The types of hunger and why telling them apart matters
María Laura Marranzini Rizek, M.A. 6 minute read.
Hunger is usually treated as a single signal. It is really a set of different signals, coming from different systems and asking for different things. Learning to tell them apart changes how we answer them.
Hunger is fundamental to survival, and it ought to be that simple. You are hungry or you are not, you eat or you do not. But a great many other factors shape the signals of hunger and fullness.
One useful way to sort them is into four types. It is not the only classification available, and other authors group them differently. This one works well in practice because it is concrete and quick to recognize.
Sensory hunger
This is the hunger that arrives through the senses.
Someone opens something crunchy beside you and suddenly you are hungry. You pass the bakery section, the smell of warm bread reaches you, and your appetite opens even though you have just had lunch. You drive past the billboards on the way home, see the pizza and the fried chicken, and nothing else will do.
You did not lose control. Your system responded to a stimulus, which is what it was built to do.
Hormonal hunger
Appetite is not stable, and it does not need to be.
In women it shifts across the menstrual cycle. There are weeks when appetite rises, and that has a physiological explanation [1].
Cortisol plays a part in these shifts too. During sustained stress, with cortisol elevated, appetite commonly increases and cravings for sugar and fat appear [2]. The body asks for fast energy because it reads the situation as requiring it.
Many people experience this as the body betraying them. It is the body working with the information generated inside it, trying to handle situations we cannot see but which show up as this kind of symptom.
Physiological hunger
This is the only one of the four that answers a real energy need.
When the body runs out of fuel it releases ghrelin, the hormone that switches appetite on [3]. From there the signals arrive: emptiness in the stomach, noise, an energy drop, irritability. Ignored long enough, it can produce nausea and headache.
Two features identify it.
It arrives gradually. It builds over hours rather than dropping on you.
It is satisfied by almost any food. It does not ask for something specific, only for food.
Emotional hunger
This is the urge to eat that arrives without an energy need behind it, set off by an emotional state.
Emotional hunger can turn up shortly after a meal. We know it as the whole pint of ice cream after a break-up, the film scene everyone understands without explanation.
If you stopped in that moment and listened to your body, you probably would not find physiological hunger. That does not mean you are not feeling the urge to eat.
Unlike physiological hunger, this one arrives all at once. It brings no physical symptoms and it tends to be specific. You do not want to eat, you want to eat something in particular.
What changes when you tell them apart
When every signal is treated the same, they all end in the same verdict: I overate, I behaved badly, I lack willpower.
That verdict corrects nothing and usually worsens the cycle, because it adds guilt to the original discomfort. Guilt is a poor starting point for changing anything.
Telling them apart turns an accusation into a question that has an answer.
| Type of hunger | How to recognize it | What tends to work |
|---|---|---|
| Sensory | Arrives in response to an external cue picked up through the senses. | Recognize it and decide calmly. Stop and check with your body, are you actually hungry? |
| Hormonal | Tied to sustained stress and to hormonal shifts. | Try folding the craving into one of your next meals rather than eating off-schedule. |
| Physiological | Gradual, with physical signals, satisfied by any food. | Eat. |
| Emotional | All at once, no physical signals, specific. | Name the emotion before answering it. Going for a walk, drawing, listening to music or writing are all valid ways to handle your mood. Food should not be your only refuge. Reaching another person is always a good option. |
None of these hungers is wrong
None of this means the physiological one is the good one and the rest are faults.
Eating for pleasure, for a craving, to celebrate or for comfort is part of an ordinary life. The problem is not that these signals exist. The problem arrives when one of them carries the whole weight of your emotional regulation.
References
- Dye L, Blundell JE. Menstrual cycle and appetite control: implications for weight regulation. Human Reproduction. 1997;12(6):1142-1151. PubMed
- Epel E, Lapidus R, McEwen B, Brownell K. Stress may add bite to appetite in women: a laboratory study of stress-induced cortisol and eating behavior. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2001;26(1):37-49. PubMed
- Cummings DE, Purnell JQ, Frayo RS, Schmidova K, Wisse BE, Weigle DS. A preprandial rise in plasma ghrelin levels suggests a role in meal initiation in humans. Diabetes. 2001;50(8):1714-1719. PubMed