Hunger Vs Appetite.What is the difference?

n terms of weight loss / maintaining a healthy weight hunger is an often discussed topic and major hurdle to overcome. Let's get something straight, first up. In this case when we are talking hunger we don't really mean hunger. Drugs have been trying to manage that for years without much success. What we want to focus on is learned appetite. Think about it. How many of us eat each day not due to genuine hunger but due to the fact that it is time to eat, or we are catching up with friends, with a cup of tea or coffee, when we feel sad or need to relax? I am sure most of us can recall a meal over the last two days where we have eaten without being genuinely hungry.

The first thing to do is to recognise genuine hunger rather than stimulus driven hunger (this is the same thing that prompts a smoker to want to have a smoke with their beer). Many of the stimuli in our modern environment, such as fast food, eye catching packaging and food courts are designed to make us eat at times in the day when we don't really need to. If we start doing this in association with daily activities the chances are we will feel hungry next time we do that activity. Just like Pavlov's dogs. Each day, when Pavlov fed his dogs he rang a bell. Overtime all Pavlov had to do was to ring the bell and the dogs would start to salivate in hunger, regardless of time of day!

So what we often consider to be hunger is what could be called pseudo hunger, and someone with a big appetite could possibly be someone who has learned to eat too much. It's important to differentiate between the pseudo hunger and the real thing. Here are some tips:

* Deal with or avoid completely those situations where pseudo hunger is making you overweight (eg snacks when shopping, lollies when driving, ice cream after school, chocolate when tired)
* Recognise the difference between real hunger and learned appetite
* Don't eat treats (i.e. chocolate) when you are hungry – it conditions you to believe that only treats satisfy hunger
* Fill up on high fibre, low fat foods
* Don't get hungry – eat small, eat often (eg last weeks tip eat every 3-4 hours)

http://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/health/reference/11092008/hunger-vs-appeti...

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