Hunger

I have been experimenting with hunger.   I was not aware of it when the process became an organized approach over ten years ago.  Just after my first baby, I started reading about nutrition and diet.  I felt dismay after gaining a significant amount of weight.  I tried different ways of eating based on information I was gathering.  I threw in a little exercise.  Over the decade that followed I bounced around various states of weight, eating approaches and exercise.  This created a kind of hobby:  exploring eating – vegetarian, low-carbohydrate, gluten free, low-fat, reduced calorie, meal replacement, macrobiotic influenced, protein shakes, herbal supplements, dairy-free and combinations to feed my hunger.

Dictionary.com lists the following to define hunger as a noun.
                1.  a compelling need or desire for food
                2.  the painful sensation or state of weakness caused by the need for food
                3.  a shortage of food; famine
                4.  a strong or compelling desire or craving   

While my experimentation may have been a banana peel littered path along the edge of eating issues it taught me a lot.  I was searching from a place of hunger.  Through life’s course I found empty places in myself.  I decided food would fill them.   I read books, took cooking classes, digested research, bought an elliptical machine, discovered yoga.  I also sometimes stopped at the store exclusively to buy cupcakes that, if they made it home at all, I would hide in the freezer to avoid sharing them instead eating them in stealth secrecy when no one was home. 

Recently, I watched myself walking home thinking, “I am hungry.”  The thought did not go further.  Simply, I felt hunger.  No headache, no lightheadedness, no wonder about what it meant.  I was experiencing the pure, physical feeling of an empty stomach combined with the ultimate knowledge that I would be soon be home and could eat.  That moment felt like a revelation. 

The physical reality of hunger and the body’s need for food is real.  We cannot deny our physiology.  But we can separate it from our emotions.  We all know when we are empty – it makes hunger.  Deciding what to ingest is our work.  Much of consumption is not about food at all.  Hunger is physical and emotional and spiritual – fasting and feasting relate to our souls as well as our stomachs.  We know hunger can have as much to do with our sacred selves as our physiological need for food. 

Yoga may be the nourishment that allowed me to find the truth in my hunger.  What I have learned from living in my body and food research I have ingested on my mat:  humans thrive in balance.  From the science of nutrition I learned excess fat storage is an outward sign of my body’s internal imbalance.  Balance in the physical body is thrown off by extremes - over consumption (say of sugars) and under-consumption (perhaps of protein and green stuff).  Feeling hunger and feeding ourselves in balance is a daily challenge.