Words by Alexandra Cortina, Nutritional therapist, non-exec Director Bant, Psychotherapist in training, founder of www.meyahealth.com
Most people, when they think of the word hunger, define it simply as the body’s way of telling us it needs food. For many years, I would have agreed. Then I became interested in fasting.
One of the most surprising things fasting taught me was that hunger is not nearly as straightforward as I once thought clinical learning from my fasting reset weekends. What feels like an urgent need to eat can sometimes disappear thirty minutes later. A craving that appears intensely physical can turn out to be driven by habit, emotion or simply the anticipation of pleasure.
As a nutritional therapist, and now as a psychotherapist in training, I have become increasingly fascinated by what hunger can tell us about ourselves. Clients often arrive frustrated by cravings, snacking, emotional eating or what they describe as a lack of willpower. Underneath this, there is frequently shame. Shame that they cannot control themselves. Shame that they keep reaching for the biscuit tin, the crisps or the chocolate. Shame that they know what they “should” be doing but somehow cannot seem to do it. Yet beneath those concerns, I often find something far more interesting: the hunger they are experiencing is not always the hunger they think it is.
Take a common scenario. It is four o’clock in the afternoon and you find yourself reaching for chocolate, and hopefully dark chocolate. The explanation seems obvious enough: you are hungry. Yet from both a nutritional and psychotherapeutic perspective, that same craving could have many different origins. Perhaps your blood sugar has dipped after a carbohydrate-heavy lunch. Perhaps a poor night’s sleep has altered appetite-regulating hormones such as ghrelin and leptin, making hunger feel more intense than usual. Perhaps chronic stress has elevated cortisol, increasing the drive for quick energy. Or perhaps you are tired, lonely, bored, overwhelmed or simply in need of a break.
The sensation may feel the same, yet the cause may be completely different. What appears to be a simple craving can emerge from a complex interplay of biology, psychology, habit and environment. And that, for me, is where hunger becomes interesting.
We are living through a fascinating moment in the conversation around appetite. Intermittent fasting has become mainstream. GLP-1 medications have transformed the treatment of obesity and changed the way we think about hunger. Continuous glucose monitors are giving us unprecedented insight into blood sugar regulation. Yet despite all our advances in nutrition science, many of us remain confused about one basic question: when should we eat?
Perhaps before answering that question, we need to understand what hunger actually is.
Hunger Is More Than An Empty Stomach
For many years, hunger was viewed largely through a biological lens. We became hungry, we ate, we felt full. Yet modern science paints a far more nuanced picture.
Appetite is regulated through an intricate network involving hormones, blood sugar, the nervous system, the gut microbiome and the brain. Researchers now understand that the gut and brain are in constant communication through the gut–brain axis, influencing appetite, mood and behaviour.
This means that hunger is never simply happening in the stomach. Poor sleep can increase hunger the following day. Chronic stress can amplify cravings through the effects of cortisol. Blood sugar fluctuations can leave us searching for food despite having eaten only a few hours earlier. Even our emotional state can shape how we interpret the body’s signals.
Over time, I have come to think about hunger in four broad categories. The challenge is that they rarely arrive one at a time.
A four o’clock chocolate craving may begin as physical hunger because lunch was inadequate. Poor sleep may have amplified appetite through changes in ghrelin and leptin. Stress may have elevated cortisol. At the same time, your brain may have learned to associate four o’clock with something sweet, while the chocolate itself offers a small burst of dopamine after a demanding day. What feels like one craving may actually be several different forms of hunger layered on top of each other.
Physical Hunger
Sometimes the chocolate is exactly what it appears to be. Physical hunger is the body’s genuine request for nourishment. It tends to build gradually and is often accompanied by a drop in energy, reduced concentration or increasing thoughts about food. When we respond to physical hunger with a nourishing meal, the body generally feels satisfied.
Yet, many people have become surprisingly disconnected from these signals. Years of dieting, skipping meals, eating on the run or overriding the body’s cues can leave us uncertain about what genuine hunger feels like. One of the most common things I hear in clinic is, “I don’t actually know if I’m hungry anymore.”
When someone says that, I am rarely interested only in what they are eating. I am usually more interested in their relationship with their body. Have they spent years ignoring hunger? Are they eating according to rules rather than cues? Have they lost trust in the body’s ability to regulate itself?
Conditioned Hunger
The physician Dr Jason Fung, known for his work on fasting and metabolic health, describes what he calls conditioned hunger. This is the hunger that develops through habit, routine and expectation rather than biological need.
