The Eight Traits of Emotional Hunger

Emotional and physical hunger can feel identical, unless you’ve learned to identify their distinguishing characteristics.
The next time you feel voraciously hungry, look for these signals that your appetite may be based on emotions
rather than true physical need. This awareness may head off an emotional overeating episode.

Source: Virtue, Doreen. Constant Craving A-Z. (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 1999).

Emotional Hunger

1. Is sudden. One minute you’re not thinking about
food, the next minute you’re starving. Your hunger
goes from 0-60 within a short period of time.

2. Is for a specific food. Your cravings are for one
specific type of food, such as chocolate, pasta, or a
cheeseburger. With emotional eating, you feel you
need to eat that particular food. No substitute will do!

3. Is "above the neck." An emotionally based
craving begins in the mouth and mind. Your mouth
wants to taste that pizza or chocolate doughnut. Your
mind whirls with thoughts about your desired food.

4. Is urgent. Emotional hunger urges you to eat
NOW to instantly ease emotional pain with food.

5. Is paired with an upsetting emotion. Your
boss yelled at you. Your child is in trouble at school.
Your spouse is in a bad mood. Emotional hunger
occurs in conjunction with an upsetting situation.

6. Involves automatic or absent-minded eating.
Emotional eating can feel as if someone else’s hand is
scooping up the ice cream and putting it into your
mouth ("automatic eating"). You may not notice that
you’ve eaten a bag of cookies (absent-mined eating).

7. Does not notice or stop eating, in response
to fullness. Emotional overeating stems from a
desire to cover up painful feelings. The person stuffs
herself to deaden her troubling emotions and will eat
second and third helpings, even though her stomach
may hurt from over-fullness.

8. Feels guilty about eating. The paradox of
emotional over eating is that the person eats to feel
better and ends up berating herself for eating
cookies, cakes, or cheeseburgers. She promises
atonements to herself ("I'll start my diet tomorrow.")


Physical Hunger

1. Is gradual. Your stomach rumbles. One hour later, it
growls. Physical hunger gives you steadily progressive clues
that it’s time to eat.

2. Is open to different foods. With physical hunger, you
may have food preferences, but they are flexible. You are
open to alternative choices.

3. Is based in the stomach. Physical hunger is
recognizable by stomach sensations. You feel gnawing,
rumbling, emptiness, and even pain in your stomach with
physical hunger.

4. Is patient. Physical hunger would prefer that you ate
soon, but doesn’t command you to eat at that instant.

5. Occurs out of physical need. Physical hunger occurs
because it has been four or five hours since your last meal.
You may experience light-headedness or low energy if overly
hungry.

6. Involves deliberate choices and awareness of the
eating. With physical hunger, you are aware of the food on
your fork, in your mouth, and in your stomach. You
consciously choose whether to eat half your sandwich or the
whole thing.

7. Stops when full. Physical hunger stems from a desire to
fuel and nourish the body. As soon as that intention is
fulfilled, the person stops eating.

8. Realizes eating is necessary. When the intent behind
eating is based in physical hunger, there¹s no guilt or shame.
The person realizes that eating, like breathing oxygen, is a
necessary behavior.