If you’ve heard much about intuitive eating, you’ve probably heard a lot about hunger. And maybe you’ve heard the not so helpful advice “just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full.” But what do you do when you feel like eating but you’re not physically hungry? It’s completely normal and human to eat for reasons beyond physical hunger. In fact, there are four types of hunger that we experience. And it’s helpful to understand the different types of hunger in order to better understand what might be driving a desire to eat. Being able to interpret and tap into these different hunger experiences and body cues can help you better respond to them in a meaningful and helpful way.
As humans, we do not just eat food. We experience food. And we eat for a lot of different reasons: taste, pleasure, emotion, nutrition, etc. So, while it’s incredibly helpful to understand and get to know your own personal physical hunger and fullness (especially when coming out the restriction cycle), there’s more to it than just physical hunger. In intuitive eating, there are four different types of hunger: physical, taste, emotional and practical. None of them are more or less valid than the other. They all address ways that make eating a human experience.
4 Types of Hunger in Intuitive Eating
Physical Hunger
Often the term hunger is used in a way that describes the “desire” to eat. When in reality hunger is technically the biological need to eat. It’s the cues your body sends to you saying that it needs nourishment. Just like the pressure in the bladder lets us know it needs emptying or when we yawn and our eyes feel heavy, it signals a need for sleep, when we feel physical body cues of hunger, it’s telling us it needs energy. And it can manifest in many different ways (not just the stomach) and varies person to person. It can show up as headaches, fatigue, irritability, low energy, difficulty concentrating and even just increased thoughts about food. And despite popular belief the only way to “suppress” or take care of physical hunger is to eat food!
Taste Hunger
Taste hunger is when you want to eat something because it simply sounds good. Like the idea of a food item touching your tongue’s taste buds and making it’s way into your stomach feels like it would hit that satisfaction spot. It can occur in the absence of physical hunger or alongside of it. For instance, when taste hunger is in conjunction with physical hunger you might decide to go out for lunch and order a refreshing and crunchy salad with grilled chicken and a blue cheese dressing because it sounds tasty and delicious. Or by itself, it could look like having a piece of pie after a satisfying meal because it sounded appealing.
Taste hunger is often demonized. As if every french fry or celebratory piece of cake is a perceived food transgression. And it’s this mindset that generally precedes the “f*ck it, might as well throw in the towel” type of eating, which can lead to eating in a way that does not feel good. Remember taste hunger is valid hunger. You CAN eat something just because it sounds or looks good. And it’s this permission mindset that let’s you know tasty foods will always be available in your eating world. And when there’s permission you might not feel the desire or urgency to fulfill every taste hunger experience.
Practical “Hunger”
Practical “hunger” isn’t hunger in a sense that you can feel it. But rather it’s more like planning ahead for hunger. It’s preparing for an anticipated need to eat that you wouldn’t be able to satisfy otherwise. An example might be eating a bigger snack before a really long meeting or eating a meal at a scheduled break time, even though you’re not feeling physically hungry at the moment. Honoring practical hunger can be critical to avoiding future discomfort resulting from feeling overly hungry.
Emotional Hunger
To be honest, emotional hunger deserves its very own post, if not multiple posts on coping with emotions in relation to food and eating. So… stay tuned for that. But for the sake of a reasonable blog post length, here’s a snippet. Emotional hunger happens when there is an unmet emotional need that drives a desire to eat food in an effort to alleviate, numb or distract you from the emotion.
“Emotional eating” gets demonized in our culture and gets talked about in a very negative way. The truth is it’s not necessarily a bad thing. And coping with emotions using food can be a positive, intentional and productive experience. It is, however, a spectrum of how helpful it can be. For instance, on one end using food as the only/primary coping mechanism while not leaving any room for processing emotions or any other coping tools can pose problems. On the other side, choosing to eat food in an effort to find a little emotional boost might offer some good feelings. For example, if maybe you had a bad day and you’re feeling sad, a nostalgic piece of pie like grandma used to make might offer a little soothing pick me up.
Emotional eating can sometimes be hard to distinguish from physical hunger. To help navigate between the two, it can be helpful to tap into body cues. Is there an uncomfortable or intense feeling happening in your body related to an emotion? Are there any typical hunger cues (like an empty feeling) that you might be experiencing? A big difference between the two is how quickly the hunger comes on. Did it pop up out of nowhere (a sign of emotional hunger) or more slowly (likely physical hunger)?
While food rarely fixes what’s wrong, using food to help cope is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s completely normal. After all, as humans we are feel-y and emotional beings. And food and eating are most definitely tied to our emotions.
All of these types of hungers are normal and valid. And sometimes they can occur in conjunction with each other or they may occur on their own.
Here are some examples:
You might feel very physically hunger while also feeling a taste hunger for corn chips. Since corn chips are tasty but not really filling, maybe you pair them with a more filling snack or meal. Or eat that filling snack or meal and wait a bit to see if you’re still hungry for corn chips.
Another example might be a situation where you’re experiencing emotional hunger without feeling physically hungry. So perhaps you choose a food to satisfy that emotional hunger while also utilizing another helpful coping mechanism.
The 4 Types of Hunger Takeaway
When you start to truly be able to identify and distinguish between your biological hunger, taste hunger, practical hunger and emotional hunger, it becomes so much easier to clarify WHY you want to eat. And when you get to know the WHY behind an experience of hunger (hungers) you’re gaining insightful information on how to effectively satisfy it.
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