An analysis of hunger

In my experience, food choices are made out of hunger, greed, despair, self harm and/or a desire to die.

Hunger
Nature's feedback system works well if you don’t deliberately over-ride it. Before we eat, the bio-feedback mechanisms that we call “hunger:” provide us with an appetite for the specific foods our body needs so our ever-changing bodily requirements are satisfied. After we have eaten, an orchestra of hormones ensures that blood sugar remains equable and digestion proceeds in a benign way.

Greed
There are some foods that excite our hunger, even on sight or smell, and they mostly contain sugars, cereal starches and cows’ milk in one form or another. Once the food processing industry has taken these basic ingredients and combined them in the most delicious way possible, the pure enjoyment of eating these foods can over-ride the hunger than is nature’s gentle way of keeping us healthy and well.

Despair

Food is a comfort, but not all food: the sugars, cereal starches and dairy products in particular are the favourite comfort foods for people in despair. The vicious circle is that people who eat out of despair eat themselves into despair. Their diet is insufficiently varied to be nutritious and this has a depressing effect, Also, the massive weight gain that can result from overdosing on sugars, grains and dairy products can lead people into even deeper despair. This is the beginning of food addiction.

Self harm

Addiction can be defined as participating willingly in an activity that will damage one’s health, wealth or well-being in full knowledge of the potential damage this will cause. Choosing to eat too much of the wrong mind of food is self-harm. Some foods disagree with particular people and are best avoided, but addicts don’t avoid these foods. Chocolate, for instance, can precipitate a migraine. A food addict would sooner suffer the migraine that not be able to enjoy chocolate.

A desire to die

The morbidly obese, who lose hundreds of pounds only to regain it, or who never lose weight but simply eat themselves to death, are people who know they are eating to die and are not willing to stop. It’s heartbreaking to watch but then so are most forms of slow suicide. The chronic anorexic is on the same mission: to fade away and die.

This descent from natural hunger into death happens slowly, stage by stage. In order for the individual to climb out, he or she must decide whether to live or die. That’s the first and most important choice and the others flow from that.

Recovered food addicts know they have recovered when they are able for the first time to experience natural hunger - the subtle driver that is so easily swamped by greed and addiction. It’s a magical moment of healing, like being fully alive again.

If you lost your natural hunger, "Food and You" can help you find it again.