In 2021, the German YouTuber Fritz Meinecke started a crazy experiment.
He and six others were dropped separately into the wilderness of Sweden. The challenge was to survive for seven days with only seven items of their choice. No camera teams. No human contact. Complete isolation.
Watching this show is obviously addictive. Part of the reason is that you get to see seven people survive in the wilderness from the comfort of your couch. That’s wildly entertaining. But more importantly, you learn a great deal about the human condition when people are in such a raw environment.
And so this experiment answered a critical question: What are the true essentials of human life?
Two Essentials of Happiness
At first, it seemed the answer was shelter, food, and water. But once the candidates found rocks to sleep, berries to eat, and water to drink, a bigger problem was revealed: Loneliness.
The isolation was by far their biggest struggle. Whenever they recorded a video update with their GoPros, they admitted how lonely they felt and how much they were thinking about the others. The lack of human contact was sickening.
But there was another prominent pattern. Everyone rambled about how much they missed a warm, wholesome meal. In fact, Fritz once hallucinated about indulging in a mountain of falafels and fries covered in sauce.
What does this teach us?
Loneliness and hunger are signals to a happier life. Loneliness shows us the path to human connection. Hunger leads the way to a filled belly. Both states are essential to feeling satisfied.
It’s not that we don’t know that long dinners and relationships make us happy. It’s just that we kind of forget in our hectic, work-driven lives.
So — if loneliness and hunger play central roles in our well-being, what more do they have in common? Can food be a teacher for finding human connection?
As it turns out, the answer is yes.
Here are five more things loneliness and hunger have in common (and one thing they don’t).
They’re Survival Mechanisms
We all know that food is essential to our survival. That’s why we feel hungry.
But what many people don’t know is that loneliness acts as a similar survival mechanism.
You see, we human beings are deeply social animals. And our ability to collaborate is our biggest strength. Hunting down humungous beasts, engineering skyscrapers of staggering height, or exploring the dark depths of space — all of these things were possible because thousands of minds cohesively worked toward the same goal.
And so, over millennials of human evolution, the need for social connection has ingrained itself into our DNA.
This is easy to forget in our individualistic world. Nowadays, we don’t actually need others to survive anymore. We can lock ourselves inside our apartment, work remotely, and have food delivered to our doorstep.
But deep down, we still crave human connection. And so we mustn’t neglect our social appetite — just like we mustn’t forget to have regular, nourishing meals.
There’s No Perfect Diet
For decades, researchers have been obsessing over the perfect diet. This resulted in countless studies, shamanic self-help books, and confusing labels for eating habits.
But have you ever wondered why the perfect diet hasn’t been found? Well, that’s because it doesn’t exist.
Loneliness is the same: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Every condition of loneliness will vary in intensity and risk. It’ll also feel differently based on your existing social circle, personal history, and character traits.
One of the great paradoxes of humanity is that we’re all so alike and yet so different. We may have the same needs. But we need to meet them in unique ways.
And so, we should get to know ourselves. We should experiment. We should be patient. Some people’s “loneliness diet” may involve talking to every person they meet. Other people just need one intimate confidant.
The only perfect diet — in nutrition as in human connection — is the one that’s custom-made and rooted in self-knowledge.
There’s Fast Food and Superfood
Even though there’s no ideal diet for everyone, there are surefire ways to increase your chances of becoming obese or lonely. I call this the fast food of loneliness. This includes:
- Excessive social media use and mindlessly consuming technology, rather than using it as a tool.
- Suppressing difficult emotions instead of feeling and processing them.
- Living alone in a way that makes it hard for you to form meaningful connections.
Doing these things seldomly or for a limited time won’t hurt you — just like indulging in some burgers and milkshakes is not the end of the world.
It’s the long-term habit you want to avoid.
On the flip side, we can find beneficial habits for deepening connections. These are the superfoods of loneliness:
- Focus on making others happy. (This can be as simple as helping someone at work, smiling at a stranger, holding eye contact, etc.)
- Cultivate self-compassion to break your inner critic and insecurities. (Some things to try include physical exercise, journaling, and mindfulness.)
- Spend time in solitude to get to know yourself and your needs. You can only connect to others if you connect to yourself.
If these suggestions sound cryptic and overwhelming, that’s fine. There’s no need to end your loneliness and conquer the world by tomorrow evening. It’s all about taking baby steps.
So, try one small thing at a time. See if it makes a difference. Repeat.
Often I found that a few sentences in my journal, a genuine conversation with a stranger, or a stroll around the block made all the difference.
Deliberate Fasts Can Be Healthy
Intermittent fasting is the concept that you go without food for an extended period of time — commonly 16 hours — before you inhale the next meal. And there’s great evidence that it’s incredibly healthy. Some of the benefits include:
- Weight loss without having to consciously restrict calories.
- Reducing insulin resistance, which protects against Type-2 diabetes.
- Lowering inflammation — a driver behind chronic diseases.
If we applied this to loneliness, the analogy to intermittent fasting would be solitude. That is, deliberately enjoying your own company. Being free from the input of other minds.
This may sound paradoxical. How can spending more time with ourselves help us fight loneliness? Here are some of the benefits I observed:
- You get to know your own mind. You spot harmful thinking patterns and learn to notice them, rather than whirling in a carousel of worries.
- You learn that you’re enough. Meditation is often the best part of my day. That’s because the world has very little to offer when can contently sit in silence with yourself.
- You process difficult events and emotions. Solitude means watching your own thoughts instead of binging Netflix. And yes, that can get uncomfortable. But it teaches you that you’re capable of dealing with difficulty, rather than burying it deep inside your mind’s basement.
Solitude needn’t mean going into the wild. It’s simply pausing for a moment — breaking free from outside inputs. So that only you and your mind remain.
What Loneliness and Hunger Don’t Have in Common
Unlike loneliness, hunger doesn’t cause feelings of shame or despair. Quite the opposite: We might even get excited about it. Oh, I’m hungry — that means it’s time for a great meal!
And that’s because the solution for hunger is simple and well-known: Eat food.
Easy peasy.
Loneliness, on the other hand, is highly complex. And it’s certainly not exciting. Why? Because we can’t stop the discomfort by diving into the next-biggest crowd of people. Instead, we need to create meaningful, high-quality connections.
Unfortunately, there’s no universal solution for that. There’s no “food” for the “hunger” of loneliness.
Or is there?
The food that stills the hunger of loneliness
During the countless hours of research and experiences I’ve made with loneliness, there’s one thing that always stuck out as an antidote: Service for others.
Here’s Dr. Vivek Murthy, the author of Together and former US surgeon general, on the Vox Conversations podcast:
“It ends up being one of the … counterintuitive lessons from loneliness that the path out of it is to help other people. That service, it turns out, is one of the great cures.”
Service — or giving to others — is so powerful because it achieves three things:
- You build a meaningful connection. Service is based on generosity, kindness, or compassion — people appreciate these traits.
- You shift your focus from yourself to someone else. This is crucial because loneliness makes you overly self-observant.
- You reaffirm your sense of worth. When you contribute something to someone else’s life, it reminds you of your inherent value.
Again, you needn’t spend the rest of your life in service to humanity. There are thousands of simple ways to embed it in everyday life. In fact, Dr. Murthy redefined service as the act of “giving love to others.” And this can be embodied through kindness, empathy, and compassion.
The great irony here is that loneliness — a highly personal problem — demands a communal solution. And that communal solution is being useful to others.
So perhaps loneliness is like hunger even in this regard. Maybe we can “eat” our way out of it. It’s just that it works the other way around:
To end loneliness and feel “full,” we need to “feed” others.