Expressing Your Level of Hunger

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I’m going to talk about ways to express levels of hunger. I’ve made a scale that’s going to be useful, I hope, in expressing the different levels or like how hungry or not hungry we are. I’m gonna talk about these expressions we can use to talk about hunger. I’m gonna talk about responding to those expressions and I’ll talk about a couple of other useful vocabulary points. So, let’s get started! Okay. I actually want to begin this lesson at this side of the scale. So, I’ve made this scale an appetite scale from 0 to 100. So, to start, “appetite” is a word that means “desire to eat,” your appetite. This is a noun. So, in a sentence, we would use it something like this: “She has a big appetite.” That means she wants to eat a lot or she can eat a lot. Another example: “He doesn’t have an appetite lately.” So this means he doesn’t want to eat very much lately. So, “appetite” means desire to eat. Therefore, at this part of the scale, zero, this means a person does not want to eat. You are not interested in food. There’s zero appetite here. On the other hand, at 100, this means someone does want to eat. You have an appetite, you have a desire for food. So we’re going to use the scale to talk about some different ways to express your hunger. Let’s start here, at 100%. So we have an appetite, we want to eat. The most basic expression you can use to talk about that is, “I’m hungry.” I’m hungry. Don’t forget this “I’m,” the M part here, not “I hungry,” but “I’m hungry.” “I’m hungry” is the most basic way to express that. If you want to be a little bit more specific or if you want to express that you’re very, very hungry, you can say, “I’m very hungry,” or you can use one of these two. So “starving” here is like saying I really, really feel like I’m gonna die because I haven’t had anything to eat. So, you can use “starving” or you can use this other more formal word, “I’m famished.” I’m famished. “I’m famished” means I’m very hungry, but it sounds much more polite. It sounds much more formal. We don’t use this word very much. We would use this perhaps in a very polite situation, and in lots of those cases, I personally don’t really report if I’m feeling very hungry. I tend to try to be a little more polite and not say anything until food becomes available. But if you do want to mention your hunger levels in a polite situation, you can say, “I’m famished,” I’m famished. I want to talk about one more expression here. This is a pattern that’s kind of common. It depends on the person. Let’s look at it first. It’s, “I’m so hungry, I could eat a…” or “I could eat an…” So, this, we use “could” here to mean like it’s possible to. So this person usually wants to express they could eat something very large, so that’s how they want to express their hunger. Some common examples are: “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse.” “I’m so hungry, I could eat an elephant.” Or “I’m so hungry, I could eat a whole pizza.” A whole pizza means not one piece of pizza, but 100% of a pizza. So, you can choose as well your own thing too. So I have these question marks here. That means you can choose your own thing, but just keep in mind, we usually use something very big, something kind of crazy in this expression. So we wouldn’t say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a cupcake.” It sounds really small. When we use this expression, we use something big with it, and it’s okay to be a little bit funny. So, you could use like another big animal here. So, horse is a big animal. Elephant is another big animal. Perhaps you could say, “I’m so hungry I could eat a lion,” I don’t know. That’s up to you, but these are the common ones that are used; horse, elephant, maybe whole cake, for example, or whole pizza, you could use that. So, these are common expressions that we use to talk about kind of this part of the scale, maybe like 80% to 100% level appetite. When you want to respond to something like this, if your friend says, “I’m hungry” or “I’m starving” or “I’m so hungry I could eat a whole pizza,” if you want to agree, just say, “Me too!” Me too. That’s the best way. Just say, “Me too!” You don’t need to say anything special. You could say, “I’m hungry too” or “I’m starving too,” but this is the easiest, quickest, most natural response you can give here. Okay. So now that we’ve looked at this part of the scale, I want to go down to this section now. Maybe like the 50 to 75 or so part. So here, I’ve got a couple of other options that we can use for