There is a podcast about mental hunger here if you prefer listening to reading: http://tabithafarrar.com/2017/10/defining-mental-hunger-important-anorexia-recovery-podcast/
What is mental hunger?
Mental hunger is thinking about food. You might not even be thinking about eating food, but you may be thinking about food nonetheless. It can also be thinking about things that lead to or are associated with eating food. For example, when I was planning my exercise routine I was really thinking about food, because exercise made it more allowable for me to eat. Or these little OCD behaviors that are also wound up in your eating disorder — thinking about them and the activity of doing them counts as mental hunger.
Egregiously, mental hunger often can be actually thinking about food. So planning meals in your head; fretting about shopping; juggling things around the day so that you don’t eat more than usual; and also thinking about foods that you don’t allow yourself to eat. It’s like you are window shopping in your brain for food all the time but never actually going into the store.
Why do we have mental hunger when we are in energy deficit?
Your body is low on fuel. Your intake is not enough to match your expenditure. So your body reacts by lowering metabolism. To do this, it systematically starts to get rid of all procedures that use energy but are not vital. If your brain believes that you are living in a famine environment, then physical hunger signals are not justified as a use of energy. It doesn’t want to waste any energy at all, so it ceases to give you physical hunger signals. These will come back as you come out of energy deficit. In the meantime, the brain will use mental hunger to signal to you that you need to eat more food.
You are thinking about food because you need to eat food. Period.
How long will mental hunger last?
As long as it needs to!
When you come out of energy deficit your body will begin to produce normal physical hunger signals, and your mental hunger will gradually decrease. It is there because it is needed, when it ceases to be needed, it will dissipate.
How should you respond to mental hunger?
Eat food.
You go with it. Scary as that is, if you are thinking about food you should be eating food.
Does this mean I will eat all the time forever?
Your body is smart. When you are in energy balance your brain stops getting feedback from the body that you need to eat all the time. Your mental hunger goes when you are in energy balance.
No, you will not eat like this all the time forever. You will have no desire to eat like this when you are nutritionally rehabilitated. This sort of eating is needed right now, and when it is no longer needed your thinking about food all the time diminishes.
So …. where does extreme hunger come into this?
Extreme hunger is what some of us get when we start eating more food and the brain realizes that it is no longer in a famine environment. In a nutshell, extreme hunger is when your physical hunger cues come in at the level of your mental hunger … i.e. all the time! Just like mental hunger, extreme hunger will diminish as you come out of energy deficit.
Extreme hunger doesn’t happen to everyone. If it does happen to you then you go with it. Eat. When your body is in energy balance your extreme hunger will reduce and you will be left with normal levels of hunger.
What if I am “weight restored” and I still have mental hunger?
First off: weight restored according to whom?
A graph and a chart in the doctors office? Nah. You’re likely not weight restored. I’m beginning to move away from that term as people get so confused and think that if they hit a BMI 19 they are weight restored. Your body will tell you when you are weight restored. A better term is “nutritionally rehabilitated.” Regardless of what your weight is, when you are nutritionally rehabilitated your mental hunger will decrease. Nutritional rehabilitation is more than just putting on weight. You also have to amend that Energy Debt.
True nutritional rehabilitation is evident only in your mental state. Sure, you likely have to gain weight to get there, but you cannot tell if a person is nutritionally rehabilitated or not from their weight.
If you still have mental hunger I would guess that you are still restricting somewhere, or that your body simply needs more food and more time yet in order to reach full nutritional rehabilitation. You cannot be suppressing your weight and also be “weight restored.” That doesn’t even make sense, however many dietitians and therapists, and medical doctors support weight suppression by telling clients and patients that they are “weight restored” just because they are no longer emaciated.
What if my mental hunger is only asking me for “junk food?”
Then you eat junk food. Without judgement.
Your body will ask you for what it needs. When you are in a state of malnutrition often you will crave and think about highly processed and sweet foods because these are a fast source of nutrition. Many of us only want to eat processed foods for a while in recovery. Don’t fret. Your body needs these foods in order to achieve balance. Once it has done that, you will find that you naturally begin to eat a more balanced diet.
Do not fight the urge to eat processed foods. Do not negotiate and substitute what you really want for a “healthier” version. The quicker you allow yourself to FEAST on the foods that you want, the faster your brain will think that the FAMINE is over.
Bottom line: if you are thinking about food you need to eat food. Do not judge the what, the when, or the quantity of the food you want to eat in recovery.
Mental hunger is your guide as to how much you need to eat in recovery. If you follow your mental hunger you will eat accordingly to what your body wants and needs. As you come out of energy deficit your mental hunger will decrease.
i usee to think about food all the time as a kid , before ed…… there again i guess i ate and ate and ate…and was happy and healthy!
Totally can relate. I hope I can get back to that mental state of thinking about food then simply eating and moving on to the next one without being guilty of it
But how do i know if i’m just thinking about food or its mental hunger? I think about food all the time? Please help x
This is really hard for me, as anyone looking at me would think I was borderline overweight. However I’m still getting a lot of mental, and physical, hunger and it is just really hard to ignore all the everyone-needs-to-be-fit-and-athletic and only-eat-healthy-food messages that we are surrounded with every day. I try my best, but when I see pictures of girls that look like me, and they are the ‘unhealthy’ one in weight-loss advertising and such, it is rather difficult. It is especially hard to believe that I will not just gain a ridiculous amount of weight because according to any dietitian or calculator, which I know aren’t accurate, tell me that because I am not active I only burn a teeny amount of calories a day- again, I know they aren’t accurate but it’s hard to shake off everything we’ve ever been taught to believe as true about food and weight.
