How can you be hungry when you’re not?  Why does your mind tell you one thing and your heart tell you another and both make you feel like eating? Why do feelings and food seem to be so closely related?

Good questions, all. Hunger is a feeling that occurs when the body feels stress. Usually it is a signal that the body needs fuel, and the obvious response is to eat. This relieves the stress and makes us feel balanced again.

We may not think of feelings and stress in the same thought sequence but emotions do create stress. It may be positive stress which has the feeling of abundance or negative stress which has the feeling of lack.

It’s the negative stress that can really get a food addict’s motor running. Emotional eating is an accepted practice in our society. We feel an emptiness inside and it feels natural to want to fill it with food, but a food addict can take that practice to the extreme.

There are different kinds of hunger. Hunger is a feeling with a name and a face. In other words, hunger has an identity, one not always associated with food.

So what about feeling hungry when you’re not hungry? Well, there are those words again. If you’re going to call it hunger, you’re going to think of food.

What emotions make you eat? When someone dies, I don’t feel like eating at all. When sadness or loneliness consumes me, I crave music, fresh air, deep breaths, the sounds of nature.

My heart knows that these things will re-establish my connection with the Universe and get me back on track. Once the harmony returns all is well, but until it does, everything seems a little off-center.

Food is always the answer to hunger, but what kind of food for what kind of hunger? If we are lonely, should we not seek out friendship instead of eating a quart of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream?

If we are hungry for intellectual stimulation, should we not go to a library or an art museum, read a book, or have lunch with someone who speaks in full sentences and present tenses.

There are many kinds of hunger, and food isn’t the only answer. It is one answer, though, and an important answer for emotional eaters and food addicts.

If you feel hungry when you’re not, it’s time to get connected again.