"Hunger " is a term colloquially used to refer to appetite, or o...

Hunger is a poorly defined cognition, assumed to motivate overeating, but there is no firm evidence that the intensity of a sense of hunger is related to overweight. Recent research has suggested instead that irregular eating habits, as deriving from dieting, emotional stressors or other causes may have a role in the weight gain of obese people. These "borderline eating behaviours " (or BEB), targeted in cognitive behavioural therapy of obesity, were found associated to the body mass index both in normal and in overweight subjects in previous studies, using a specific scale called SENICAL. This study aimed at exploring the role of the sense of "unbearable hunger " on these eating irregularities, as measured with SENICAL, which provides an overall measure of BEB. SENICAL has been administered to a sample of 365 university students, together with other self-report measures; one item of SENICAL has been used to measure the frequency of the feeling of "unbearable hunger". An ANCOVA performed on the total SENICAL scores showed a linear increase of BEB along with the frequency of perceive