feeling hungry all the time?

Ever wonder why you’re constantly hungry sometimes when on a diet?

Usually, there are 2 main reasons.

Reason number 1 is that you’re just simply eating way too little. Too little as in trying to survive on as little food as possible thinking that’s the solution to lose weight. Numbers wise it would be say you’re aiming for 1500kcal daily (which is already a calorie deficit for you) but you instead decide you’re only gonna eat 500kcal daily.

Is that gonna make you lose weight faster? Short term, definitely.

Long term? No chance.

What happens when you consistently eat way too little? You’re hungry and frustrated all the time which just gets to a point where you can’t take it anymore and end up binging. What happens when you start binging? You basically gain back everything you lost with an extra topping of emotional damage that you have to recover from before trying again.

How do you solve eating too little?

Aim to eat as much as possible instead within your limits.

If you’ve decided your goal is to eat 1500kcal to lose weight then your goal everyday should be to eat as close to 1500kcal as possible. That how you’ll minimize hunger which makes keeping it up consistently a lot easier which translates to long term permanent results.

Reasons number 2 for feeling constantly hungry is eating too much ‘junk’ food. Now remember, nothing wrong with ‘junk’ food, it’s totally fine to include it in your regular diet, but when the majority of your diet is ‘junk’ food it’s difficult to stay satisfied.

Let’s use 500kcal for example.

500kcal could be a big bag of potato chips, one large Mcdonalds french fries, or it could be one cup of rice with 1 sunny side up egg, 100g of chicken breast, 1 cup of cabbage, 1 cup of spinach, drenched in teriyaki sauce. One of them is gonna make you fuller than the others, but they’re all roughly 500kcal.

If you’re feeling hungry a lot and also making an effort to eat as much as possible while in a deficit, then you might wanna look into the types of food you’re eating. You don’t need to alienate any of your favorite foods, but you do wanna aim to eat mostly nutrient rich whole foods & lean protein. A rough guideline would be 80/20. 80% whole foods, 20% whatever you want.

Of course one thing you gotta understand is that hunger is part of a weight loss journey. You’re gonna feel it here and there. It’s not possible to eliminate it completely. The goal is to make hunger manageable, not solve it.

There’s no need to do something about hunger every time you feel a little bit of it. Sometimes it’s ok to just be hungry and carry on your day and wait till your next scheduled snack or meal. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I hope this has given you more insight on how to tackle hunger.

Till the next one~

—Po