Appetite vs. Hunger

I’ve been back on the low fat raw food diet for just over a week now. I’ve been at the office a lot over the past week and today was really the first opportunity we had to get out and do some shopping. I waited in the food court while my son played on the playground and my wife shopped.

I wasn’t very well prepared for the trip. I had only eaten a slice of watermelon before we left and took 4 bananas with me, so I got hungry while I was there. After I ate the bananas, I was no longer hungry — but I had an appetite for the chicken strips and fries that I had purchased for my daughter.

And that helped me realize something important: The difference between being hungry and having an appetite for something.

This is how the 80/10/10 raw food diet helps you lose weight. For the most part, you eat when you are hungry. Sure, you also eat for taste — there’s nothing like fresh fruit, and if you are like most people, you will have an appetite for it — but that is much different from an appetite for cooked foods. You could eat an entire quart / liter of strawberries and only have a couple hundred calories of the food we were meant to eat — food that would digest quickly and begin to be used by your body.

However, to be successful with this diet, you shut off that part of yourself (the appetite) that tells you to pick up a slice of pizza or a hamburger at the food court when you visit the local mall. They are no longer choices that you are willing to accept. You don’t want several hundred ill-mixed calories that your body will labor to digest, that will take a few days to pass through your digestive system, and that will, in many people, end up being deposited as more fat — making the rest of your body work harder to maintain, wearing out those systems even faster.

But this is not what you want, is it?

Taking this further, I don’t think that many people know the difference between being hungry and having an appetite for something. I’d guess (based on the way I used to eat and still would if I allowed myself to do so) that most people eat because they have an appetite for something — and not because they are hungry.

So try this little experiment: Commit to a 100% low fat raw food diet for just a week. Seven days. 168 hours. That’s not very long; you can do it! Eat nothing but fresh fruit and fresh vegetables during that time (a handful of raw nuts or seeds daily is also OK). After a couple of days, go to the food court at your local mall. Think about what you would like to buy (but you are not going to do it because you’ve committed to this for a week). Then think about your raw food. One is appetite. One is hunger. See the difference?

Now answer this question: Do you want to eat some raw food? If not, then you are not hungry; you simply want to feed your appetite. And that’s what I want you to learn. There is a difference between hunger and appetite.

Hunger will keep you alive.

Appetite can kill you.

Please learn the difference (my little experiment will help) and let you hunger serve you while you ignore your appetite.

P.S. — Do you see what committing to a low fat, raw food diet long-term could do for your health?