You Aren’t Hungry – You Are Migrating

Stomach grumbling. Tiredness. Headaches. Agitated. Feeling weak. All symptoms of you requiring your next meal, yes? Conventional wisdom and most medical fields agree; and I used to agree as well.

I now do not. I now believe that a) we have been thoroughly misinformed and b) the majority of the Western world has never felt true hunger. We have been moulded to think that our stomach should never feel even the slightest bit empty or unsatisfied.

True hunger is not actually felt in the stomach; it is an uncomfortable feeling in the mouth and back of the throat. Babies do not cry if their belly makes a noise; they start to cry for food when they experience that anxious feeling in the back of their mouths.

So firstly, what does spark that four horseman of the apocalypse noise in the stomach, once our last meal has worked its way through our system? That noise is called the Migrating Motor Complex. This complex sends waves of electrical activity through your stomach and small intestine, which regularly occurs whenever you are in a fasting state. (And by fasting, I do not mean 24 hour water fast, 12 hour dry fast, lemon fast, etc – I mean any time you are not eating food, period.) This complex occurs every day between meals.

The MMC acts as a housekeeper; it helps sweep undigested material down your digestive tract, in four phases. The third phase is the most vital; they are the most rapid and evenly spaced waves. The third phase occurs 90-120 minutes into a fasting state. The typical ‘growling’ sounds you hear when you think you are hungry are actually the MMC doing its job, cleaning your bowels of waste and excessive bacteria. The moment you eat something; anything; the waves stop. So when you are snacking/grazing on a small meal every 60-90 minutes – you are not actually allowing your body to fully move all remaining food remnants down into your intestines. This food will actually sit around, only to be joined by the remnants of the next meal you eat. And then the remnants of the next after that. This build-up is toxic to the body and is the true cause of dis-ease. This is also a reason (one of many) for longer fasts being so therapeutic and beneficial to the body.

The MCC is also much quieter and less active at night; so eating close to bedtime (or worse, right before you go to bed) means your body is never getting a full chance to do its proper housekeeping for your short and long term health. Knowing this, people may be more inclined to incorporating a ‘bedtime food curfew’ and not eating any food after 6-7pm.

People who suffer bloating, flatulence, SIBO, constipation – all can greatly benefit from reducing the amount of times they eat in a day so that their MMC can take effect. Those who close their ‘eating window’ to only a few hours per day – or reduce their number of meals down to just one to two meals per day – all share that their ailments minimise or completely disappear, after now allowing their bodies to dig deep into housekeeping and self-care and healing.

Now; what does it mean, if not hunger, when we feel shaky, weak, irritable, tired and unfocused, after it has been a little while since our last meal?

When digestion has finished, the body begins the process of mobilising and eliminating waste product, which causes the uncomfortable symptoms. The more waste there is, the more uncomfortable a person will be. I suffered all of these ‘hangry’ symptoms and beyond when I lived a life of nutrient-devoid foods, like microwaved meals, take-out foods, deep fried and oily foods, food-like products constructed of mainly chemicals, the ‘glue’ that is pasta and pizza bases. I wasn’t feeding my body; I was feeding my candida overgrowth and my growing level of parasites.

Detoxing symptoms include: headaches, dizziness, weakness, irritability, lack of focus, foggy head, cramping stomach and muscles, lethargy – etc, etc, etc. Are these not the same symptoms you feel a few hours after most meals? You are not hungry; you are detoxing. Your body wants that out. It has no use for cheap carbohydrates, refined sugars, sodas, animal flesh, animal milks. Hunger after meals like this is labelled by Dr. Joel Fuhrman as ‘Toxic Hunger’. Filling a body with foods that contain little to no nutrients, foods that a body has great difficulty digesting and utilising – leaves a body empty but still having to do the work to detox from those substances. Your body IS hungry – but hungry for proper food sources, not creamy pasta and M&M’s.

Now, I can easily go hours without food; daily fasts are a regular occurrence and I intermittently fast from early evening to midday each day. I actually now feel more alive and alert and energetic when I haven’t eaten, not when I do. Anything outside of fruit has me feeling lethargic, sometimes cranky and I lose focus and creativity. Even some fruits have a similar effect; watermelon appears to be the only food I can intake without anything but positive effects. I do not panic if I am not fed on demand; I no longer revolve my day around where food will be and at what time; and whenever I hear my tummy gurgle, I know it’s just my body running efficiently. I want the leftover food remnants pushed out, not stuck in!

If the thought of not eating for hours after a meal panics you at first; start by adding on an extra half an hour before your next snack or meal. After a few days or a week of this – add another half an hour. Continue with this gradually, so that you slowly become accustomed to not feeling a need to constantly consume food (or liquid; smoothies and juices will stop the MMC also).

Over time, it will not phase you to be without food for hours on end. I use this method when helping people incorporate regular fasting into their lives. We are raised in a society that tells us we need to eat 24/7 or we will keel over in weakness whilst looking like a bag of bones. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum, our hospitals are full of people whose bodies have become that overloaded with toxic build-up that it has gone into a state of full dis-ease. The body has tried to regain its equilibrium and return to its natural state of health, but when that body has been regularly overloaded with food, it has no time to be housecleaning – its entire focus has been spent on continually trying to digest food.

I found the below pyramid in my travels last year thanks to Nourish to Health (highly recommend checking her out!); and it perfectly encapsulates how I slowly progressed to where I am today. Dry fasting is definitely the creme de la creme of fasting and is not to be done on a whim and taken lightly; but this pyramid as a whole highlights a nice visual on how to increase nutrition and healing gently over time; and how to phase out things we do not need and are not best serving our body, mind and soul.

If you have any questions or wish to work with me as you progress on your journey, please feel free to contact me via my blog site Contact page, Facebook or Instagram.