In this post, we are going to teach 6 different types of human hunger. What should you do to overcome that hunger? Here are 6 human hunger.

Have you ever wondered why you eat?

You eat because your body needs things It needs energy, it needs building blocks. That’s sort of why you eat. But have you ever really wondered what you eat?

That’s a fascinating conversation because once you begin to understand why you make your food decisions the way you do, you begin to take a step toward “food freedom.” And by “food freedom” what I mean is eating what you want when you want as much as you want in a functional and healthy way.

We’ve determined having helped thousands of people in over 20 countries around the world change their relationship with food that there are 6 primary hungers that drive the eating decision.

And when you begin to understand what those 6 hungers are, when they come up you know what to do about them and sometimes eating isn’t the thing to do about them.

1. Thirst

That may sound a little bit odd to you but bear with me. The reason is that for the vast majority of our ancestors’ history they didn’t have pottery and they didn’t have sports bottles to walk around with.

So that meant that they weren’t able to carry water and so a lot of the water, a lot of the hydration that our ancestors got came from the food they ate. They ate a huge amount of water-based foods and so here’s the challenge, what that created is a communication system within the human body that says that when you begin to start to feel a little dehydrated the body knows that one of the best sources for water is water-based foods so it sends a message that says “I’m hungry eat something.” But what it’s really saying is go get me some hydration.

The challenge is that it’s lost in translation and so now what happens is, you go alright I’m hungry eat something and maybe what do you go eat? Maybe a bag of chips. How much water is there in that? Not so much and so your body’s like “dude did you not hear the message? We need some water to go and eat something” and so maybe you eat the next thing.

And so thirst when you begin to recognize that it shows up as hunger is incredibly powerful because all you really need to do is to stay hydrated. And by hydrated what I mean is drinking water.

2. Emotions

A huge number of food decisions that people make are about emotions, to change the way they feel. Look I want you to really think about something, do you have some foods that if you’re feeling really down, that you really want to go to those foods?

Or do you have some foods that when you’re really up and you want to celebrate that you want to go to those foods? How did that happen? I want to tell you it was like a Pavlovian dog response and ultimately what happened is that you were having peak emotional states, up or down, and then you were given those foods during those times and now you’ve linked them up.

3. Variety

Variety is a very important need from a human perspective because you know our ancestors would often be faced with the situation where one type of food was in regular abundance but in order to get all of the nutritional needs met, they would kind of need to get bored of that one food and be driven to go get another one.

A great example would be if there’s a lot of plant-based foods around and they’re just lying around well you just eat them why would you risk your life and go hunting when all this food is lying around unless of course a power drive, a powerful drive came in for variety for something different.

Our need for variety is causing all kinds of challenges because what we really need to recognize is that we don’t need nearly as much variety as we get currently. What we do need to do is make sure we’re getting a variety of the right healthy foods coming in.

4. Low blood sugar

Have you ever had in the afternoon? When you start to flag a little you get a little tired. Maybe you’re yawning a bit, your eyes feel a bit heavy. Well, there might be low blood sugar!

Humans have two primary energy sources one is fat and one is sugar and when you have your body predominantly burning sugar what’s gonna happen is that you’re gonna have ups and downs of your energy.

When somebody trains their body to predominantly burn fat, then they have this steady slow burn they can run for ages that’s why you now have these people, ultra-marathoners who can run multiple marathons in a day when the prevailing wisdom of the old used to be that you’d hit the wall at 17 miles and you had to be so tough and use your willpower to get through that. That’s because low blood sugar kicks in and so the problem is is the minute somebody starts to feel low blood sugar, they want to go out and eat something with high sugar, with a high GI count, they want to go eat something with sugar and it gives them a craving for carbs.

When you begin to recognize that you can change your metabolism to get yourself to a place where you have a steady form of energy. Then you’ll eliminate a huge reason for snacking and eating dysfunctional foods.

5. The desire to eat

Have you ever felt empty? You know your stomachs growling a little and you want to fill up. What I want to tell you is that’s actually not a form of hunger at all that is simply a physical sensation. Your stomach is empty and you feel more comfortable with food in your stomach.

The challenges are that most people in the developed world today are constantly starving. What I mean is is that they’re eating a lot of food but the food is so low on nutrition that they are actually feeling like they’re starving and the problem is is that then when their stomach is empty, while they’re starving, those things get linked up and become incredibly powerful and so now when somebody’s stomach is empty they feel like they have to fill it. Absolutely not the case. You have to healthy nutritional food to kill those fake cravings.

6. Nutritional hunger

Nutritional hunger is the only real hunger and the problem is that it’s not very clear. You see it’s not very clear because our ancestors didn’t have a grocery store to go to, so in other words mother nature ultimately drove what was nutritionally available and so as the body said “Wow I need this vitamin, mineral, fats, proteins, the body didn’t say “we’ll go and get this brand”. It said to eat something because if you simply did that every day if you simply ate what was available around you and nature every day over the course of the year. You would get your nutritional needs met.

The challenge we have today is that most of us are not getting our core nutritional needs met and so we are walking around with a permanent state as a permanent feeling of hunger.

The simplest way to neutralize this one is to make sure that you follow a core principle that is that your health is far more determined by you getting enough of the good stuff than it is even by you eliminating the bad stuff. If you focus on getting enough of the plants that you need to be eating, enough of the healthy proteins that you need eating, enough of the hydration and water that you need. And if you focus on that then you’re gonna reduce your nutritional hunger dramatically and then all of a sudden you’re gonna have a great deal more power to deal with emotional hunger when it comes up. By getting your nutritional needs met you’ll change your relationship with food forever.