Perhaps your four o’clock chocolate appears every day at precisely the same time. Perhaps it accompanies a cup of tea. Perhaps it has become the bridge between work and the evening ahead. Over time, the brain learns these associations so effectively that the expectation itself can trigger appetite.
One of the most interesting observations from fasting is that hunger often arrives in waves. What feels urgent at four o’clock may have disappeared entirely by four thirty. This does not mean the experience was not real. It simply means it may not have reflected a genuine need for fuel.
Sometimes the body is asking for food. Sometimes the brain is simply responding to a familiar pattern.
Emotional Hunger
Food has always been about more than nutrition.
Long before we understand language, we learn that nourishment arrives alongside comfort, safety and connection. A crying baby is soothed and fed. Families gather around meals. We celebrate with food, grieve with food and express love through food. It is therefore hardly surprising that many of us continue to reach for food when we feel anxious, lonely, exhausted or overwhelmed.
Perhaps your four o’clock chocolate arrives after a difficult meeting, a challenging conversation or a day that has simply felt heavier than usual. In those moments, what you may be reaching for is not food itself, but what food represents: comfort, relief, reassurance or a moment of pause.
As I have progressed through my psychotherapy training, I have become increasingly interested in the question beneath the craving: what am I actually needing right now?
Sometimes the answer is food. Often, however, it is comfort, reassurance, connection or simply permission to stop.
Food can be a beautiful source of comfort and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The challenge arises when it becomes our primary strategy for managing emotional discomfort. The chocolate may soothe the feeling for a moment, but the underlying need often remains.
Hedonic Hunger
The fourth type of hunger may be the most modern of all. Researchers refer to this as hedonic hunger, from the Greek word hedone, meaning pleasure. I often think of it as reward hunger because it is driven less by a need for comfort and more by a desire for stimulation, anticipation and enjoyment.
Unlike emotional hunger, which seeks comfort, hedonic hunger seeks pleasure. It is driven by the brain’s reward pathways and the neurotransmitter dopamine, which plays a central role in motivation, anticipation and pleasure.
We live in an environment designed to stimulate these pathways. We scroll, swipe, click, stream and consume. Many highly processed foods are engineered to maximise reward, combining sugar, fat and salt in ways that keep us wanting more.
Perhaps nothing is wrong at all. You are not physically hungry or emotionally distressed. Your brain simply wants a little reward. This is often the hunger people find hardest to recognise because it can feel remarkably similar to physical hunger.
One of the most fascinating observations from fasting is that people often discover they do not miss food itself as much as they miss everything that surrounds it. They miss the ritual, the anticipation, the reward and the momentary pleasure that eating provides.
The urge feels real because it is real. The difference is that it may not always be the body asking for nourishment. Sometimes it is the brain seeking stimulation.
What GLP-1s Are Teaching Us About Hunger
One of the most interesting aspects of the GLP-1 conversation is not weight loss. It is what many people describe as the disappearance of food noise. Again and again, people report that the constant background chatter about food becomes quieter. Cravings become less intense. The mental energy devoted to eating begins to fade into the background.
As a nutritional therapist, this makes sense. GLP-1 plays an important role in satiety, appetite regulation and blood sugar control. From a psychotherapist lens, I find it fascinating for a different reason.
If the noise becomes quieter, what exactly was the noise? Was it physical hunger? A conditioned habit? Emotional discomfort? A search for pleasure and reward?
Perhaps the most important lesson these medications are teaching us is that appetite is never purely biological, just as it is never purely psychological. It exists at the intersection of hormones, metabolism, behaviour, emotion, environment and experience.
The Next Time You Reach For The Chocolate
The next time you find yourself reaching for that four o’clock chocolate, pause for a moment. Not to judge yourself. Not to resist the craving. Simply to become curious. Are you physically hungry? Responding to habit? Seeking comfort? Or looking for a little pleasure at the end of a long day?
The answer may be different each time.
What feels like one craving may actually be several forms of hunger layered on top of one another. Perhaps the goal is not to suppress hunger but to understand it. Hunger is not a failure of willpower. It is information. And perhaps the most important question we can ask ourselves is not, “What should I eat?” But rather, what am I truly hungry for?
Alexandra Cortina is a Registered Nutritional Therapist, Director at BANT, founder of MeyaHealth, and psychotherapist in training.
References
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2. Dallman, M.F., Pecoraro, N., Akana, S.F., et al. (2003). Chronic stress and obesity: A new view of “comfort food”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100(20), 11696–11701.
3. Lutter, M., & Nestler, E.J. (2009). Homeostatic and hedonic signals interact in the regulation of food intake. Journal of Nutrition, 139(3), 629–632.
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5. Fung, J. (2016). The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss. Greystone Books.
