Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid of Being Hungry — Mindfulness And Hunger

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word hunger? The time you last had something to eat? The mantra that breakfast is the most important meal of the day? How a healthy meal is always worse tasting than junk food? Maybe images of starving children in sub-Saharan Africa?

Sweet Tooth

Of all the foods, sugary-sweet dishes are the ones that everyone knows it’s bad for them. Yet, we consume quite a lot, maybe because there is such a difference in immediate and long-term effects. Depending on when you eat sugar or foods with high levels of processed sugar in it, it can either calm you down (when you’re hungry) or give you an energy boost (when you had food already). Maybe both. Either way, after consuming said food items, you probably end up in a calmer mental state because you satisfied your body. Or so you think.

Probably you know this, but eating high amounts of sugar (and carbohydrates from processed food in general) is really bad for your body. The list of negative effects is almost endless, starting from the obvious things like obesity and diabetes, but gobbling up carbs is equally as bad for your brain:

Even a single instance of elevated glucose in the bloodstream can be harmful to the brain, resulting in slowed cognitive function and deficits in memory and attention. — Very Well Mind

Meaning that you will think slower, remember less effectively and lack focus. These substances are as addictive as drugs with equally bad side-effects. Good news is, although it might make you feel more tired for a day or two, coming off sugar is not as bad as you think.

Hunger Is The Enemy

Apart from being addicted to the food we eat, why are we so afraid of being hungry? Hunger is not an unnatural feeling; it could be a marker when our body needs some nutrition. But what if I said it really comes down to levels of hormones in your body whether you’re hungry or not?

Without going into science talk too much, feeling hungry or full comes down to two hormones: ghrelins are appetite increasers and leptins are decreasers. If it makes you feel all sarcastic when people talk about food science than you are not alone. I was one of those people, not listening to any pseudo-mumbo jumbo about carb intake and hormone levels.

What we have to grateful, though, is the fact that all this information is available, whether you want to be informed or not. Now we understand how our body works much better than any of our predecessors did. We have the information and the right food available to maximise the performance of our bodies and minds at any given age. And that is not mumbo jumbo. You don’t have to read studies about leptins or how the liver works, but you can, if you wanted to.

But back to hunger. If we understand the biology of hunger, it’s easier to accept it as what it is: just a hormonal response. You can lose your sense of hunger by not eating. Seriously. There is a video below explaining it much better than how I ever could. Go ahead and watch it.

Demystify hunger and fullness is vital. Understanding that hunger is just a play in hormones makes it less of an enemy and more of a minor obstacle. You get hungry around the times you most usually eat. That’s it. You can eradicate the feeling quite easily and more importantly, you can ignore it, or even more so, incorporate it to your daily routine. It’s just a signal, nothing more.

Intermittent fasting

What if I told you you can easily go without any food for days? But you can definitely go without food for more than 12 hours. Even 16 hours a day, every day, without a problem. It may be even more beneficial to do so than you thought.

The term intermittent fasting (IF) keeps on cropping up everywhere lately. You can find numerous videos about it, even Terry Crews credits IF as the primary reason for his physique and energy.

There are different versions, some recommends to go without food for a day or two a week, others recommend a daily fasting period of 14–16 hours. After doing some research, I decided to try the latter.

You have to know a couple of things about me first. I wanted to try IF to enhance my cognitive performance, above all. I didn’t need to lose any (or much) weight and I am fit (though not muscly) for my age (34). I can run for an hour without an issue, I don’t smoke or drink excessively (recently I was thinking about giving up alcohol altogether).

That being said, I was the hangriest person out there ever since I can remember. You just knew not to approach me when I was in the mood. I was never obese; I’m also fairly tall (6'1" or 185 cm) and my metabolism was always working more or less alright. Yet, when I cut my finger, I felt light headed and not one occasion, I had to sit down to avoid fainting. I was also restless but often felt quite depleted, not to mention my thoughts were very gloomy sometimes.

Around November last year, I was toying with the idea of taking a Mensa supervised IQ test. I was researching ways to maximise my cognitive functions and realised that in order to perform better on the test, I have to change my diet. IF seemed to be way to go. I saw a video on YouTube that convinced me to try it out (I recommend checking the channel out too):

I didn’t actually start my new diet until March the next year, 6 weeks before the test. Whether or not it helped me with the test I don’t know, but what I realised is that I wasn’t hangry anymore, I was thinking positively about things and generally, I wasn’t a slave to my own body. I didn’t have to eat a chocolate bar to get rid of my lightheadedness and I felt generally more in control of my system.

That, in itself, was enough reason for me to keep up my new diet. I wasn’t eating much added sugar before either, but I still ate carbs, rolls, the occasional pizza or pasta and the likes.

