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Appetite, hunger and weight

Understanding why you feel the need to eat is an important step in controlling food intake and maintaining a healthy weight.

It’s the all-important interaction and relationships between your appetite, hunger and satiety that causes you to eat. Problems arise when the delicate balance between them breaks down.

Hunger and appetite, are they the same thing?

No they’re not. Though the terms appetite and hunger are often used interchangeably they are in fact different. It’s important to identify those differences.

What is appetite?

Appetite relates to the desire for specific types of food and eating experiences. Appetite is the short-term, environmental regulation of feeding from hour to hour. The appetite is concerned with the immediate effects of eating including salivating, tasting, chewing, swallowing, and the condition of the stomach and intestines.

What is hunger?

Hunger is a craving for food associated with a number of objective sensations including hunger pains or a tightness or "gnawing" feeling in the stomach, general tenseness, and restlessness. Hunger, as opposed to cravings or appetite, is largely physiological.

What is the satiety centre?

The satiety centre is neurologically connected to the hunger centre and the appetite. It’s the satiety centre that gives you a feeling of fulfilment and tells you that you that you have eaten enough. We eat when we feel hungry. It’s natural. If your body doesn’t know when you are full, however, you can eat too much and become obese.

Learning to only eat when you are hungry and to only eat enough to satisfy your physiological need for food is one of our primary concerns at the Gastric Band Service. Gastric banding can help to create that mindfulness of eating that will help you to recognise the difference between appetite and hunger and to know when you have reached satiety.

Contact us now to discuss your situation in more detail