Am I? Hungry? Really?

One of the instructions in the Mission Biggest Weight Loss Challenge plan is to rate your hunger on a scale of 0-10 with 0 being “empty” and 10 being, “take me to the hospital and have my stomach pumped” (not really, but you get my drift). We were given a list of factors that make you hungry, one of which is: Defending your set point. Several years ago there was a diet philosophy that centered on a person having a weight set point; a weight that your body naturally gravitates to, and that’s what I thought the Challenge information was referring to. It well might be, but yesterday I discovered that it meant something entirely different to me.

I was struggling with the amount of food I had eaten, rather than whether or not I was hungry. I ate a good breakfast at 8:00 (satisfied), and at 1:30 I had a small salad with hummus on the side (not satisfied), then ate a Larabar at 3:00 (satisfied). At 3:45 I went to the rec center and swam for 40 minutes, stretched out in the steam room for about five, then headed to the showers. Walking to my car at 5:10 I was hungry and decided to have a leftover baked potato at home.

Driving home I got to thinking about whether or not I was actually hungry, much less starving, and I discovered that physically I wasn’t hungry, but mentally I was famished. I fought it for awhile, but gave in and ate a handful of roasted butternut squash seeds and a small bowl of brown rice. It was this morning that I realized I do have a set point and it has to do with volume and density, not weight or hunger. There is a certain volume/density of food that is a subconscious need rather than a physical one.

So even if gluten isn’t an issue for me this test has been enormously beneficial. The absence of dense volume has brought me a new level of awareness and is responsible for the set point epiphany. I can look at my hunger with new eyes and when it’s volume/density related deal with it differently. That might not alleviate the feeling that something is missing, but it gives me an opportunity to discover what is actually physically necessary.

I wonder if the lower density of the food is why a lot of people who have grown up with a predictable food volume/density at meals and snacks feel deprived when eating healthy, lower calorie foods.

This brings me to another factor relating to my volume/density set point and that’s my sense of the volume of food that will prevent future hunger. I often eat based on when I think I’ll eat again. As an example, one of the factors in eating the seeds and rice last night was that I was going to go out and walk my dogs. Ummmm … Okay. What’s that about? Was I going to pass out from lack of food in the next hour? I don’t think so. Remember, I wasn't even physically hungry!

I can’t imagine many situations when I wouldn’t be able to find something to eat in a timely manner. I’ve never been so broke that I didn’t have food (thank you, universe!) and it’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere and find my cupboards bare on a regular basis with the nearest convenience store twenty miles down a lonely country road; Awareness.

Redefining hunger is going to be enormously helpful to me. Gaining insight into an issue gives me information to change it. Recognizing the absence of density is another piece of information on the journey.