Snowdays, The Hunger Habit- A Book Summary

Life came to a standstill for a day and a half as we had a snowstorm here. What would be trivial weather up North cripples life in the South as we are unaccustomed to it, plus the thawing and refreezing of snow results in icy, treacherous roads. 

I was quite happy to be housebound for a couple of days and hibernated on a corner of the couch while we ate down leftovers and made simple meals when we had to. After a gap of a couple of years, I cast on a new sweater and knitted for hours until the nerves in my hands were tingling. 

Sweater in the making

Instant noodles with everything
from the crisper

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While browsing through the new books section of the public library a week or two ago, I came across the book The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry and How to Stop by Judson Brewer, published about a year ago. This post is a summary of the book, along with thoughts on books on similar topics that I've read over the years.

It is one of the many paradoxes of mankind today that a proportion of humanity struggles- in the face of poverty, war, displacement, famine- to obtain enough food to eat, while at the same time another category of humans- mostly affluent, but also sometimes those living in poverty (in food deserts) in the developed world- struggle with an overabundance of food that threatens their health and well-being. There are countless books on dieting and weight loss and controlling hunger as people often spend their entire adult lives trying to deal with this obesogenic food environment. There are other innovations too, like the class of drugs called GLP-1 agonists, recent game-changers for some people in reducing appetite and "food noise" and controlling weight and blood sugar. 

I've always been interested in these issues from both a biology and public health perspective, and from the very personal perspective of being annoyed at why I give in to cravings and overeat certain foods, fried snacks, for example. The feeling of being out of control around food, even occasionally, is frustrating. I've read several books on the subject of managing hunger over the years and it was interesting to go back and compare and contrast them. 

In 2014, I wrote a post here summarizing some practical advice from Mindless Eating (2006) by Brian Wansink. He emphasizes the food environment and food psychology. It is important to note that since then Wansink's research has come under fire for statistical misconduct- here's a good article on that whole story. Still, the major findings are reasonable- setting up your food environment for success and establishing some useful habits. 

In 2019, I read The Hungry Brain (2017) by Stephan Guyenet and posted a summary on Goodreads. This well-researched book is a deep-dive on how the brain controls hunger and eating behavior. Among other things, it covers how modern food is highly rewarding and entertaining and how that drives craving and overeating. Not many of us want to eat a bland, repetitive diet by choice, but it may be possible to find a middle ground and eat simpler foods some or most of the time. 

Soon after, during my pandemic reading in 2020, I read The End of Overeating (2009) by David Kessler, summarized in this post. He makes the point that weight gain is primarily due to overeating and again blames the highly palatable, stimulating, rewarding foods we are surrounded with. He has many tips for responding to this environment we live in, including seeing food as nourishment and not reward, and planning our eating. 

It was interesting to go back and read my summaries of these books. Taking notes is honestly the only way I can retain valuable information that I glean from books. Also, the posts have insightful comments from readers sharing their own experience with these issues. A couple of the wise comments mentioned "awareness" and "mindfulness" being the keys to not overeating, and that's exactly the theme of the book I read this month, The Hunger Habit (2023) by Judson Brewer. I've posted a summary of the book on Goodreads. 

Brewer's book is similar to the other books above in the sense that it tries to explain why we behave the way we do, and how to use it to our advantage, working with ourselves instead of fighting against ourselves. This book is not suitable for people with a history of or currently suffering from eating disorders, or with people who are overeating as a response to trauma- those require different types of specialized help. It assumes that we are satisfying our hunger well, and offers advice for those cravings or habitual pangs that arise when we are clearly well-fed and not hungry. 

The way I interpreted it, the central premise of the book is that we overeat because it is rewarding- we are programmed to chase calories, plus satisfying a craving feels good and soothing in the moment. The only way to change the habit is to be mindful and learn through practice, introspection, and trial and error that overeating is in fact not rewarding. (This whole exercise actually goes for any habit and not just overeating. It could just as easily apply to a smoking addiction or a shopping addiction.) It is fine to say, eat mindfully, be aware, but what does that really mean in practice? The book has many practical tips for this. 

I have many takeaways from this book, noted below: 

Introduction and general ideas from this book

• Aim of this book: help you change your relationship with food. Some common types of bad relationships with food- we cannot tell if we are hungry or eating our emotions, can’t stop eating once we start, mindless eating, strict food rules (food jail)
• How did we end up in this mess? We don’t even know if we are hungry. Cravings that come from very different spaces and places all converge on one place- the urge to eat. Convenience, food engineering and emotions add up to make it really easy to get locked into poor eating habits.
• How food habits form: Our behaviors are dictated by reinforcement learning. 
• Positive reinforcement: finding food sources, remembering and going back for more- trigger/cue, behavior, result/reward
• Negative reinforcement: avoiding unpleasant or unsafe experiences
• The only way to change behavior is to change its position in the reward hierarchy. This can happen randomly like when getting food poisoning turns you off a favorite food. Or it can happen on purpose, which is based on one simple and critical ingredient: awareness.
• Why diets and measuring don’t work: They focus on willpower to lose weight, which has one fatal flaw- that’s now how our brains work. We are wired to prefer a smaller reward now over a bigger reward later. Willpower runs out sooner or later.

