Fear of Hunger

Is the fear of hunger a basic as instinct? Many people are never deprived of food for long but somehow always have an undercurrent of worry about what or when their next opportunity to eat will come. There are food related cultural ideals such as: 

• Eating everything on a plate
• Drinking something other than water
• Having a meat and several vegetables
• Expecting dessert after a meal, sometimes fruit but more likely something heavily laden with sugar 

And so we tend to eat when food is available even if we are not particularly hungry. If we are traveling or busy with work, we may eat while we work - munching on things available from a vending machine. By the day we are not particularly satisfied but we are not hungry either.

Recognizing that the fear of hunger comes to us down through the generations - it is part of the heredity of us all - may help. But it takes conscious effort to overcome the fear. Give yourself the gift of eating only foods of the amount and type your body truly needs.