Why Do I Feel Hungry?

Hunger is what makes us eat. The question "why do we feel hungry?" seems to be very obvious to answer. It is because we need to get nutrients to survive. Hunger is the motivation for us to be able to know that we need to get the nutrients in our body. But how does all this happen?

Consumption of energy in the routine work leads to depletion of nutritive materials in the blood. When the blood is depleted of nutritive materials, a message is sent to our ‘hunger centre' of the brain by our body through nerves and we feel hungry. Hunger comes in many forms, actually. It can be caused by a variety of things. Some type of hunger feels stronger, worse, than others. And, we find different ways to satisfy our hunger, depending on what we hunger for, what type of hunger it is, what kind of people we are, what food we have available. I will go through a number of various types of hunger, or reasons for eating:

Mind Hunger

When one has been without food for a long time, then even if one is not hungry, one feels one ought to be hungry. For instance if one has missed a meal or is on a fast, one feels one ought to be hungry. This type of hunger disappears after some time and is not real hunger.   

Cognitive Hunger

This type is very simple to understand. The human species is different because it can get hunger signals by sensory inputs like smelling or seeing good food. The interesting part of this signal is that it can override physiological hunger. Simply stated, we can eat more food by smelling our favorite foods despite the fact that we may have eaten a complete meal. This hunger is not a real one and is the main cause of obesity.

Learned Hunger

This hunger is a result of our accustomed eating schedules. So if we are accustomed to eating breakfast at 7 A.M., lunch at 1 P.M. and dinner at 7 P.M., then even when we are not hungry at those times, we will think of eating because our mind is attuned to eating at those times. This is not real hunger. If for some reason, we get busy and the appointed time of eating passes, then if we were really not hungry, the hunger too passes.

Biological hunger

This is real hunger. This type of hunger is experienced when the stomach becomes empty. There were many experiments that tested this type of hunger. Some of these experiments linked satiety of this hunger with feeling full or stretching the stomach receptors which gave birth to the logic of high fibre diets. Others linked it with the blood glucose levels (eating when we feel low) or a high insulin level (typically associated with stress eating) or increase in fatty acids release. When one is faced with this hunger, one can eat. But if one wants to remain healthy, one should never overeat.

Body Hunger

This type of hunger can be dangerous and occurs when the whole body needs food because of famine or fasting. Body hunger will not dissipate with the passage of time. It persists because the body is deprived of nutrition. At such a time, if no other right food is available, one should eat glucose or honey. If no food is provided to the body, the body will draw food from within itself resulting in muscle loss.

Hunger is a primary motivation. Despite strong beliefs that hunger is caused biologically, this motivation is controlled not just by physiology, but also psychology as well. Problems like eating disorders and obesity could occur because we mistakenly keep tying to satiate our psychological hunger by eating food. Until we realize that we need to feed our mind with something, rather than eating, we can not feel satiated. Until we recognize it is our mind, not our body which needs food, we cannot be satisfied with what we put in our mouth. Thus, hunger is not only about how the body changes physiologically, it is about how our body and mind together are well fed.


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