The crisis of hunger is in fact not a hunger crisis at all. Speaking, of course, completely contextually. Food scarcity, hunger and starvation are sadly still daily realities for far too many humans globally, despite the morally despicable literal throwing away of 50% of available food.
But if you’re here reading this, in your life, your geographic-social-economic circles, there is likely no crisis of hunger. In fact, the crisis is completely the reverse.
The crisis is you are not hungry enough.
Obesity has been surging since the 1980s to the point that it is only a select few countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have not seen an increase in obesity in their national population. Obesity has ballooned 82% since the year 2000. Yet, whilst a global phenomenon, it certainly has a regional slant. Nearly 20% of obesity globally, and more than 25% of severe obesity, reside in just a handful of countries – Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. In America, 70% of the population is either overweight or obese. This will grow to 86.2% by 2030. And whether in Qatar or South Africa, obesity is growing and shortening life spans by between 5 and 20 years. There is no better predictor of a future cancer diagnosis than being at an unhealthy weight according to a 30 year joint-venture analysis by the World Cancer Research Fund and American Institute of Cancer Research.
Even needing to prove obesity is a problem though seems redundant. We need only look around us.
The big question is why. And there are several obvious villains of this tale. One is SAD, or Standard American Diet, and all its ultra processed, ultra-caloric, ultra-inflammatory, ultra-yummy junk goodies that have been exported around the world in the course of post-World War globalisation. The availability of SAD foods is directly and irrefutably the cause of the Middle East’s belly boom since permitting access to American businesses following the oil boom. The other major baddie, is the sedentary lifestyle inherent in urbanisation, and the related migration of work into office spaces.
So, as we humans do, we’ve been searching for answers. Exercise is one. But that jig is up. Gym memberships spike every year in January, enjoy some increased attendance for a few months and by half way through the year numbers begin to dip below average again. Thinking of exercise as an isolated daily event as opposed to consistent movement is the culprit here.
The other major sword in the sheath to combat rising BMI is of course diet. The theory being if we just follow the right diet we will lose the weight. Hence the parade of diet fades. Atkins, raw, Mediterranean, paleo, vegan, banting, carnivore, keto, macrobiotic, etc etc. We’ve tried and tested a lot. As a whole, they’ve clearly failed. The stats back this up. Following the right diet cannot claim to be a successful strategy if globally obesity is soaring.
And there have been endless studies repeatedly affirming the same thing – most people can’t and don’t stick to their new diet nor do they keep any weight off they may have temporarily lost. A major UK study concluded people follow a new diet for 5 weeks, 2 days and 43 minutes. In any given year, only 3% of those whom intentionally aimed to shed pounds kept them off. Again, following the right diet cannot claim to be a successful strategy with a 97% failure rate within 12 months. It just can’t.
What gives then? If you can’t exercise the pounds away and you can’t diet your way back to a healthy body weight is there hope?
Luckily, yes.
Of course there is hope. We need again just open our eyes and look at people in and around our lives. We all know someone. Look at Adele. Listen to Ethan Suplee. Google Angus Barbieri. If 97% of people fail to stick to their weight goals, conversely 3% succeed. The question again then is why? And the answer is simple.
You have to get comfortable with discomfort.
You have to embrace the suck.
You have to be hungry.
“People who are at a consistent healthy weight don’t have better genetics or a higher metabolism, and they don’t magically burn more calories. They’re just more likely to deal with stress by going for a walk instead of eating. That’s really the difference”.
These are the words of Trevor Kashey. Kashey is described by eminent experts in the field of nutrition as a “wacky, amazing, beautiful-mind genius”. He got his undergrad science degree at 17, and his PhD in cellular energy transduction at 23. He is far from a house-hold name, but is considered a savant by those in the know working with Olympic teams (with his clients winning 16 golds), high-profile athletes and wealthy CEOs. His clients have not only lost they have kept off a cumulative 245, 987 pounds/ 111,578 kilograms, after working with him for an average of 2 years, after which they have no longer need him to stay lean.
All of which has been done without “dieting”. More specifically, without a diet fad. In fact, he tells his clients they can eat anything. Anything. Junk food and all. His entire approach is effectively about hunger. His clients can eat whatever they want but they cannot eat how much they want. He sets non-negotiable caloric caps, and as long as they maintain a caloric deficiency the kgs come off. This can only be done because his clients learn to be okay with being hungry, and after enough time their brains have rewired to having a new, permanent and healthier relationship with eating.
