tips to feel full

When you’re on a diet, hunger is inevitable.

Meaning you’re gonna feel hungry here and there and that’s super normal. There’s no need to fight or solve the feeling of hunger whenever it occurs. Of course being hungry all the time isn’t normal and that likely means you’re doing something wrong with your diet and some adjustments need to be made.

With that said, feeling full isn’t a crime.

Feeling full doesn’t mean weight gain. You could be feeling super full regularly and still be losing weight. Full is merely how much volume of food you’ve eaten at one go, it doesn’t determine the progress of your weight at all.

Are there ways to feel fuller during your diet?

Absolutely. Let’s go over a few things that can help.

1) Food choice. Food choice is a pretty big deal in terms of feeling full. Eating a bag of chips or a chocolate bar for 350kcal is gonna feel very different than eating 350kcal worth of fruits, veggies or lean protein. Of course this isn’t saying you should completely avoid chips & chocolate bars and only eat fruits veggies & lean protein, it just means when planning out your meals you want the majority of it to be whole foods and lean protein and a smaller percentage of it to be the “fun foods”.

A latte and cookie is gonna make you feel a lot less full than rice, fish and veggies and are likely similar calories. Eating fruit is gonna make you feel way fuller than drinking juice.

2) Meal timing. Eat at times when you usually feel hungry. You don’t have to follow the traditional breakfast, lunch, dinner. Follow a schedule that suits your preferences and lifestyle. Swapping around your meal timings could help you feel fuller cos you could be eating at times you’re usually hungry.

Having less meals in a day means the meals are larger and can help with feeling and staying full if that’s what you prefer. An example would be, if you had 3 meals a day and was aiming for 1500kcal, your meals would likely be 500kcal each. If you skip one of those meals and have 2 meals a day instead, each one of your meals become larger (750kcal each).

Play with meal timing if you’re struggling with hunger and feeling full. It could just be a couple of little tweaks to help you solve it.

3) Drinking enough water. The recommended amount of water to drink daily is roughly 2-3L spread out throughout the day. Water can’t make you feel full, but can help ease hunger and make it easier to deal with.

4) Sleep. Not sleeping enough (less than 7hrs a day) could be the culprit of uncontrollable hunger and cravings as lack of sleep messes with your hunger hormones. You could be doing everything correctly in your diet but simply be lacking sleep so end up having to struggle a lot with hunger and cravings.

Get these 4 things in check in your day to day life, and you’ll likely see a huge change in hunger management and be able to feel and stay full for longer.

Hope it helps!

—Po