Hunger

Hunger can be thought of as physical, emotional and experiential. Physical hunger is the body's need to replenish itself. Emotional hunger represents charged feelings that need to be felt, expressed or dealt with in some way. Emotional hunger is not about food, although food is often used inappropriately to stuff the feelings. Experiential hunger is the psyche or soul's appetite to experience a sense of aliveness.

The soul's appetite and desire for beauty, self-expression, creativity, nature, story, song, dance, music and art is often repressed, denied or forgotten. This leads to an impoverished soul and loss of sense of vitality, which is often misinterpreted as a hunger for food to provide energy. Unfortunately, it is not the food energy that our soul desires. Food eaten in response to emotional and experiential hunger leads more often than not, to weight gain.

Usually, however, people eat because of the time of day, not because of internal sensations of hunger. Staying present to our inner voice and bodily signals, rather than external messages of cleaning the plate, refrigerator, cookie jar and time of day, can save you a lot of grief around unhealthy food practices.

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