Nearly 70 kgs down and counting, this is from the mouth of one of Kashey’s real clients Ashley:
“I would always snack because I thought I was starving all the time. He taught me that hunger can be deceptive. I learned I often just had a psychological need to eat. He taught me that it’s okay to be hungry. My response was “WHAT???”. He told me to embrace the suck. Now, yeah, I’m hungry sometimes. It is what it is. I’m OK with being uncomfortable now.”
People aren’t eating anymore because they’re hungry. That accounts for just 20% of eating. The other 80% is psychological and emotional. Whether comfort eating or stress eating or what I call soothe eating, overeating is effectively a condition of attempting to escape from discomfort.
That’s why dieters quit after 5 weeks, 2 days and 43 minutes. They could no longer tolerate the mounting discomfort. Which is real. Do not misunderstand. The discomfort is very real. The brain makes it so. When in the process of losing weight, neurological aka hormonal evolutionary mechanisms kick in. As one loses weight, evolutionarily that is signalled as a survival threat, so the brain literally ramps up the production of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, causing a double whammy of feeling hungrier and not feeling satisfied when eating. And if one is already overweight, it’s even harder as overweight people underestimate how much they eat daily by a factor of three (717 vs 218 calories) compared to their leaner counterparts per the The Mayo Clinic. Not sleeping enough? Well now it’s even harder. The day following less than 6 hours of sleep someone will on average eat 550 calories more than normal, also per the The Mayo Clinic. Why? Because they’re uncomfortable. They’re tired, grumpy, sore, sad and whatever else often accompanies poor sleep.
Being hungry is also hard because we don’t have to be. In the world we’re talking about, food is abundant. And ever-increasingly convenient. Open an app and in 35 minutes you can get whatever delivered. But there are far if any real, whole, nutrient dense restaurants on UberEats or DoorDash. It’s junk food, which is more caloric, yet less filling (they engineer it this way on purpose btw) and therefore why we overeat. Food has become an “inexpensive resource for providing short-term pleasure and relief from discomfort”.
But being hungry is especially and critically so difficult because we are stressed, which is just another word for uncomfortable. Chronic stress is a plague on modern, urban life. The slow drip drip of cortisol into the bloodstream creates a host of unwanted consequences, including making us feel hungrier to eat to soothe the stress whilst simultaneously eroding our ability to practice self-restraint. Or what Harvard MD, PhD and 40,000 times cited psychiatrist Dr. Marc Potenza calls the “potent formula for obesity”. His work clearly demonstrates that food is providing “the rewarding properties that act as forms of self-medication to distract people from unwanted stress”.
None of which means what you eat doesn’t matter. It of course very much does. For example, one potato provides the same level of satiation as seven croissant because it is more energy dense. Food can range in energy density in fact by 700%.
But the answer to our obesity problem lies in first eating less but mostly adapting to deal with discomfort and hunger. Which can only be achieved by increasing our awareness of the “why” of why we eat. Soothe eating is triggered by psychological, emotional and environmental cues. As nutrition genius Kashey says, he doesn’t solve peoples’ weight loss problems by changing what they ate, he does it “just by virtue of improving their awareness of their own behaviour”. He teaches them that feeling hungry doesn’t necessarily actually mean that you’re hungry. It could mean many things, usually being ‘I’m stressed or sad or want a reward’. That’s why he tells them to walk.
“Walking is my number one. It relieves more stress and is health promoting. It leads you to burn calories rather than onboard them. And it removes you from the situation and adds time for reflection, where you can realise that you weren’t really hungry.”
The research is unequivocal now. Weight loss is about personal behaviour change. Which is effectively about recognising triggers to eat and overriding them. Meaning going for walk instead, but one can only take so many walks, so the other override is embracing the suck and being hungry.
This is a process. As Ashley from before notes, she had to remind herself her feeling of hunger did not mean she was starving or unsafe and that there was food just down the passage and that she would eat when it was the right time to eat.
And there is hope! Because humans are resilient and capable of overcoming incredible levels of suffering. And being a little bit hungrier a little bit more often is not that. In fact, a major NIH study believes the post 1980 obesity crisis comes down to just a measly extra 13 tortilla chips a day! If that’s not hope, what is?
But in overcoming obesity we must likewise overcome our “inability to persist against the discomfort of hunger”. In reality, our inability to persist with discomfort across the board.
We have to embrace the suck.
So yes, we must move and we must eat health promoting food. But there has been a missing ingredient all along in our struggle to curb obesity. And it was the most accessible, most available and most cost effective non-ingredient ingredient of all.
Hunger.
Citations & Acknowledgements: All non-specific references, quotes and information come from Michael Easter’s 2021 book “The Comfort Crisis”