this phrase, but around 70, maybe 70% mark on this scale, I’ve put this expression: “I could go for a…bite.” “I could go for a snack.” “I could go for something small.” So, a couple of points here, this “could” means it’s possible. “It’s possible for me to (something).” This “go” connects to “for.” “I could go for…” That means it sounds good or “I want to eat.” So, it’s like saying “eat,” but it’s much more casual like: “I could eat a bite.” “I could eat a snack.” “I could eat something small.” That’s okay to use, but this “go for” sounds friendly and casual and very natural. So, in quick speech, we say, “I could go for…” “I could go for a bite.” “I could go for a snack.” “I could go for something small.” Let’s break these points down now. “Bite,” so, /eɪ/ bite or /a/ bite. “A bite” means like literally one bite. So a bite is this motion, to bite as a verb, is this motion, when we’re eating. When we say “one bite,” “a bite,” it means one mouthful, like we bite one time of something. So this expresses we want just something very small. A “snack” means just something, again, very small, so not a full meal, just maybe a few pieces of something. We can also say, as I’ve said, I could go for something small. If you use this expression, there is no article here. “I could go for something small.” Not “a something small.” But “I could go for something small” means maybe cheese or maybe a few crackers, something small, so not a full meal. “I could go for (something).” Okay. Let’s compare this to this set of expressions, right here. I have, “I’m a little hungry,” which is very similar to “I’m hungry,” but we have this “a little” here, which kind of takes the level down a bit. And “I’m a bit hungry.” So same thing. “A bit” and “a little,” but there’s not really a difference between “a little” and “a bit.” Perhaps, a bit sounds smaller than a little. It kind of depends on the person, but they communicate the same idea. So with this pattern, these two patterns, actually, I want to introduce a couple more casual words we can use instead of hungry. So, I have these three. They are very casual and kind of a little bit childish, but we commonly, we commonly use them. So, they are “snacky,” “nibbly,” and “munchy.” “Snacky, nibbly, and muchy. So each of these words comes from another word in English. First is “snacky.” So you can see, “snack” is in this word. We talked about “snack” down here, something that’s not a full meal. So, “I’m a little snacky” means I want to eat a snack, like I feel a little bit like eating a snack. So, we can use the word “snacky,” like it’s a very casual word, like i said. “Nibbly” is the same idea. So, I didn’t talk about it down here, but this comes from the verb “to nibble,” to nibble, N-I-B-B-L-E. “To nibble” means to eat very, very small bites of (something). So I talked about the word “bite” here which is like a mouthful, taking a bite of (something). “To nibble” is like very, very small bite. So, when we say, I’m a little “nibbly,” it means I want to have a very small amount of something. So, I have the feeling of wanting maybe to nibble something, so not a lot of food, in other words. The last one here is “munchy,” munchy. “I’m a little munchy.” This comes from the verb, “to munch,” to munch. So, “to munch” is a casual verb that means “to chew,” to chew. So, to chew means to have food in your mouth and to use your teeth to break it down. “To munch” is a casual way to express this. So, it means we want to eat and it’s like a casual way of saying that. “I’m a little munchy.” I’m a little munchy. So again: “I’m a bit snacky.” “I’m a little nibbly.” “I’m a bit munchy.” We can use all of these words instead of “hungry.” I think I’ll probably use “snacky” the most from this list, but you may hear these other words too. Finally, in this section, I want to talk about this phrase, right here. It is “I have (the) munchies.” Munchies So, this is a word that means the same thing. “Munchies” here has the same idea as this word, “muchy,” munchy. So, “I have (the) munchies,” this is kind of a cute expression that means I want to snack. So, “I have the munchies” usually means I want to eat junk food, like I want to eat chips or maybe candy or I want to snack on cookies, for example. “I have (the) munchies.” I have this in parentheses here, “(the).” Sometimes, you’ll hear people say, “I have munchies,” that’s okay to use too. I prefer to say, “I have the munchies.” Another expression you might here is, “I’ve got…,” “I’ve got the munchies,” is another expression you might hear. So “I have the munchies” or “I’ve got the