Some Thoughts about Hunger and a Fat Dentist

Understanding hunger is important to a lot of people in the developed world, because we believe we are too fat. If only we could be less hungry, we would eat less food, and we wouldn't be so fat.
I'm not thinking about Hunger with a capital 'H,' the hunger of people who don't have enough food at all. I have never experienced that kind of hunger, and I pray that I never well.
I'm also not thinking about the hunger one feels on Yom Kippur.
I'm also not thinking about the hunger one feels for emotional reasons, or just the simple pleasure of eating something sweet or salty, a brownie or some potato chips.
I'm thinking of the hunger that well-fed people feel at the hour when they ordinarily eat.
That hunger, as I experience it, is a kind of discomfort, not more acute than, let's say, having tired feet at a museum, and a lot less acute than a bad headache. But it's real discomfort.
That kind of hunger is different from other types of discomfort, because it's so easy to get rid of it. You don't have to take an analgesic. You don't have to sit down and take off your shoes. All you have to do is eat something.
I get very hungry before mealtimes and especially when, for some reason, I am
eating later than usual - much more hungry than a lot of people I know (like my wife).

Years ago, when I attended some meditation retreats, I was taught how to deal with discomfort while meditating. Instead of saying to yourself, "My back really hurts," you're supposed to think, "I have a sensation in my lower back," without classifying it as pain, and thus as something to avert. You're supposed to give the sensation your attention, to locate it, to feel it - and then, as happens in meditation, your mind will wander, you call your attention back to your breathing, and the sensation in your back no longer distracts you.
Can one do the same thing with hunger? It's seven o'clock, say, and you ordinarily eat at seven, but tonight you're going out and you won't be eating till nine. Your abdomen is telling you to put some food inside yourself.
You have several options: you can give in and eat something, you can hold out, not eat, and become grouchy, or you can examine the message your abdomen is sending you: Where is the discomfort situated? How acute is it? What other sensations are connected with it? Usually I eat something.
In our society, while we are constantly being bombarded with advertisements for highly caloric, unhealthy foods, nevertheless being overweight tends to be regarded as a moral failing. When I was a child, my mother routinely referred to our dentist with the almost Homeric epithet of "that fat pig," as in, "I have an appointment with [name withheld, even though my mother and the dentist are long deceased] today, that fat pig."
Fat or not fat, he was a great dentist.