Sensations About Eating And Eating Behavior

Summary

• What are sensations about eating ?
• Satisfaction of food sensations

What are sensations about eating ?

Hunger, satiety and satiation are familiar words, but what do they really mean and what is their impact on our organism?If you have ever eaten without feeling hunger, or held back from eating for any reason whatsoever, then you have already gone against your own sensations about eating. While this act will be ponctual for some people, it may become pathological if it settles in time in which it will cause suffering, leading to modification of eating behavior, and thus modification of weight. This newsletter aims to help you better understand the mechanisms of sensations about eating.

SOME CONCEPTS

• Sensations about eating (hunger, satiety, satiation…) are the result of internal (from within the organism) and external signals (from the environment) that interact to regulate food intake, either by stimulating or by inhibiting it.

As a matter of fact, sensations about eating are much larger than what one may think and involve complex mechanisms. In a situation of eating disorders or obesity, people generally emancipate themselves from their sensations about eating, to the detriment of their internal energy balance.

Satisfying our sensations about eating

Three conditions determine sensations about eating: meal frequency, meal size and food choice; which are themselves determined by many biological, environmental and individuals factors.

CONCLUSION

Sensations about eating are the language through which our body expresses its physiological and hedonic needs. They reflect a lack of energy or specific nutrients, but also a state of nutritional balance. By regulating our food intake, these sensations have a major influence on our weight stability. Nevertheless, our sensations can be disrupted in many situations :

• Benign ones in the short term : long meeting, flu, stress, closed supermarket, special occasions, etc… → no worries ! The organism adapts its energy balance in these situations
• And others that are more permanent : restrictive diet, compulsions, disease, altered hedonic system, etc… → the body is no longer able to compensate.