Are You Hungry?

I was going to post this yesterday in response to another post discussing feeling hungry between schedules meals. I have since lost the post so I figured I would just make it its own topic.

Your stomach rumbling does not necessarily mean you are hungry. Your stomach rumbles as a result of the contractions of your stomach and intestines, which then causes vibrations which are what you hear/feel as the rumbling. These contractions take place whether you have food your system or not. In fact, these contractions increase both at the presence of food and after a period when food is no longer present. So if the contraction increase at the presence of food, why does eating make the rumbling go away? Because the food acts as an insulator and reduces the vibrations caused by the contractions. It is also detected by “sensors” in your stomach that tell your hypothalamus (the part of your brain that craves food) that you are no longer hungry.

Hunger pangs are different, however. Hunger pangs are prolonged stomach contractions which can last between 2-3 minutes and will feel much sharper and intense and will come anywhere from 12 to 24 hours after a meal. It is believed that this is what drives wild animals to search for their next meal. Likewise, it is believed this is how cavemen and the like hunted and gathered food. There were no scheduled meals, if hunting and gathering expeditions were successful, then they ate, if they failed, then they didn’t or they ate very little.

In our modern day society where food is readily available, our hypothalamus has been re-trained to associate the normal stomach rumbling with hunger, as well as to associate times of day with hunger (whether or not you consciously know what the time on the clock is.) This also effects domesticated animals the same way; food is plentiful, so they eat on a schedule and the result is that they get “hungry” on that schedule.

Now, I am not claiming to be better than anyone. I operate on my misfiring hypothalamus as well and refer to the rumbling in my stomach as hunger too, even though I know that it is truly not “hunger” in the wild/survival sense. That being said, you can retrain your hypothalamus through methods like intermittent fasting (IF). I followed the Eat Stop Eat approach to IF for a while and it took about 10 days to retrain my hypothalamus. Afterwards, my rumbling stomach didn’t cause me to “think” I was hungry. It wasn’t until around the 18 hour mark of the fast that I started to feel real hunger. I ended up falling off the IF routine during one holiday season and just never jumped back in, so my hypothalamus has once again reverted itself back to thinking I am hungry every few hours.

So this is just an FYI for everyone. If you schedule your meals and end up feeling hungry before your next scheduled meal, don’t worry. That “hungry” feeling will not impact you negatively, slow your metabolism, etc… because even though your stomach may be empty your body is still utilizing the nutrients from your previous meal.