Day 11 - Beck Diet Solution, Hunger vs. Cravings

To lose weight and keep it off, we need to have the skill of differentiating between 1) hunger, 2) a desire to eat and 3) cravings.  Beck defines these states as:

• Hunger: when you’ve fasted for several hours and your stomach is empty and may be rumbling;
• A desire to eat: not being particularly hungry but eating because there is food around, like wanting seconds or dessert after a meal;
• Craving: physiological and emotionally intense urge to eat, tension and yearning in your mouth, throat or body.

Know the difference between the three – your success depends on it.  And chances are, if we struggle with weight, we don’t really know yet.  Today’s exercise will sharpen our ability to differentiate between hunger, desire and cravings, and know when it is truly time to eat.

We start by rating our hunger on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0=no hunger and 10=the hungriest you have ever felt.  Today, we will do this four times whenever we eat: 1) right before we start eating, 2) halfway through the meal or snack, 3) once we’ve finished eating and 4) 20 minutes after eating.  The book provides a hunger monitoring chart that you can use.  Each time we rate our hunger, we should also note the accompanying sensations/desires and what they feel like.

If today is not a good day for this task, we can also pick another day.  Talk back against the STs tempting you not to do this exercise.  Beck says that knowing the difference between hunger, desire and cravings isn’t something that can be learned just by reading about them.  We need to physically experience and identify these three states and note the differences between them.  Unless we learn to do this successfully, even if we lose weight we will eventually gain it back.  We may even have to do this exercise periodically to remind ourselves and sharpen our skills when needed.