Hunger Chart
What is a Hunger Chart?
A hunger chart is a tool to help you assess whether you are genuinely hungry or just craving food for emotional reasons or because of its availability.
Emotional hunger might be defined as a desire to eat in order to fill an emotional need.
The emotion might be fuelled by emotional factors such as:
- stress
- excitement
- boredom
- tension
Genuine hunger by contrast is when your body needs food in order to meet its need for nutrition or energy.
A Hunger Chart basically asks you to analyse where you are on a scale of 1-10 in terms of your state of hunger, so that you can then decide whether actually it is sensible for you to eat or not.
Using a Hunger Chart
When you think you are hungry, try to assess where you are on the Hunger Chart below to decide whether to eat.
It varies from individual to individual but as a general rule, eat when you notice yourself between 3 & 4 on the list & stop eating at around 6 or 7:
- Faint with hunger
- Feeling starving
- Reasonably hungry
- A little bit hungry
- Neither hungry nor not hungry
- Pleasantly content
- Full
- Over full
- Bloated from eating
- Nauseous from eating
Hunger charts are used in a number of diet books and are one of a number of practical tools that you can use if you are having difficulty in maintaining a sensible healthy diet to assist you in eating for the right reasons and at a sensible level to help keep you fit, healthy and feeling balanced.