Emotions and feelings are really weird, weird in the sense that you can quite often mistake one for another. Of all of them, hunger is something that you can quite often assume is happening when in fact there is another feeling going on entirely.

It’s good to get a hold of how this can manifest in your own body, because it can save you a lot of excess calorie consuming! Here are nine feelings that you can mistake for hunger.

Have you noticed that your snacking tends to happen in the mid-afternoon or right before you go to bed? That is because you are mistaking hunger for low energy.

You tend to be at your most tired during these periods of the day, but you can avoid unnecessary snacking if you improve your sleeping cycle.

When you are stressed, it can cause adrenaline and cortisol to pump through your body which in turn causes things like high blood sugar levels.

It it’s a one time event it should be no biggie, but if it is chronic stress, then you are likely to turn to snacking as a way to deal with your blood sugar spikes.

You would be amazed by how many people mistake thirst for hunger! Make sure that you don’t have to deal with this confusion by staying nice and hydrated throughout the day. If you get a pang, drink a glass of water and see how you feel five minutes later.

When you eat foods you like, it can release the same kind of pleasure in your body as something like sexual arousal. So it makes sense that when you are feeling sad, your body tries to tell you to eat in order to raise your mood in that way.

Routines can often make you feel like you have to eat, even when you don’t want or need to.

Something like going to the movies, for example, you might have just eating a full dinner, but your brain will trick you in to thinking that you need popcorn because you are at the cinema. It’s wild!

You could be working completely happy and fine, and then someone walks by you in the office with a big cookie.

It’s only then that you start to feel hungry, but not because you actually are, more because you have been made aware of the possibility of snacking!

It might be completely out of your control. If you are taking medications, it’s worth having a read through the possible side effects to see if feelings of hunger are listed.

Depending on the time of the month, a woman can feel one way in the morning, and a completely other way in the afternoon!

Hormone surges are very common throughout all stages of the menstrual cycle, and one way that you might be tempted to deal with it is through comfort eating.

You might be thinking back to a time when your grandma used to make the best biscuits in the world and all of a sudden you feel the urge to eat some, not because you are hungry, but because you are craving nostalgia!