The Hunger

Have you ever experience The Hunger?
The grumbling, the rumbling, the insane little monster clattering, thumping and crashing around in your belly leaving you with a feeling of utter empty-stomachness that you glance over to any person (or animal or plant etc.) in the room and instead see a big chunk of food?

Have you ever eaten a full plate of food, thinking surely this will fill you up and then there is no change in how you feel? Even after eating slowly, chewing lots and putting you fork down after every. single. mouthful.

Water won't help you with this predator. You can't run. You can't hide. You most definitely can't distract yourself.

Ok, ok I'll stop scaring the little children now ;)
You know what I mean though right? Those days when you seem to eat and eat and yet never feel full? I have been experiencing this lately... more than usual (you all know I generally eat a lot anyway!) and I'm blaming my runs. Not really- because I love running and would never want to upset it. No, I am concluding it to be my runs from a tested hypothesis. Bam.

Just look at today's breakfast:

 Overnight oats in an almost empty jar of mixed nut butter, green grapes and a nudie juice

 Yes, it was quite a sweet brekky... but I didn't care at that moment, I needed food.

 I could really trick people into thinking I eat full jars of nut butter for brekky with photos like the one above. Not to worry though... ta-da!

....Guys, I was still hungry after all that and had a handful of raw nuts too. Can you believe it?
I guess I wanted to write this post because I wanted to not only preach about listening to your body but also add to the credibility of my wise, wise words by including my very own personal experience.

I believe that every signal your body gives you is given for a reason, like if your body hurts it may mean that whatever you're doing is not right (maybe you're running wrong, or your sitting for too long, or you've done something your body wasn't ready for), if you are extremely fatigued it could mean your pushing your body too hard- over exercising, not eating enough/ right nutritional requirements or your over-stressed, Your body heats up when you have a fever to kill the bugs that make you sick, it'll become red and itchy indicating an allergic reaction, your body is super smart and and will tell you if something's not right/ needs to be changed if you listen to it. Which is why if you're super hungry, your body needs extra fuel and you should feed it.

Now, I'm not talking about that little niggling 'I could eat something' because you're bored hunger. I'm talking about the body screaming at you to bite into something, anything, so the amylase can break it down, the oesophagus can swallow and peristalsis can push it on into the stomach/ beast.

That type of hunger can lead to all sorts of problems though...

• Firstly the hunger can mean you reach for something quicker, packaged and less than healthy to suppress your scary alter-ego (chips, microwave pie, two minute noodles, many slices of white bread)
• Secondly, you will probably end up eating a lot faster than usual thanks to the burning desire to get said food into your body
• Point 2 can result in the creation of a  hypothetical muzzle for your natural fullness signals, ergo resulting in a lot more food (and from point 1- maybe not the best choices) being consumed
• Lastly at the end of that meal (or large amount of random foods) instead of feeling happy, fed and ready to go, you're bloated, over full and maybe feeling a little bit sick.

Now I feel like I might be going off on a totally different tangent... as usual.
What I'm saying is- if you have experienced the hunger, feed yourself, you're body needs it for some reason or another, just make sure you're careful as the hunger can make you choose less-than-good food choices and you can also over do it.

Here are some of my top tips from my own personal experience with THE HUNGER!

1. Bring healthy snacks with you everywhere. I generally always have nuts/ trail mix/ fruit with me
2. This is also the case if you're super-duper bite-your-arm-off hungry. You should definitely make a filling, healthy, nutritious and yummy something or other, but to make sure you can think properly while waiting for your meal to come together have a little snack (see above)
3. Please, please, please re-fuel with loving and nutritious and filling foods and make sure you eat slowly and enjoy it. Listen to your body and when you feel satisfied stop.
4. Don't ignore THE HUNGER. Your body is telling you something- listen to it!
   

Here's a little insider into a typical lunch that feeds the beast:

 A multi-grain roll with hommus, steamed pumpkin, spinach, veggie burger, grilled capsicum, eggplant, zucchini and sliced tomato:

 With the leftover stuff on the side (the roll is quite small, so there is always a side salad of the filling!)

 Or a big bowl o' veggies:

 Chopped, broccoli, brussels sprouts, capsicum, tomato, corn, kale, zucchini, lentils and satay tofu all chucked in a fry pan with garlic and some water, cooked for about 5 mins until soft and then mixed with a cup of cooked brown rice:

So you see, I eat a large amount of food when the hunger strikes, but I make sure it's the right stuff, filled with lots of filling and delicious veggies, healthy fats and energising low-GI carbohydrates.

What do you think?
Please tell me I'm not the only one with THE HUNGER!
How (if you do have it) do you deal with it?
Has your body ever told you something amazing?

Bye for now friends! :D