When you feel a sudden urge to eat something, how do you know what you are feeling is actually hunger or simply a craving for a specific food? This digestive confusion may seem to be the same on the surface, but there are basic differences between hunger and cravings. One may make your stomach growl, while the thought of the other may smack your lips! While hunger may be driven by physiological factors, cravings may be psychological too. Want to know more? Read on!

What is the difference between hunger and craving?

When you experience hunger bouts 1 to 1.5 hours of eating a good meal, it could be a craving. We all eat when we are hungry, but we all must have indulged in a dessert or a snack at a random time of the day when we are not hungry. When done seldom, it may be okay. But if there is a repeated urge or a habit to keep eating a snack or a sweet in between the meals, these can be called cravings.

How does hunger feel?

Physical hunger is the body’s necessity to fulfil the nutritional needs of the body, while craving is a desire for specific foods and may sometimes be emotionally driven. When you are hungry, the symptoms that you will notice are a rumbling sensation in the stomach. You may also feel a typical pain related to hunger in the stomach and in the chest, and one may feel slightly acidic as the acid levels in the stomach rise when your stomach is empty, says dietician Pooja Shah Bhave.

Explaining the symptoms of hunger, Bhave tells Health Shots, “If one is extremely hungry and yet does not eat for several hours, the person will start feeling nauseous. Overall weakness may be reflected in weak muscle movements, irritability, anger or anxiety. With extreme hunger, the sugar levels in the blood may go down and one may start to feel shakiness or jitters. There may be breathlessness, often accompanied by yawning, sleepiness and dizziness. With the blood sugar not reaching the brain, it may lead to confusion and risk of fainting. Whenever one is extremely hungry or does not get food for quite a long time or days, he or she will eat anything served to him or her. It can even be a food he/she does not eat actually or may not like.”

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What does craving feel like?

Craving is defined as an intense desire for a specific food, flavour or texture. If you have an urge to eat after one hour of a meal, it is typically not to do with hunger, but a craving. Hunger takes several hours to develop, but cravings develop suddenly at times. One may get confused and feel that one is hungry, but usually there are no typical signs of hunger.

Usually with the urge to eat, a person will crave very specific types of food and will often make unhealthy choices. The person will typically gravitate towards foods that have high sugar or salt in it rather than healthy alternatives. If during such an urge, a regular homemade meal is served, the person may not choose to eat it. Instead, if a packet of chips, a cake, or a piece of chocolate is offered, the person may eat it right away, explains the expert.

Cravings may also be attributed to psychological factors like emotions, memories or learned associations. But you must know how to deal with cravings, in order to avoid impulsive eating and staying healthy, especially if you are on a weight-loss spree.

Common issues with cravings

Some of the common cravings that people may experience may not be healthy after all. These may lead to certain health issues.

• Sugar-laden desserts and salty snacks are highly addictive foods, and once a person starts eating them, he/she can get addicted to them and start craving them often.
• Cravings are most often but not always associated with emotional eating. Sometimes, people having stress, anxiety and depression may feel like binge-eating certain foods.
• Some physiological health issues like impaired blood glucose or pre-diabetes or hormonal issues like PCOD may cause such cravings.
• More serious issues are eating disorders like bulimia or binge eating disorders that cause high cravings and are seldom associated with non-stop binging on snacks until one feels uncomfortable and requires medical help.

When a person eats along with the hunger pangs, he or she will just fulfill the nutrition and will not gain any weight or be at risk of any diseases. But with cravings and overeating, one is extremely likely to gain weight, be obese and have complications like risk of lifestyle disorders like diabetes or heart ailments.