WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR SEPTEMBER 2019

Five Types of Hunger

Somatic Hunger
Somatic hunger is the hunger that you feel in your belly; it may feel like sort of a cramping or twisting sensation, and it's often associated with stomach gurgles. [Deep rooted need for food when you are truly famished... my addition to the text.]

Limbic Hunger
Limbic hunger is the instinctive hunger that drives you to eat more than you intend to eat, as soon as you take the first bite. Limbic hunger is the reason that the serving size on certain thin, minty cookies should be one sleeve, not the four-cookie serving claimed on the package. Limbic hunger is the reason any size bag of chips might become one serving and the potato chip tag line, "nobody can eat just one" generally holds true. In the survival setting faced by humans for most of the past 100,000 years, limbic hunger made sure that as soon as there was a successful hunt or foraging trip, humans ate more than they needed so that there would be plenty of reserve even if the next meal did not come for several days. Food that wasn't eaten would either rot or be eaten by insects and other animals, so limbic hunger made sure the surplus food/fuel was safely stored in the fat-fridge by prompting more eating than was essential for survival.

Clock Hunger
Clock hunger is your body's biologic clock ticking, saying "Hey, you ate this time yesterday! Where's today's chow?" Clock hunger is felt as somatic hunger (the feeling in your belly that comes with stomach growls) about 23-24 hours after the time you ate the day before. If you eat a morning breakfast, that punches your body clock at that time. The next day at the same time, you'll likely feel hungry, because clock hunger triggers somatic hunger. On the other hand, if you usually eat a morning breakfast, and then don't eat it for several days, your morning breakfast clock hunger will fade, and within a few days, you won't be hungry at that time.

Appetite-Driven Eating (ADE)
Appetite-driven eating is an odd kind of hunger. You don't feel it as you do somatic hunger, but you can see it and experience it. When you see yourself eating when you'd rather not, that's ADE. You may not even feel any somatic hunger at the time, yet there you are, stuffing food into your mouth when you know you don't need it. Your mind is saying stop, but your body doesn't comply. You'd rather stop eating whatever it is you're eating, but you don't.

Mouth Hunger
Mouth hunger is related to ADE. It's the urge to chew on or eat something when you're not really hungry. Mouth hunger may be prompted by eating carbohydrate-rich foods and is distinguished by wanting or craving a particular sensation in the mouth. You don't want to eat just anything; you want something of a particular taste, texture or mouthfeel, such as sweet, crunchy, salty or chewy.

Herring, Bert. AC: The Power of Appetite Correction (p. 35-36). OpKnox LLC. Kindle Edition.