Yes, Fake Hunger!

Yes, it's true it's true!

In a psychology textbook of mine, I read about experiments on the psychology of hunger which factored in brain chemicals, chemicals from the pituitary system, the stomach, etc. Interestingly, if you eat at a specific time every day, you will become "hungry" hungry during that time. If you always have lunch at 11am you get hungry then. If you wait until later, you feel starving by 11:30, but if you do 1pm regularly, you become accostomed.

Why? Scientists found that your insulin level rises shortly BEFORE your regular mealtime in preparation to handle the food expected by your body. The rise in insulin corresponded with a feeling of hunger reported by the participants.

I normally ate around 9am at work. I did The Master Cleanse one day and when I got to work, silly me remembered I had left my lemonade on the counter at home! Rats, what to do? At about 8:45, I felt myself getting very "hungry" and thought "wow if I'm this hungry already how will I make it through the day? Should I get some juice and break, then continue day 1 tomorrow?" I decided to see if I could tough it out, after all, some people water fast, right? About 45 minutes from the beginning of my urgent feeling of hunger, it faded and I did not feel that urgent hunger feeling again (presumably meaning the insulin has left my blood stream) - it was only at about 3pm when I was close to leaving work did I notice a more dull empty feeling of my stomach which is something like the fake hunger but not as urgent, simply because my stomach had been empty for a while and other things in there were likely emptying out as well, or whatever was going on.

So if I wasn't bothered with thoughts or feelings of hunger for 6 hours and then only vaguely after my severe 8:45am I'M STARVING attack, it seems to make sense that this is not true hunger. I'm sure I didn't get hungry and then go into starvation mode supressing that feeling within less than a day of no calories.

I hope this gives some understanding of those feelings that we call hunger but are not true hunger. :-)