You are listening to the Stop Binge Eating podcast with Kirsten Sarty, episode number 378.

Hi, let's talk about hunger. For so many people who binge eat, they've not only lost touch with

their hunger signals, but they also confuse physical hunger and emotional mental hunger. They've lost touch with what it feels

like to actually be physically hungry because they've been ignoring their hunger signals for so long

or because they don't let themselves get physically hungry. They eat before it shows up.

They might ignore their hunger because they're trying to lose weight and think they can't

eat every time they're hungry and lose weight. They might not let themselves get hungry because

they don't want to feel a discomfort of hunger or are just eating for pleasure or to escape

emotions when they're not hungry too often. Because they've been so disconnected with their

body's signals, they start to think that their

mental, emotional hunger is actually physical hunger. So many times they might say that they're

hungry thinking they're actually physically hungry, but really they're just thinking about

eating and are wanting to eat. So they say they're hungry when really

their body isn't signaling to them that it's hungry. But they don't even realize that.

There's been so many times that I've been working with someone and they tell me they were hungry

and I asked them, were you physically hungry or did you just want to eat? And they didn't realize until I asked

them that question that they actually weren't physically hungry. And it's important that you're

recognizing which kind of hunger you're experiencing because if you don't know, then it can be

hard to decide if you should eat or not. And also, you could end up eating and not feel satisfied.

So often people are just wanting to eat and they don't even have anything specific in mind.

They just want to eat something. So they do. And they don't feel satisfied. So they eat something

else and are still not satisfied. And they could keep eating different foods to the point where they feel very full and the satisfaction still isn't

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