As I’ve written recently, I’ve transitioned to a mostly vegan and organic diet over the past few months. A little meat and dairy thrown in here and there, but when I do, I try to stick with sustainably raised meats and organic cheeses (no milk). If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you know I’m always experimenting with diet. I’ve done vegetarian in the past, a few months raw vegan, I’ve water fasted, and so on. And it seems that I’ve always noticed that when I eat healthier, I have less hunger pangs (pains?). But just this weekend I think I’ve figured out why.
In the past I had always attributed decreased hunger with lower meat intake, thinking that the more I ate meat the more I craved it. But now I’m wondering if it has nothing to do with the type of foods I’m eating, but rather the quality. As an example, for the past several days (on top of two months of mostly vegan) I ate pretty much perfectly, no refined sugars, no meat, no dairy, just some homemade vegan meals made of all whole organic foods. And I realized that I had absolutely no food cravings at all, no hunger, no pain. Don’t misunderstand, I still get hungry and have urges to eat when it comes time, but I don’t have those insane hunger pangs and cravings. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve felt like I was starving, when in the past I would get this feeling almost daily.
My thoughts are that maybe hunger pangs are not caused by withdrawal from food in general, but perhaps by withdrawal from the crap that is in food. When I eat SAD (standard American diet) food, I pretty much get feelings of hunger again within 3-5 hours after eating. And that SAD food is most certainly filled with processed and refined sugars and fillers, as well as some combination of artificial chemicals, preservatives, hormones, and antibiotics.
Now that I think about it, it seems so obvious. Put synthetic chemicals into your body, and after several hours your body will ask for them again. I’ve always wondered why humans need to eat 3 meals per day, obviously this can’t be as nature intended it. But I always just chalked the need to eat every few hours up to some sort of social training, but now I think that it’s this combined with the poor quality of food which most people eat. Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it seems that there is something addictive about commercial food, it’s almost like when eating SAD food, we’re eating drugs. Whether this is intentional by big food companies to keep a loyal following, or whether it’s simply a byproduct of such crappy “ingredients” and modern food, I won’t speculate. But I can say for certain that as you increase the quality of food that you eat, whether or not you go raw, vegan, vegetarian, sustainable, free range or whatever you do, you will notice less cravings for food, and will enjoy it more when you do have it.
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Originally posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2010 at 5:48 AM .
Wow, great article! Just this morning before i saw this article, it’s night now and i just saw it and read it (i found it because i did a yahoo search “eating vegetarian no hunger pangs” and your site came up so i clicked on and lo and behold found your article here) so just this morning i was telling my daughter (she’s 27) that it is really amazing how with my new vegetarian diet that i switched my lifestyle to (not a temporary thing, but rather a permanent lifestyle change), and so i eat mostly vegetarian, eat fish around 3 times a week, and eat a little red meat around once every 2 weeks for the B12/Iron Combo that it gives as it is a good boost. So, i creatively made some ground beef/vegetable egg rolls a couple days ago (just not deep fried, baked in oven quoted with olive oil instead) and they were so delicious and i made a large batch so i had about 6 one day and about 4 the next day, and this is not alot of red meat cause it’s super loaded with cabbage and other veggies mixed in with the ground meat, and this morning i had terrible hunger pangs which made me realize how much meat does cause hunger pangs. Everytime i eat a little meat, i notice i get hunger pangs. So i really do believe it is the meat, and as for the other chemical stuff that you were talking about, i believe that could contribute but more so i think that would just make us feel more kind of weak. Eating vegetarian even with fish 2-3 times a week and meat once every 10 days to 2 weeks, i find i feeel light all the time, i never feel sluggish (and i exercise 3 times a week) and i don’t get hunger pangs…like you say just the urge to eat because that is normal but not like hunger pangs. And sometimes i eat just fruit for a meal. Doesn’t always have to be protein/grain/veg/fruit whatever each meal, sometimes just a simple apple and a piece of melon is a meal! I agree with you about this society rules thing that talks about 3 meals a day. Just this morning i was saying all that to my daughter too, i was saying that it’s not true, we don’t need to eat 3 rounded meals a day, it’s hogwash! Look at the tribes on National Geographic in all the different jungles, etc, they never eat 3 rounded meals a day and they don’t eat meat all the time! This is the best i have ever felt all my life, i feel light, i don’t get sluggish, i feel peaceful, relaxed, calm and happy, ofcourse i’m human and get upset over certain happenings, but otherwise i feel like i’ve gotten poisen out of my blood and my body, and i hardly consume sugar now also, so of course that is getting rid of poisen right there. By the way too much sugar intake causes hunger pangs also, and again, it is not natural to humans to consume all this sugar, it causes diabetis, it causes tooth decay, hunger pangs, sluggishness, weakness, etc. So, i agree with you about the chemicals, i been studying all this for years actually, just studying on my own time on the net, it’s not new to me, and yes organic is the supreme way to go! and eliminate food with perservatives, that is poisen and a killer. Perservatives and sugar both cause cancer and make you feel like crap and headaches, dizziness, sluggishness, weakness, etc.
I was blown away when i read your article just now, i feel like i found my twin! LOL 🙂 Nice to meet you!! 🙂
Nice to meet you too Shawn, glad you enjoyed reading this article!