Breaking the hunger scale

There are a few ways that dieting makes us break the hunger scale (see yesterday's post); one way is that sometimes dieting forces us to deny our own hunger cues, making us go down to a 2 or a 1 on the scale before it's time to eat; then, we eat everything in sight and feel like a failure. Repeat after me - WILLPOWER IS A JOKE! - we are programmed to overeat when our body feels like it's heading into hard times (like a famine, yikes!). It is simply nature's way.


Another way dieting forces us to break the hunger scale is by instilling a fear of the feeling of hunger in us. When you are uncomfortably hungry for a prolonged period of time, your body learns to fear hunger. When we fear hunger, we tend to eat before we feel hunger. This means that we always start "munching" or "grazing" as soon as we are at a 5 or so on the hunger scale - just to keep from slipping into the hunger pangs at a 3 or 4. This adds up to extra calories and pounds on the butt (or wherever you tend to store it).


By the way, people who actually experience real hunger (as in no money or no other resources to obtain food), will react the same way once they have access to food - they will overeat when given the chance, and avoid getting hungry because of the awful memories of feeling hungry.