What kind of hungry are you when the brain says, “EAT!”?

What Kind of Hungry are You When You’re Hungry?

Here’s a recent Tweet: Simple principles for #weight control & #health 334: Exercise your muscles and your will power. Both are easily re-trained with practice.

For the past couple of years I’ve been studying the strange ways the brain works. Not one of us thinks the way we think we think. (Here’s a good example:Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013))

The brain plays tricks on us all day every day. As concerns what we eat, there are three kinds of hunger, but the brain will calculate each one to mean we need food. It ain’t so.

What Kind of Hungry are You?

Nutritional hunger stems from the nervous system, carrying the message from trillions of cells that they are hungry for what feeds them. Amino acids, minerals, and vitamins that come from whole foods is what they’re looking for. If you continually eat foods that do not provide them, you will continue to feel hungry, and then overeat. Think junk foods and sugary snacks. they never satisfy your real hunger.

The second kind of hunger is emotional hunger, triggered within the brain, mostly as a response to circumstances. We reach for comfort foods when we feel insecure or threatened. You may get a quick fix through a sugar rush for instance, but you’re not truly feeding your body, you’re more likely to leave it less healthy.
The third kind of hunger is habitual. When the clock strikes 12:00 Noon, you eat. When you get home from work or school you have a snack or dinner or both, whether you’re truly in need of nutrition or not.

Brain training is trusting that your body is smarter than you think. Pay attention and your body will tell you when you need to eat and it will give you excellent feedback on what you choose to eat. Grab a handful of coated chocolate candies, you know the ones that have become cartoon characters, and you’ll get a sugar rush, but you’ll also feel a significant letdown in about 15 minutes. You’ll feel tired, more than the workload warrants. On the other hand, if you keep some berries, nuts, and veggies around to snack on, you’ll enjoy the freshness of the flavors and will feel more energized.

Start training your brain now. Understand your hunger. You’ll become better at it, be healthier, and have a shot at controlling your weight the easy way.

Now that I’ve mentioned it, what kind of hungry are you and what do you think?