Are You Really Hungry Or Plain Bored?

By Alyssa Martinez @ItsMariaAlyssa

All have their quirks when it comes to food! Some love ice-cream, some love pizza, some love piping hot home-cooked food.

Deep down in their hearts, everyone is a foodie with a real love for food. While some eat when they are really hungry, others eat to pass their time. Boredom eating or emotional eating is having food when you are not actually hungry.

It is never too late to get medical help from experts. If you are having difficulty in managing your hunger habits and body weight, you can consult a best nutritionist in the dubai.

It is not easy to overcome boredom eating, you keep snacking on food just out of a sheer feeling of boredom or not having anything better to do.

The trigger to eat mindlessly could be a coping strategy to spend a mundane day. Eating your way to dispel boredom can seem a swell idea. Ironically, it could literally make you swell or gain excess weight.

When you do not keep a track of your eating habits or do not have an 'eating awareness', you may start eating thoughtlessly and later have no recollection about it. This could lead to serious health hazards.

Be it distress eating or boredom eating, the end result is obesity lined with an onset of chronic symptoms.

Here, we aim to highlight the glaring differences between eating to satisfy hunger pangs and mindless eating out of boredom.

We wish to help readers (already armed with a bagful of munchies) to stay away from boredom eating. Happy Reading!

The Dissection of the Word - Hunger

There are many types of hunger, and every individual reacts differently when it comes to eating food. You could be having a physical reaction to hunger, you could be acting on your hormonal imbalances, or it could even mean some biochemical factor is involved.

There are two primary hunger pangs; one is physical and the other is psychological. Physical hunger is the real hunger wherein you eat to keep your body fit and healthy. Psychological hunger speaks about mind cravings.

Physical Hunger

Hunger for physical causes, which helps to produce vital energy and stamina required to conduct your normal duties, cannot be avoided. If you do not satisfy physical hunger, your body can fall apart.

It will become weak and suffer from intense hunger pangs. Ignoring physical hunger pangs can result in health complications such as extreme fatigue, exhaustion, a sudden drop of blood sugar levels, or even strange behavioral changes.

Psychological Hunger

When you experience no real physical pangs of being hungry but just feel an urge to indulge in immediate binge eating, it is a sign of psychological hunger.

This can also be called emotional hunger or boredom hunger. People often keep eating whatever they find in the kitchen just to pass their time or come out of a gloomy mood. Such people usually try to fix their emotional upheavals by turning to comfort food.

POOR SLEEP is also one of the major culprits that can lead to boredom eating. Not getting appropriate sleep can make you indulge in midnight snacking and gain unwanted kilos.

How can you know if you are really HUNGRY?

This is a perplexing question, how to know if you are eating for your bodily needs or just eating due to boredom? Let us find out:

  • Get a Grip, Do a Mental Check Always
  • Do some self-inquiry, ask queries to yourself
  • Am I feeling sad, am I bored or stressed out?
  • What emotional mood am I in right now?
  • When did I last eat a proper meal?

After answering these questions, if you think the feeling of being hungry is an emotional response rather than a physical one, you can skip the food and drink a glass of water instead.

Just like boredom hunger, some people also experience something opposite in nature. They feel physically hungry but are not able to eat food. This condition is more complex than the boredom hunger problem.

Whatever your Hunger Issues, you can Seek Medical Help

A certified and experienced nutritionist can help you get to the root of the problem and guide you to follow a proper diet plan without the need to binge eat.

Cannot connect to a verified nutritionist? Feel free to visit https://ae.doctoruna.com/en/dubai and request a Telehealth Consultation. The best doctors in Dubai are found right here at DoctorUna.