Hunger might seem straightforward—just a signal from your body to eat, right?

But the reality is much more intricate, and understanding this complexity can be helpful when navigating changes in your eating habits, health, and weight during perimenopause and beyond.

So let’s dive right in.

Have you found yourself standing in front of the fridge, ravenously hungry and wondering why this is happening more than ever before?

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. 

But does menopause really mess with our hunger signals? 

And when we say we’re hungry, what exactly do we mean?

And are we all talking about the same thing? 

Types of Hunger

We often view hunger as a single experience, but there are different types, each with its own triggers. 

Recognizing the type of hunger we feel helps us determine how best to respond

Physical Hunger

Physical hunger stems from the body’s need for energy and nutrients. 

Our bodies have a sophisticated system of hormone and nerve signals that come from the stomach, blood, organs, and fat tissue. These signals are sent to the brain, which controls hunger and regulates weight.

After a few hours without food, hunger hormones rise, making our stomach growl and encouraging us to look for food. Once we eat, signals from the gut tell the brain food has arrived, triggering feelings of satisfaction and fullness. There are many things that can affect this mechanism and menopause is one of them. 

Emotional Hunger

Emotional hunger is linked to our feelings—stress, sadness, anxiety, boredom, or even physical discomfort like pain or tiredness. This type of hunger isn’t about nourishment; it’s about seeking comfort or relief. 

Eating to manage emotions is common and usually harmless unless it becomes your main go-to strategy for dealing with uncomfortable emotions or sensations. 

It’s perfectly natural to seek solace in food and most women will experience this at some point. In the moment, it can make you feel better, distracting or numbing uncomfortable feelings. Eating in this way releases dopamine, a brain chemical that makes us feel better, at least in the short term. 

Coping with emotions using food can also develop into a habit so if we eat in response to stress regularly over time you may automatically respond to the first signs of stress by reaching for comfort foods. 

How Peri and Post Menopause Can Change Our Hunger

Although we need a better understanding of exactly how menopause affects appetite there is research showing an increase in both physical and emotional hunger. 

And there’s lots of reasons why this might be happening. Some may be linked with how we might try and cope with some of menopause symptoms and others are directly linked with the hormone and biological changes that occur at this time. 

Hormone Changes

One of oestrogen’s many jobs in the body is to dampen down physical hunger by acting on parts of the brain that control appetite and weight. As we go through perimenopause and oestrogen levels drops this hunger-dampening effect diminishes, leading us to feel hungrier than we have before. So its not all in our heads. 

The impact of menopause on gut hormones like leptin, ghrelin, and adiponectin (which regulate hunger and fullness) isn’t fully understood but they may also play a role.

Stress Eating

Midlife often brings stressful events—caring for elderly relatives, children leaving home and career challenges as well as the frequently experienced menopause-related anxiety. 

Given these challenges, it’s not surprising we may turn to food as a way of coping. Stress can also lead us to make different food choices, often opting for highly palatable foods rich in sugars and fats and a reduction in healthier food choices

Incorporating specific stress management strategies like mindfulness has been shown to produce better weight loss and well-being results.

Fatigue

There is a strong connection between poor sleep and difficulty managing weight. Fewer than six hours of sleep per night has been linked with greater difficulty managing weight partly due to higher levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin and lower levels of the satiety hormone leptin, making healthy food choices harder to maintain. Poor sleep has also been shown to impact how well the body manages blood sugar due to increased insulin resistance.

Changed Gut Bacteria

Research suggests that the bacteria in our guts (collectively called the microbiome) may play a role in how hungry we feel—both physically and emotionally. 

As strange as it may sound bacteria release chemicals that signal the brain to either increase our food intake or signal satiety. Gut bacteria are also believed to have wide-ranging effects on our immune system, mood, and hormones. There is particular interest in the role of the microbiome in recycling hormones like estrogen, although more research is needed to understand this in detail.

During menopause, the gut microbiome changes a lot with a fall in the diversity of bacteria. A less diverse microbiome, known as dysbiosis, has been linked to various diseases and may be affected by lifestyle factors common in Western societies.

Altered Response to Sugars

Menopause can affect how our bodies process sugar, which may increase hunger levels as we move closer to pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes. 