If you don’t eat for 10–16 hours, your body will go to its fat stores for energy, and fatty acids called ketones will be released into the bloodstream. This has been shown to protect memory and learning functionality, says Mattson, as well as slow disease processes in the brain. — www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Is Starvation the Answer?

The short answer is no. One thing I have to point out is, by eating relatively healthy, IF won’t make you starve. You might feel hungry, but there is a lot of difference between being hungry and starving, although many people use both expressions interchangeably. Hunger is associated with negativity and admit it, you are the person who raids the stores before public holidays because what if you won’t have something you needed and the shops are closed? Even the thought of not having surplus food in the house makes you feel hungry in advance.

By changing your mindset you can let go of the anxiety about feeling hungry. By letting it go, you get more in control of your body. By eating right, you’ll feel less sleepy, feel more energetic, more focused and conserve your body and mind. Also, there are strong evidence connecting obesity with Alzheimer’s Disease, essentially making it a type 3 diabetes. Do yourself a favour, stop eating 💩.

We have to make a distinction between hunger and cravings too. Craving is when you fancy a specific food item, most likely something unhealthy. Never heard anyone saying “I really want some Brussels sprouts”. It more likely goes like this: I really want some chocolate/pizza/crisps etc. If you don’t satisfy your cravings, you end up thinking about it more and more intensely until you give in “just this once”. Does this sound familiar? Well, it sounds just like addicted people talking about their preferred substances, let it be cigarette, drugs or whatever. You can be addicted to sugar and carbs just as much as any other harmful substance.

Going All Out — The Other Way Around

Confession time! You might want to sit down for this. As established earlier, I do intermittent fasting, every day. I am also a pescaterian (I eat fish and dairy products and eggs but no meat), by choice, for over a year and a half now. I also steer clear away from processed (and unprocessed) sugar lately (your body doesn’t really need excess sugar even if it comes from fruits). Recently, only a month ago, I gave up gluten too.

What can you even eat!? — You might exclaim.

Quite a lot, actually. If you were listening carefully, I still eat carbs, although I try to keep the levels to the minimum. I even bake stuff; I just baked some gluten- and sugar-free brownies yesterday and I tell you what, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Here is the recipe:

I used xylitol instead of sugar (a 1:1 substitution) and sugar-free dark chocolate from Sainsbury’s (85p per bar). It was extremely easy to bake and you can’t tell it has beans in it. Seriously, I tried to bake sugar-free peanut butter brownies before and they were awful. This is gold. I also baked this not so long ago (again, with xylitol):

Everyone who tried it, loved it. No joke. I have a 5 year old son and he gobbled it up like there is no tomorrow.

My diet is also high in fat and cholesterol. I can get away with it because of the lack of processed sugar and carbs. I eat a lot of veg (fibre), drink coffee and green tea and try to drink plenty of water. Quinoa-lover might be the pejorative term to describe vegans, but it actually tastes okay and you can season it however you want. Quorn is high in protein, Quorn Mince and Quorn Pieces are also gluten free. If you eat meat, your meal choices broaden up significantly.

You don’t have to be extremely strict with your diet either. Any reduction in processed food intake is greatly appreciated by your body and brain. I don’t believe in cheat days, people tend to go way overboard on those days. “I don’t want any more pizza but let’s eat a bit more because I won’t have any for another 6 days”. I would rather have a small pizza for lunch on an average day and then carry on with my regular diet as opposed to kill my intestines for a day with ridiculous amounts of junk food.

What’s In It For You

What’s is the point of all this and what does it have to do with mindfulness? I mentioned before the benefits of my diet change on me. I think more positively, abolished my hangriness (I wanted to use the word hanger but then I realised it wouldn’t work) and, yes, I feel less hungry in general. Guaranteed, I still feel hungry towards the end of the 16 hour fasting period, but it’s only because my body knows it’s going to get fed soon. You know that feeling when you are really hungry for a long time and don’t eat, then after a while you realise you aren’t hungry anymore? That’s a drop of ghrelin levels. You don’t feel hungry because you passed the point when your body generates that hormone. Easy-peasy.

By looking after your body and brain, you are looking after your mind, too. If you don’t get distracted by your bodily functions, you can spend more time being present and appreciating the small experiences around you. Cheesy as it sounds, during this very warm summer there was a day when the temperature only went up to 20 degrees, it was raining a bit and I was sitting by the window reading a book, covered in a blanket. I can clearly remember looking up and realising that I was happy in that moment. I was contained in my situation even though I still had the same amount of debt, lived in the same crappy rented flat and had a lot of other ongoing issues. Being hungry, though, wasn’t one of these.

P.S.: If any of the images, apart from the last one maybe, prompted you to have some sweet food, you might want to seriously consider cutting back on carbs. You know, for your own benefit. Just sayin’.