On hunger and cravings

• Identifying your urges- hunger or something else? Craving is different from hunger. Hunger focuses on getting calories in (fuel for the body) while craving is centered around the desire for something in particular. Unless we regain bodily awareness, it can be challenging to understand the difference between hunger and craving.
• Reconnect with your body: The body scan can be a helpful and simple and powerful way to start reinhabiting your own body. Over time, you will begin to distinguish cravings from homeostatic hunger.
• Get to know your pleasure plateaus: The pleasure plateau can let you know when you’ve had enough- is this bite more pleasurable, the same, or less pleasurable than the last one? Don’t fall for the “clean plate club”- stop eating when you’ve had enough.
• Craving tool- Go ahead and eat whatever you’re craving but pay careful attention to what you’re getting from it. You may find that it isn't quite as satisfying or fun as you thought it would be. 
• “What do I get from this?”
• Another craving tool: Notice when you have a craving for food, imagine eating it in all its glory, then imagine the results in great detail, how it felt in your body. The urge might pass or lose its power (disenchantment) or it may get stronger in which case you can eat the food with awareness and record in your mind how it makes you feel.

Food habit loops

• The first step is to map your food habit loops
• Why you eat- craving, stress, boredom, habit are all different from true hunger
• What you eat- Food high in sugar or simple carbs affect the brain differently
• How you eat- quickly and mindlessly or mindfully
• Mapping out your habit loops of {{trigger -> behavior -> result/reward}} is like flipping a light switch to see your behavior and where you are tripping up
• Interrupting habit loops with awareness
• If you pay attention and experience that something is better than expected, you get a positive prediction error and that behavior is reinforced.
• If you pay attention and experience that something is worse than expected- the salty bag of potato chips gave me a headache- you get a negative prediction error in your brain and that behavior isn’t reinforced.
• If you don’t pay attention, you can’t get a positive or a negative prediction error. You just keep the old habit going.
• Practically speaking, for most unhelpful behaviors, the more we pay attention, the more disenchanted we get, they appear less and less magical because we’re seeing and feeling clearly that they are not rewarding.
• Build your disenchantment databank, a store of memories where satisfying a craving didn't actually make you feel better. When you have enough data of this type, your cravings don’t have the same pull that they used to.
• The question “what am I getting from this?” is set up to help you right now. Move from overindulgence and automatic eating to being content now.
• A choice freely chosen will be embraced more deeply and more consistently than one which is dictated from on high
• Step 1 is awareness of old habit loops
• Step 2 is awareness of how unrewarding the old habit loops are
• Step 3 is an unforced freedom of choice
• When it comes to changing habits- whether letting go of old ones or developing new ones- the brain follows one path and one path only- changing reward value.
• Eating mindfully has a higher reward value than perpetuating unhelpful habit loops.

Mindful eating

• Mindfulness is awareness and curiosity. Eating with awareness means that you notice how food looks, smells, feels, tastes. Pay attention to your experience in 6 categories- seeing, hearing, feeling (body sensations), smelling, tasting, thinking.
• RAIN on the craving monster’s parade. We have a screaming toddler inside us but we can love ourselves and train ourselves to choose helpful behaviors at the same time.
• Recognize the craving (persistent desire for a specific food) and relax into it
• Allow and accept the experience with a smile- don’t distract or try to do anything about it
• Investigate the experience with curiosity- how does it feel in your body?
• Note the experience and name the sensations you’re experiencing- don’t identify with your thoughts, emotions, body sensations
• Noting: Noting is putting a frame around our experience. It inserts a bit of distance and you gain perspective. You are not as identified with your cravings and they lose power.
• Stay curious and open minded instead of getting stuck in habit loops of self-judgment and blame: What do I really want?
• Awareness helps you to become enchanted with (and therefore choose) foods that serve your health and well-being.
• Success in changing eating habits depends on curiosity and kindness.
• Kindness cools the brain regions that heat up with craving
• Practice genuine kindness to yourself: “You’re doing the best you can”
• It is human to slip up but by putting these experiences to good use, you can transform them from failure/shame into an impetus for progress.
• What can I learn from this?
• Instead of treating cravings as obstacles that we need to endure or fight we can think of them as teachers and lean in and learn from them.

So, yes, this book is valuable in going to the root cause of the craving and changing behavior in a sustainable way. In the end, we have to take all this knowledge from various books and other sources and use whatever applies to our particular lives and what makes sense to us. I'm trying to be more mindful in other areas of my life and therefore I think I found this book at the right time for me. Putting it into practice will be the work of a lifetime as it always is! 

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Today's moment of fitness is some gentle myth-busting. Few people would disagree with this statement: "You lose weight though diet and exercise." However, it turns out that while exercise has incredible and wide-ranging benefits- the closest thing we have to a magic pill, I'd say- the one benefit it does not have is the one thing that people commonly use it for- weight loss. 

People who exercise primarily for weight loss can end up feeling frustrated and disillusioned. It is just not the right tool for the job. A better way to think about it is something I read on Reddit that stuck in my head- "Our physical activity controls our fitness but not our fatness. Our food intake controls our fatness but not our fitness." 

Why is exercise secondary to diet for weight loss? Here's a great article that explains this concept. 

• Exercise accounts for only a small portion of the calories we burn daily. 
• Weight loss is based on calorie deficit (burning more calories than we consume) and it is hard to create a significant calorie deficit through exercise. 
• Exercise can undermine weight loss in subtle ways, for instance, by making us hungrier.
• Exercise can lead to other physiological changes that help us conserve (rather than burn) energy- our bodies get more efficient. 

Exercise at any weight will make you fitter and stronger. And, interesting, studies show that people who exercise regularly maintain weight loss more than people who don't. But if fat loss or weight loss are your primary goals, implement sustainable changes in what and how much you eat and don't rely on exercise alone. 

The bottom line: You typically can’t exercise yourself thin. You definitely can’t diet yourself strong.