Most people jump straight into a diet without thinking ahead for the possible changes they may experience mentally, hormonally, and physically. We are of course talking hunger today, and usually for most, after a few rounds of avoiding cravings or suppressing hunger pangs, they eventually break and eat everything in their sight, ruining their diet and potentially putting them in a worse position than they started.
1. Eat More Satiating Foods
While this sounds obvious, your body usually craves energy dense foods that pack a large amount of calories in a small amount of volume. These tend to be what we consider “junk foods” with some examples being chocolates, oily foods, and highly-processed food items. To outsmart that brain of yours, you need to firstly avoid what you are craving, and instead eat foods that can help you feel satiated without going overboard on calories - protein and fibre.
Protein and fibre usually come in the form of meat, seafood, poultry, fruits and vegetables. These foods are generally harder to overeat and will have you feeling fuller in proportion to the calories ingested. Imagine how much chicken breast or salad leaves you could eat before you’d reach your limit. Put them together and you’re on the road to success as you’ll quickly feel full eating at a caloric deficit.
2. Suppress Hunger Using Fasts
During a diet, hunger levels go up as a result of ghrelin rising. It’s the body’s way of urging you to eat. Surprisingly however, if you ignore this signal and not eat, ghrelin levels drop leaving you feeling normal and not hungry again. This happens on average three times a day, and sometimes a strategy many people like to use is fasting. By skipping breakfast for example, you power through the first wave of hunger and allow yourself to eat only lunch and dinner, leaving you more calories to play with that may otherwise have had you feeling unsatisfied.
Coffee, tea, and low-calorie beverages are good forms of appetite suppressants and can help you get through that wave of hunger if you decide to try this strategy. While some people fast in the morning due to not wanting to go to bed hungry, there are those that prefer to do evening fasts. Experimenting to see how you feel is usually the best way to go.
