See also:
Injury
Illness
Sleep Deprivation
Dehydration
Heat
Cold

Hunger is a universal human experience. It is vital to our survival. It can motivate people to do many things---it can be used as a tool to manipulate.
But what is it like?
All of us have been hungry before. I'm sure some of us have been without food longer than usual. Please share! How does it feel to be hungry? What are the effects on the body after an extended time without food?
Share your own experiences, but on this thread, feel free also to share medical facts you have learned about hunger.

I've never been that hungry myself, but I have been to Liberia, Africa, and I've seen some of the effects of hunger.

Most of the kids I met in Liberia were hungry, some more than others. At one of the camps I helped with, there was always a group of ten or fifteen kids - most of them were ten or younger - outside. They would wait for us to finish our meals by the back door, and then they would take the leftovers and scraps.

One of my friends was there when they were handing the food out, and she saw a group of brothers fighting over one chicken bone - a bone someone had already eaten off of. Hunger had taken those boys and destroyed them; they really knew nothing but the want for food, and they were willing to scratch and claw at their own brothers to get it.

But I think, in some ways, hunger strengthened the faith of those kids. Another little boy told a guy in our group his favorite Bible verse was Matthew 4:4: "Man does not live on bread alone." I can't even imagine what that verse means to him.

I don't know that will help anyone in their writing, but that's how I've seen hunger. It drove normal kids to horrible extremes, but also brought out how strong they were.

Hunger is interesting. For me now, hunger is mental and physical. Mentally, when 5:00 PM rolls around I'm ready to eat due to routine. It's the same with any meal. (Except breakfast which I eat as soon as I wake up.)

A couple years ago when my anxiety was at its height, hunger was my enemy. If I ate, I was afraid of the possibility that I may catch the stomach flu and throw up. Every year around late-October to February I would cut back on my normal food intake because of my anxiety. Then my body got used to the smaller portions. At the worst point, I started skipping meals and eating Saltine crackers with water to wash the cracker down.

At that time my body had adjusted to the lack of food. The hardest part was eating normal again. So if you're writing a story where someone hasn't eaten in days, it isn't easy to gorge oneself. I found it hard to eat even half a canned peach without my body wanting to reject it by gagging. Not only out of fear, but my stomach had shrank.

By the grace of God, I don't have the eating issues I had two years ago and hunger makes me happy now.

~Calen

For someone used to eating regularly, eating nothing for two days brings on slight dizziness, but after the first several hours of hunger the pain gets less intense, until at some times you may not even feel hungry (mostly if you're distracted by something else.) The smell of food will make it hurt again, though.

So, one can get used to being hungry, to a certain extent. Does anybody have experience being hungry due to hard exercise?

Yes. When I do cave training I'm famished. I mean, hunger is very different feeling after extensive labor. When you are hungry because you haven't eaten in a while, it is more of a laid back, constant hunger. When you have worked up an appetite that has gone unfed, it is like an incessant need. Similar to the feeling of an adrenaline rush, just in the pit of your stomach.

Also, as a side note, I think I understand why people are not as grossed out by eating bugs and such when in survival mode, as we are (overfed and indulged people that we often are). Some who is trying to survive is in the famished mode I just talked about. They are working for survival and they are famished!!! When you are that hungry it is amazing how little you even taste food. You'll woof down anything. Sometimes I'm convinced that the food actually bypasses my taste buds.

It's just something interesting I have often considered...

Yeah. After working a full eight hour day of manual labor without eating a single bite of food...you really feel a need to eat.

*raises hand* I do!

A few summers ago, when I was still really into swimming (I was too young for missions trips, and piano hadn't picked up yet. ), I practiced three times a day, four days a week. And I'm telling you, after two hours of swimming hard in 100+ degree weather, I was famished. And I honestly didn't care what my mom brought me... as long as she brought something! Usually, I would have a really bad headache, and a little bit of a stomach ache - probably a combination of sun, dehydration, and hunger. And, like everyone else, I don't think I really tasted anything, mostly because I would eat so fast. But, unlike Brendan, I didn't have issues with eating a lot.

*nods* Very interesting.
So, if you're hungry enough, you really don't care what you eat, as long as you do eat.
If you saw an apple lying in the dirt, would you have picked it up, brushed it off, and eaten it eagerly? (Would you have skipped the "brushing it off" part?)

I've never been hungry enough to do something like that, especially considering there's always good food to eat somewhere nearby; but some of the people I met in Africa would have gladly eaten an apple off the ground. I mean, they were willing to pick scraps of food out of the dirt...

What Abby said. I've always had food available when I finished up training or any other physically exerting activity.

That's what I did once.



Well, once I didn't eat for about a day and ahalf and before the day before, I only had one meal. I got so hungry I ate anything that was given to me, my friend threw pieces of food onto the ground, and I would eat it off the ground, I skipped the picking up part. I would say, not only does your stomach hurt, and your dizzy, you go back to primal "mode" you will eat anything that is given to you, or you can get.

I had a high fever for three or four days, and it went on and off for about a week, and I simply didn't feel like eating, not because my stomach was upset but because I just wasn't hungry, and when I tried to eat, it was very tiring because of the illness.
So after I got better, I tried to eat but I could barely hold a quarter of a PB&J and half a glass of milk! I actually slimmed down a bit because I just couldn't fit food in my stomach!
(unfortunately it's stretched back out now...)
On another note, I work 6-hour days as a cashier at Harris Teeter, where the cashiers themselves have to take the stuff out of the customer's cart and scan it, then usually (for me, because I almost never have a bagger) bag it, then lift it up onto the turntable. Needless to say, this is a lot of exercise. And I only get a 15-minute break, which is by far not as much as it sounds like. I go to the breakroom, unlock my locker, get out my wallet, find something to eat, buy it, go back to the breakroom, use the restroom, and by then I don't have time to eat.
So it's like weight-lifting for 5 to 6 hours straight without eating. It is not fun. =P And I get the gnawing hunger in my stomach and I feel like I need to eat something right now when I get off work, even though my home is only 10-15 minutes away and I can't/shouldn't be sparing the money for food when there's food at my house.
Funny thing happened at work yesterday, by the way. I filled up a bag and brought it to a woman, and I handed it to her, saying, "You got it?" She said "Yes", so I let go...
And she immediately drops it to the ground and goes, "You are strong!" She wasn't faking to humor me, either. LOL I had to put it in the cart for her. It was funny