Overfed and Undersupplied
What if hunger isn’t what we think it is - a signal to be dampened or tricked?
The classic answer is: More volume! Fiber is supposed to fill the stomach and simulate a feeling of fullness. Long term, it hasn’t helped anyone - at least not that I can see.
Perhaps because this approach treats hunger as the cause of the next meal. I’d like to turn that around: what if the previous meal is the cause of the hunger? Hunger as effect.
Cause vs Effect
After a meal, hunger returns at some point. There are several reasons this might happen - and it can come sooner or later: when I eat a carbohydrate-heavy meal, blood sugar spikes. Once insulin does its work, it drops back down - usually even below the previous baseline. When the body detects low blood sugar, it signals danger and demands resupply. For example, in the form of hunger.
We can interpret hunger either as a request to “top up fuel” or as a request to “top up building materials”. In nutrition and weight loss, calories are the go-to unit. Since that’s more of a measure of fuel (“caloric value”), I’d like to invite you to consider the alternative:
The body typically has plenty of fuel in reserve. Many of us know this from uncomfortable personal experience and can verify it with a pinch at the hip. In principle, a lack of fuel can’t be what triggers hunger.
The key word is “in principle”: the body’s own fuel is locked away fairly well. As long as insulin levels are elevated, the body can’t access its own reserves. Feel free to try this in the Simulation, and enable the fat-burning layer in the chart, or the fat-storage zone.
The Alternative
So if it’s not fuel that’s missing - what about building materials? What if hunger signals a need for building materials, but we respond by filling up with fuel instead - or the wrong building materials?
But how would I know which building materials are missing? This question can also be flipped: Which macronutrients count as building materials at all? Which are fuel? One part is straightforward: carbohydrates (starches, sugars) are always and exclusively fuel - never building material. That leaves the other two macronutrients - and this matches my experience: when I respond to hunger with proteins and fats alone, the hunger disappears, lastingly. At the same time, insulin secretion stays moderate, and the body continues to access its own fat stores. So fuel isn’t just plentiful - it’s also available for use.
Overfed but Undersupplied?
Hunger is legitimate. The body is asking us to eat. But if we withhold the building materials it needs and mostly top up with fuel instead, the body has to generate even more hunger - to find the building materials it needs somewhere in all that combustible material. It doesn’t help that mainstream nutritional guidance recommends getting more than half of all calories from carbohydrates, driving insulin levels up in the process.
And that’s why we can be malnourished despite consuming a caloric surplus.
We eat because we’re hungry - but we’re hungry because of what we eat.
Food satisfies. The wrong food creates early hunger.
