What Are The Four Types Of Hunger In Intuitive Eating?
Written by Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN
When you think of hunger, you probably think of things like a growling stomach and irritability. While these physical signs of hunger are important to notice and do signal it’s time to eat, being physically hungry is just one of a few ways to experience hunger.
There are 4 types of hunger outlined in Intuitive Eating. Understanding all four types of hunger can help you realize that it is not just physical hunger that is valid and worth honoring. All types of hunger are valid and honoring them can promote pleasure, satisfaction, and safety. In this blog, we’ll break down what each type of hunger is. So, let’s dive in!
Biological Hunger
Before we address the other types of hunger, it is important we address biological hunger. This is the physical hunger you probably think of as soon as you hear the word hunger. It includes signals like a growling stomach, irritability, or low energy.
For most people, these cues will come every few hours depending on how much and what you last ate. But if you restrict your food intake, these cues may dull over time.
Dieting Can Impact Biological Hunger
Our bodies are set up to combat starvation. When your body is being underfed (like when you’re dieting), it sets into motion biological hunger signals to get you to eat. If these signals are ignored long enough, like through chronic dieting or an eating disorder, your body may stop sending these hunger cues. It may try to adjust to working on less energy.
As a result, your metabolism can slow from chronic dieting. You may be more lethargic, have a lower resting energy expenditure, and feel cold. These are signs your body is trying to do more with less. You may feel like anytime you eat something you deem “unhealthy” you gain a few pounds.
That could be a sign that your body is trying to conserve energy where possible and perform its essential functions on not-quite-enough fuel. Unfortunately, it’s a recipe for frustration, lethargy, and a rough relationship with your body.
When you’re beginning to practice intuitive eating, it may be difficult to recognize when you are hungry or full. You may have been accustomed to ignoring your body’s cues for so long. Mindful eating and interoception (a connection to your body’s inner cues) may feel foreign.
If all you want is to eat less and lose weight, biological hunger may be accompanied by disdain towards your body for making you want to eat more and break the diet. But to be clear, you are not wrong for feeling hungry.
Hunger may also be accompanied by pride because you restricted your food intake just like diet culture told you to. On the contrary, feelings of fullness may spark negative self-talk about how much you ate.
All of these common judgments are rooted in societal influences that tell us our bodies do not know best and that we are somehow morally superior for denying our bodies’ needs. In reality, our hunger will vary from day to day and honoring it helps our bodies feel safe and secure.
Reflect on if you judge yourself when you feel hunger or fullness. If so, what are you saying to yourself? What are you afraid of when you experience these sensations?
As you now know, biological hunger isn’t the only type of hunger out there. We may be self-critical when we eat for reasons other than biological hunger, but these other types of hunger are also important aspects of a healthy relationship with food. Let’s dive into what they are!
Taste Hunger
Taste hunger happens when you eat because you’re in the mood for a food or because you’re in a situation, like a social event, where eating just makes sense.
For example, you may not feel the physical signs of hunger, but maybe you’re really in the mood for cookies so you eat some.
Maybe after dinner you feel comfortably full in your stomach, but you’re craving something sweet so you have a piece of chocolate. That chocolate may be just what you need to feel full and satisfied.
Another example is if you’re at a gathering with your family and you’re not super hungry, but your abuela is serving her signature tostones to everyone (my grandma makes the besttt tostones, so this is a situation I definitely have encountered) so you have some.
Your stomach might not have been grumbling, but you honored another form of hunger, taste hunger, by eating in these situations.
This type of hunger can be amplified if you are restricting certain types of foods. For example, if you limit sweets, there may be more times where you feel relatively full, but you can’t stop thinking about sweets.
Our prior blog on the binge-restrict cycle addresses this dilemma in depth, breaking down how binge eating can often be caused by restriction and guilt.
Practical Hunger
Practical hunger happens when you aren’t particularly hungry at the moment, but you know you will be busy for the next few hours so you eat something proactively.
Maybe you have meetings scheduled through lunch time. You’re not super hungry before the meetings, but you know you will become hungry during the meetings, so you eat ahead of time to proactively nourish your body.
You are taking great care of your body by nourishing hunger you would feel at a time when you wouldn’t be able to eat. You are preventing yourself from getting to a place of extreme hunger that could be really uncomfortable and also make you more likely to feel out of control around food the next time you eat.
Many people who have tight or strict work schedules have to lean on practical hunger often. When you have fixed breaks in the day, you’ll likely use those breaks to eat even if you aren’t at an optimal hunger level because it’s when you have the time! This is a great way to be sure your body gets what it needs throughout the day.
Emotional Hunger
Emotional hunger is when you eat in response to emotions. It may be in response to uncomfortable emotions that you are turning to food to help manage or it may be in response to pleasant emotions that you are using food to help celebrate.
Emotional eating has gotten a very bad rap lately, and while you probably don’t want it to be your only method of coping with emotions, there is nothing inherently wrong with eating emotionally.
Food gives us pleasure.
It may even have comforting memories attached to it.
For example, eating your cultural foods may be an emotional experience for you. It is certainly an expression of love in our Latine culture. When you’re feeling down, a plate of your favorite cultural foods may be just what you need to feel better.
Ideally, you’ll want to have a few different tools in your toolkit for handling uncomfortable emotions. These may include journaling, talking to a loved one, working out, spending time outside, reading a book, and more.
Food can absolutely be one of your tools. There is nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, another tool may better honor your needs at that moment.
Final Thoughts
The four types of hunger included in Intuitive Eating can help you more closely connect to your body’s needs and cues. Rather than judging yourself for eating when you’re “not really hungry”, consider whether you are feeling a type of hunger you didn’t consider before.
When tuning into the nuances of hunger, working with a registered dietitian may help.
We offer a 3-part masterclass on intuitive eating to help you learn positive nutrition and improve your relationship with food, your body, and movement.
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What Is The Binge Restrict Cycle?
