How To Somatically Identify The Difference Between Physical And Emotional Hunger

Food is often the first form of love we receive as a baby from a parent or caretaker. While you're being fed, often there is eye contact, touch, and nourishment. This can leave a baby feeling heard, seen, acknowledged, loved, and cared for. Emotional and physical hungers are being satiated at the same time. This can lead to the signals for emotional and physical hungers to get crossed at a young age. Because food becomes something that supports you in feeling safe and attuned to from the time you're born, it is important to somatically identify what the difference between emotional and physical hungers feels like in your body so that you know as an adult what best satiates each kind of hunger.

Let's start with:

Physical Hunger

You will notice that physical hunger increases slowly over time. When you have finished your meal, your body goes to work to digest and assimilate that food. From the time your meal ends, your body will slowly be using that energy. So around 4 hours later, you may start to feel different sensations in your body like stomach gurgles, a change in energy, mental fogginess, and a change in your ability to focus.

Often, physical hunger doesn't go from 0 to 100. It will give you little clues and if you wait too long it will give you louder clues like dizziness, louder stomach gurgles, and low mood. This means that physical hunger doesn't need to be satiated immediately. It can wait and it will let you know when it can't wait any longer simply because your nutritional and energy needs have peaked. The somatic experience of physical hunger also ends when it has been satisfied by food.

When your body feels nourished, the physical hunger sensations slowly dissipate where your body stops telling you it needs food through a change in your physical sensations and by a cessation of no longer thinking about food as well. Any food can satiate physical hunger. Physical hunger is not choosy when it needs to be satisfied. Yes, you can get nuanced in asking your body exactly what nourishment would resonate with it in that moment but truly any food that comes in can satisfy physical hunger.

Lastly, the only thing that can end the somatic experience of physical hunger is food. Food is the only tool that will work here. The longer food is denied, the more creative the body has to get to ensure it's going to get what it needs. This can look like engaging in all sorts of behaviors that don't feel like you because your body has taken over.

Moving on to:

Emotional Hunger

Emotional hunger is more urgent. It can feel like it pops up suddenly. It's pushy and insistent telling you it needs to be satiated now! There is no gradual somatic experience here. It can feel intense and maybe even overwhelming when it shows up in its full force. Because it can feel uncomfortable in its urgency, thoughts of food can often arise to try to navigate the emotions showing up with more ease.

Since you're not actually physically hungry, the food suggestion that arises from your mind is very specific. Think of the last foods you ate when you were trying to emotionally self soothe. What memories and beliefs do you have around these foods? If you have a memory around eating a certain food that supported you in feeling a specific way, like calm or relaxed, in situations where you're feeling intense emotions these foods can automatically be suggested to you by your brain as a way to feel differently.

The feeling of emotional hunger often also shows up somatically as different sensations in the body. Emotional hunger can show up as tension in your head and/or chest. It can be a gnawing feeling. The sensations that show up with emotional hunger are often not found in the gut. You can still experience mental fog and often this can come from the stress of trying to avoid the emotion present instead of mental fog of having low blood sugar.

Emotional hunger can never fully be satisfied by food. Food can absolutely be chosen to navigate an emotional hunger with more ease at first and other tools and acts will need to be explored to fully satiate an emotional hunger. Emotional hunger is typically satisfied by our relationships, physical activity, career, spiritual practices, creativity, sense of purpose, and feeling understood, loved, connected, and appreciated.

If you're navigating patterns of binge eating, emotional eating, or overeating, identifying the difference between physical and emotional hunger in your unique body is an important step on your healing path. Somatically being able to identify which hunger you're feeling can provide you the information needed to know how to optimally satiate your body and what it is needing.

As you explore the difference between what physical and emotional hunger feels like in your unique body, you may discover that you reach for food for emotional satiation more than you realized. We cannot change what we're not aware of so this new awareness is important to have. You get to be gentle with yourself in this process that you have always been doing the best you can to take care of you and now you simply have new information that you can start practicing showing up for your hungers in new ways.

If you’re desiring to show up for your emotional hungers in ways that feel more connecting and grounding, reach out! You can schedule a free 20 minute Connect Call with me here.