s going out for a donut, and suddenly a donut sounds very good to you).
  
  
• Your hunger increases with certain feelings, particularly stress.
  
  
• You can’t think through your options. Your feeling of hunger is so intense that you don’t care what your options are—until after you have eaten something.
  
  
• Your hunger is such that it urges you to engage in mindless eating—that is, not really tasting your food or eating it in an automatic, mechanical way (for example, mindlessly popping a packet of M&M’s into your mouth one by one).
  
  
• You crave a particular kind of food, like chocolate or fast-food; something that would be merely filling just won’t do.
  
  
• A sense of satisfaction is hard to reach, and it seems unrelated to how full or how empty your stomach is.
  
  
• You often have the fleeting thought before you begin eating that you may feel guilty after you’ve eaten. Also, you often experience guilt after you finish eating.

Belly Hunger

True physical hunger is related to blood sugar levels. Therefore, your physical need for food is based on what and when you ate last.

• You notice that your need for food grows gradually in accordance with the time and the number of meals you ate. For example, between breakfast and lunch your hunger increases at a slowly rising rate.
  
  
• You are looking for something filling, and you’re open to many different options to fill that hunger, rather than craving a specific taste.
  
  
• You experience distinct physiological hunger cues, like a rumbling stomach. In the extreme, you may feel grouchy or even get a headache.
  
  
• You tend to quit eating when you are full.
  
  
• Your awareness of your body’s changing sensations as you move from hunger to satiety while you are eating, creates a sense of satisfaction.
  
  
• You know that feeding your physical hunger is essential as the fuel that nourishes you and keeps you going.
  
  
• You can wait a while to eat, instead of needing to eat compulsively at the very moment you feel the urge or desire to eat.
  
  
• Your hunger is not in any way associated with guilt. You know that you need to eat and you feel okay about eating.

If you agreed with more statements under emotional hunger than under belly hunger, then you would benefit more from a self-soothing technique than from reaching for a snack.


Excerpt from 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food: Mindful Practices for Finding Relief, Comfort & Calm by Susan Albers, Psy.D.