Thanks for another of your incredibly helpful posts, Tabitha.
You know your truth Jane. The uneducated opinions of others should not trump what you know to be true and right for your body and health.
Hi Tabitha, what if I am over my pre-ed weight but I still have a lot of mental hunger? Why is my body and mind doing that?
Your body still needs more food. Please see my blog post on Energy Debt.
I listened to this podcast episode on Sunday – I’m a little behind! Just a few minutes ago, I wanted a muffin after I’d had my afternoon snack. Had the muffin, thanked myself for hearing the mental hunger cue, and wanted to thank you for podcasting!
Yay!
Tabitha, I know you don’t usually do these kinds of posts, and this isn’t strictly anorexia-related exactly, but would you be able to do a video/blog post or something on how to deal with being fat after recovery? I, for example, am actually fat; not the I’m-skinny-but-have-body-dysmorphia-so-I-think-I’m-fat fat. I am not unhealthy- quite the contrary, this is the size where I am the healthiest, where I don’t restrict or exercise compulsively- no, it is the aesthetics of being fat that I struggle with.
Would you be able to do maybe a short video or something on struggling with being fat aesthetically? Again, I know it isn’t strictly ED-related, and seeing as you didn’t have this issue yourself it might not be something you could make a video about, but is it something you would consider?
Thanks,
J..
Hi Tabitha, my brain lately has been thinking this: “wow I’m so glad I haven’t had as much or any mental hunger today” would this kind of thinking actually be mental hunger?
Ya Same type of situation is Going on with me too
Could anyone please tell me what to do about it.
Hi,
I’ve been experiencing mental hunger and exreme hunger lately and I wanted to say that your blog posts help me A LOT with dealing it and letting restriction go. But before I knew about extreme hunger, I always restricted, purged… and I kind of started emotional eating. I ate, when I was sad, felt guilty, restricted… I ate, when I was upset, felt guilty, restricted… and so on. Was this extreme hunger and my ED just told me I had a binge eating disorder? Or am I really in danger of getting it, if I respond to my mental hunger? (I mean I have to respond it. I know, I don’t have a choice.) But I just want to know, if I should be aware of emotional eating disorders.
Thanks. I’m not perfect, nor do I want to be. Yesterday, I didn’t eat any simple carbs or simple sugar because thats all I ate for awhile. Today I drank a milkshake for lunch and I am feeling better. But thank you, just does not feel normal craving simple carbs and simple sugar all the time. I’ll also try not to supress my mental hunger. It’s scary, but I know I can eat normally when my weight has gained
thank you for this article. it helped answer my questions and put my doubts to rest
Thank you so much! I am responding to my mental hunger now for some weeks , and on the one hand it is like hell. I have so much fear ! I really do hope that we this thinking about food all the time will become better one day. But for now, it is even worse than it was when a was gaining weight by using a meal plan. However with this meal plan I did not recover. Only gained some weight and only so slowly. Now I gained much more weight much faster . i’m not feeling better now, but somehow in me I know that this is the only way . somewhere deep inside me I know that when I continue doing this I will fully recover. You Podcasts give me so much hope, thank you so much
What about feeling full after a meal or snack but you are still thinking about food? Is this hunger or not?
wondering this myself. tabitha please reply!
I’m 22 years old. I had struggled with bouts of disordered eating in the past, but have been battling a full-blown restrictive eating disorder for the past year and a half. Despite this disorder meeting all the other criteria for anorexia, it was diagnosed as “mild” ED unspecified–even at my lowest weight, I technically still had a healthy BMI. My waist-to-height ratio still marks me as underweight and I have not had a regular period in more than a year and lost a good portion of my body weight quickly. Now, I am two months into recovery and am making good progress, but I still struggle with mental hunger. Due to the shorter duration of my ED restriction than some and my lack of being unquestionably underweight, it is very hard for me to trust mental hunger. Still battling dysphoria and ED, I do fear my body growing bigger. And people, so convinced I was just really “healthy” and “fit” don’t always take me seriously as I begin to gain weight back. Do I need to listen to all my intrusive thoughts about food the way someone with a more severe disorder would? Is it still normal for me to be experiencing some extreme hunger? Thank you for all your posts; they’ve been so helpful to me in this really difficult and isolating time.
Thank you so SO MUCH..!!! I don’t know who you are, but you are an amazing person; I won’t be exaggerating when I say this article changed my life, and is changing my emotions every day. Whoever you are, I wish you the best 🙂
Sorry but this is a terrible article. “Just eat if you have mental hunger!” Is how me and so many other people got to 200 or 300 pounds in the first place. Even pre ED I had unceasing mental hunger. “Just eat” is the worst possible advice I would have ever received back then.
This has helped me So much throughout my ED. Does extreme hunger even apply to other eating disorders besides anorexia? I am pretty sure I have had every kind of eating disorder for about 10+ years. I have always restricted in some way through obsessive exercise, purging, calorie counting, etc. The lowest my weight got to was about 110 pounds and a BMI of about 18.7ish. I let myself eat foods but never to the point of satiation. I have been eating constantly for a few weeks now and sometimes go back into my disordered patterns, but I am slowly trying to accept weight gain. I have definitely gained weight but still have no period. I honestly have not had my period in about 2+ years, and even before that I only got it because I started Birth control a few years back before my weight loss. Does extreme hunger still apply to my situation?
How do I know I have extreme hunger and I’m not just bingeing cause I enjoy eating whatever I want like an addict.