Taming the Tiger Called "Hunger"

In these times of an obesity epidemic in America, it is important to understand how "hunger pangs" impact our efforts to lose weight. Those hunger pangs are the reason we eat and the secret to long-term weight loss and weight maintenance is learning how to tame the tiger called "Hunger".


Back in the days of the cavemen (and women), hunger is what drove them to hunt for food, a very important survival mechanism. We don't have that concern today - hunting for our food. All we have to do is wander down the isles of the local grocery store and pick out those foods that appeal to us on any particular day. But that doesn't change the fact that our "tiger" (hunger) makes it difficult to stay true to our weight loss goals.

The bottom line is, no matter what any diet plan tries to tell you - to lose weight, you have to eat fewer calories than your body requires. This results in your body burning fat for the calories, or energy, it needs to do your daily activities of life, and you lose weight. Hunger, that "growling" you feel in your stomach, is defined as a strong desire or need for food. I won't go into the physiological details of hunger pangs, but basically they are contractions in the stomach and typically may begin a couple of hours after eating. The reason the body has these hunger pangs is because it wants to maintain energy balance - keep the same number of calories coming in as the body is using. Thus hunger drives the person to seek out food to assure survival. There is no way to trick the body into thinking it isn't hungry. The challenge is to develop eating habits that keeps the body satisfied.

Next post: more on "taming the tiger" - or controlling those hunger pangs.