I know I sure didn't all those years when I was eating so many carbs. I couldn't understand how anyone could go without snacks between meals. I couldn't understand how anyone could eat just a couple of potato chips or cookies and not end up scarfing down the entire package. I couldn't understand why everyone else was not as horribly, desperately hungry as I was, because the hunger just got worse and worse, the longer I tried to postpone eating. (Longer being a relative term - trying to go 3 or 4 hours instead of 2 hours) It was a gnawing hungry, the kind where you would eat almost anything, even something you hated - just to try to fill what felt like an enormous empty hole in your stomach.

Nowadays when I get hungry, it's so mild that I can ignore it for hours, and often do. One of the things about working on the front end of the grocery store is that I can never take a break when I feel like it - they need to have sufficient coverage to handle the lines of customers at checkout, so I can't just walk away from my post. If we're scheduled to work 8 hours, we're supposed to get a 15 minute break and a 1/2 hour lunch break. I never know when either break will occur during my day - or even IF they'll happen at all on any given day, because working self scan is different from regular register, and some days there's no one else available who has been trained on self scan. So when I get a break, I eat something, but generally I'm not really hungry - The only reason I eat when I get the chance to do so, is that I don't want to go the entire 8 hours without eating anything at all (actually it ends up being 8-1/2 if I don't get that unpaid lunch break), because after about 6 hours, I start to get a little shaky, light headed and/or head-achy. Being a self-scan attendant, I can't leave for the day until my relief shows up either - employees often show up late, and that's assuming the scheduling manager didn't inadvertently leave a big gap in the schedule on self scan. There have been times over the years when I worked 9-1/2 hours straight, with no break at all because there was a 1 hour gap between scheduled attendants. It's not at all enjoyable on LC because of the eventual shakiness and headache, but I can hack it ok. However, back in my high carb days, I would have personified the very definition of "hangry", because I would have been monstrously hungry, and desperate to eat.

To me, after so many years of that being how I defined hunger, that's set in my mind as being what true hunger feels like, which is probably why I can so easily ignore the mild hunger I get now. It's two entirely different feelings, one desperate, the other being "oh that's annoying, maybe I should think about getting something to eat when I get a chance".

Sadly, most people are going around in that screaming blood sugar state when they're hungry - they just have no idea that's not normal hunger. Most young adults, being raised on HCLF, have probably always experienced hunger as screaming blood sugar, rather than a mildly hungry state that can be ignored for a few more hours.

Today's young kids are not going to have it any better, unless the recommended dietary advice soon changes to reducing carbs significantly, and increasing dietary fats - and considering that increasing numbers of kids are being labeled obese, they're probably already suffering from metabolic syndrome, and therefore will need to reduce carbs far more than will ever be officially recommended.