When we eat carbohydrates, they break down into glucose, which enters the bloodstream and triggers the release of insulin. One of insulin’s main roles is to move glucose into the cells to be used for energy. The efficiency with which cells respond to insulin is called insulin sensitivity. The more insulin-sensitive we are, the better able we are to manage weight and our overall health.

During perimenopause, as estrogen levels fall the body loses the protective effect of insulin sensitivity, which can lead to insulin resistance and increased fat storage, particularly around the waist. This makes weight management more challenging.

How Can We Manage Increased Hunger 

The good news is there are different approaches we can take to manage hunger in a helpful way. 

It’s important not to consider hunger as something to be avoided. It is a natural signal from the body to be responded to, albeit challenging when it may be heightened and we’re trying to navigate changes to our eating habits and health. 

Given we often react automatically to the urge to eat without much consideration of what’s behind this signal it’s helpful to pause and consider the type of hunger we may be experiencing. Then we can work out how we want to respond which varies depending on the hunger type. 

Step 1: Pause 

Although this can be challenging its helpful to slow down, pause and ask the question 

“What am I hungry for?” 

Typically, we call any urge to eat “hunger” and react automatically without thinking. 

But pausing to identify the sensations or feelings, and where they are in the body, can help us understand the type of hunger we’re experiencing.

Busy lives often disconnect us from our body’s hunger signals. Dieting, stress, and exhaustion can blur these messages, making it crucial to pause and tune in. 

We may ignore early hunger signals due to a hectic schedule—skipping lunch for an extra meeting or prioritizing someone else’s needs over our own.

“I don’t feel hungry during the day because I’m so busy. But by the evening it goes into overdrive and I just have to grab whatever I can” 

Sound familiar?

We may learn to ignore a rumbling stomach and push beyond hunger, but over time this can skew our connection to our body’s signals.

The good news? We can reconnect with our body’s true needs by recognizing the sensations associated with different types of hunger. 

Step 2: Tune In 

Below are some common sensations related to physical hunger:

By tuning in and understanding hunger, especially during perimenopause, we empower ourselves to manage our health better. Recognizing whether our hunger is physical or emotional allows us to make informed choices that support our well-being.

Check out the table below which shows some of the common differences between physical and emotional hunger 

Step 3: Helpful Approaches

Once we’ve identified the type of hunger we are experiencing, we can think about how best to respond. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Physical Hunger

To address physical hunger, include foods that help keep you fuller for longer:

• Include a source of protein at each meal, particularly breakfast. Options include pulses, beans, lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, soy, and tempeh.
• High-fiber foods (vegetables, fruits, beans, seeds, nuts) slow down the movement of food through the gut and produces signals that help keep us fuller for longer.
• Choose high-fiber options like pea pasta, quinoa, or farro over refined white starches such as white rice or white pasta.
• Include solid foods that take longer to chew over highly processed, meltable options (e.g., carrot sticks with hummus instead of crisps). Foods requiring chewing are linked to greater satisfaction compared to drinkable or melt-in-the-mouth foods, which are consumed quickly and may not allow enough time for satiety signals to reach the brain, leading to overeating
• Prioritize sleep where possible and ensure good sleep hygiene.

Emotional Hunger

• Identify the emotion or sensation you are experiencing and determine what your body truly needs. It might be rest, relaxation, or support. Emotional eating isn’t wrong, and you’re not trying to stop it entirely; instead, focus on developing other ways of caring for yourself. Be kind to yourself—it takes time, patience, and often support to move away from using food as the main way of managing emotions.
• Consider stress management techniques like breathing exercises, meditation, or yoga.
• Practice mindful eating, sitting at a table without distractions such as TV or social media, and take time to enjoy and taste your food.
• Prioritize sleep where possible and ensure good sleep hygiene (challenging in menopause I know) 
• Engage in relaxing movement, such as yoga, tai chi, or walking in nature.
• Seek support from a health professional if you’re struggling.

Conclusion

By tuning in and understanding hunger, especially during perimenopause, we empower ourselves to manage our health better. Recognizing whether our hunger is physical or emotional enables us to make choices that align with what our body truly needs.