Three Kinds of Hunger

I have a theory.  This is my theory so take from it what you will.

There are three kinds of hunger:

• Stomach Hunger
• Head Hunger
• Heart Hunger

Stomach Hunger

This is actual, physical hunger.  Our body telling you "Hey you!  Running low on fuel down here, please send some pronto."  This is the hunger where we can feel and hear our innards gurgle in request of nutrients.  This is the simplest form of hunger.

Head Hunger

This hunger doesn't live in our belly.  This one lives in our brain.  This is where cravings come from.  We are flipping channels on the t.v. and stop on the Food Network a little too long and all of a sudden we think we need some macaroni and cheese.  Or maybe it's while we are walking down the mall one lovely afternoon buying ourself some new post weight loss fashions and we smell the Cinnabon wafting down the corridor.  Without even knowing it, we find ourself drawn down the corridor, past all the cute clothes, to the line of drones waiting to satisfy their sweet tooth with the ooey-gooey goodness.

Sometimes we are aware when we switch into head hunger mode, sometimes not.  Companies are very very good about being subtle in their mind tricks to get us to buy and eat their products.  We are also far more susceptible to head hunger when we haven't yet addressed the stomach hunger that may be coming over the horizon.  This is why it's so important to really listen to your stomach hunger and make sure you never let it go too far unchecked or else your head might start to take over. 

Heart Hunger

This is the most complex and complicated of the three hungers because so often we don't know exactly what triggered it.  This is not due to actual physical need or being triggered by outside stimulus.  Rather this hunger lives in our hearts.  This is the hunger that is so hard for so many of us to see or even feel because by quenching the hunger with food we subdue whatever it is we are really craving, at least for a short while.

This is what so many over eaters call boredom, but what I prefer to call restlessness.  If we were truly just bored, we'd go do something, not eat something.  Instead we are restless, we don't know what we want so we eat to fill the void.  The problem with this?  Food isn't really what we want.  Since it's not what our heart truly desires, we just keep doing it and doing it and doing it to no avail.  Eventually our hearts are weighted down with so much restlessness and lack of satisfaction from our eating that we feel shame and guilt.  How do we cure shame and guilt?  We eat.  And the cycle begins again.

How do we break the cycle?  (I am still working on this part of the theory!)  We must learn to sit with our restlessness for a moment.  Talk to it.  Be nice but firm.  Asking it what it really wants.  Write to it, if talking doesn't work.  Hell, sing to it, if that works.  Somewhere deep in our hearts there is an answer to our question.  There is truth.  We do know what we need, we've just anesthetized it for so long with food, it may take time and patience to get to the truth. 

It won't be easy.  It will be uncomfortable, and scary, and frustrating at times.  Feeling our true feelings can be truly overwhelming after so many years of eating them away instead.  When we eat to fill our heart, we become numb.  Numb to what it and we, ourselves, really need.  Deaf to what it's saying and blind to what it's showing us.  Once we begin to patiently ask our hearts what it needs from us, we begin to learn that it's most definitely not food. 

Today is a day I need to talk gently and listen carefully to my heart as it's been trying to tell me something. 

I am listening little heart and I promise not to try and shut you up with food.