munchies.” This means I want to eat some snacks, usually, junk-food-type snacks. Okay. Let’s move on down the scale again. I want to finish with this part down here. Maybe the 0 to 40 part of this scale. So, first, I want to look here at this expression. “I don’t want to eat anything.” I don’t want to eat anything. This is useful because it doesn’t mean you’re not hungry, necessarily, but it just means right now, I don’t want to eat. So, for example, maybe you’re going to an important meeting and you’re hungry, but it’s not a good time to eat. So you can say, “I don’t want to eat anything” or “I don’t want to eat anything right now.” At native-level speed, we would day, “I dunno wanna eat anything right now.” “I dunno wanna eat anything right now.” So, “I don’t want to eat anything” can mean your appetite is low, yes, like, I don’t want to eat anything. It can also mean, now is not a good time to eat. Okay. We’ll also use this in an expression like “I don’t feel like eating right now.” I don’t feel like eating right now. You can also use that, but that one, “I don’t feel like eating” sounds like you don’t have as much of an appetite, I don’t feel like eating. So this is a useful expression that you can use if the timing is not good, I don’t want to eat anything right now. Okay. Let’s continue on to this one, “I’m not hungry.” I’m not hungry. So this is the opposite of I’m hungry. We’ve added “not.” “I’m not hungry.” I’m not hungry. So, it’s near zero down here. So, I don’t want to eat, I’m not hungry, I don’t have an appetite. To respond to this question, you can agree by saying, “Me neither.” Me neither. This is better than “me too” because this is a negative statement, I’m not hungry. To agree with a negative statement, we say, “Me neither,” me neither. If, however, you want to disagree, you want to express something different from the person you’re speaking to, they say, I’m not hungry, you can say, “Really? I am!” That’s a very common way to respond to this, or “Really? I haven’t eaten all day. I’m starving,” for example. So you can use one of these words over here to express disagreement with someone, if they say they’re not hungry. So, these are, again, these are just very common and simple ways to respond to statements like this. Okay. Let’s go to the last two points on the scale. They are, first, “I’m full,” I’m full, and second, “I have no appetite.” Let’s look at this first, “I’m full.” So again, don’t forget this, “/m/,” “I’m,” “I am.” “I’m full.” “Full,” this refers to our stomach. So, after we eat a meal and we have enough food in our stomach, we say, “I’m full.” This means my stomach is full of food, so I don’t need to eat anymore, I’m full. My body is full of food. My stomach is full of food. “I’m full.” Another word you might hear that’s kind of a casual word is, “I’m stuffed.” I’m stuffed. We use this word a lot when we’re talking about cooking. So, for example, like a chicken or a turkey, when we put a lot of things inside the chicken or turkey, we say the turkey is stuffed or the chicken is stuffed, so there’s a lot of other food inside it. If we want to talk about ourselves, we could say that too, “I’m stuffed.” It means I’m full of food. So we use this to express, “I can’t eat anymore.” That’s everything. I’m at capacity. “I’m stuffed.” Okay. Finally then is this, “I have no appetite.” I have no appetite. So I mentioned appetite at the beginning of this lesson and here, I had it kind of in an example sentence as well, about not having an appetite. This, “I have no appetite means” I have no desire to eat. This is an expression that we often use when we feel sick. So, if we have a stomachache and we don’t want to eat anything or we don’t feel like eating anything, we can communicate that by saying, “I have no appetite.” You could elaborate, you could give more information and say, “I don’t feel well today,” I have no appetite.” So this is something that you can use when you’re sick or just to communicate that you really don’t feel like eating. So, I feel I tend to use this more when I’m feeling actually sick. Not so much when I’m just not hungry. For me, most of the time, I just say this, I’m not hungry, so that’s the quickest and easiest and simplest way to communicate the idea. So, this is, hopefully, some useful information about expressing your levels of hunger. I hope that you found something that you could use right away. Of course, if you have any questions or comments or if you want to practice making a sentence with one of these expressions, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye!