If you want to eat all the time, this condition may have different reasons. Let's figure out why this happens and how to get rid of the feeling of hunger.
- Causes of a constant feeling of hunger< /li>
- How to get rid of hunger
- Don’t skip meals
- Choose the right snacks
- Eat protein foods
- Add fiber and complex carbohydrates
- Include healthy fats in your menu
- Eat less refined foods
- Drink more water
- Do breathing exercises
- Adjust your sleep schedule
- Control stress
A healthy person may become hungry approximately 2-4 hours after eating. If even after eating you do not feel full, and your thoughts constantly return to the desire to eat something tasty, you need to understand the reasons for this condition, since this can lead to overeating, weight gain or other health problems.
Causes of constant hunger
The feeling of hunger is formed due to mechanisms that regulate hormones and neuro-reflex receptors. The signal that the body needs food appears in the food center. When the nuclei of the hypothalamus are irritated, you want to eat, and if they are destroyed, your appetite disappears.
With real hunger, the body reports a lack of nutrients, including glucose, fats and amino acids. This feeling can also occur during prolonged nervous tension and active training, during which you burn more calories than usual.
If you still feel hungry after eating, the reasons may be psychological: for example, if you are used to eating by the clock, then eating occurs regardless of whether you are actually hungry or not. Hunger may also appear after emotional stress or a stressful day, when the body needs to relieve stress and relax. Sometimes we eat out of boredom or because we want to celebrate and reward ourselves with food.
Uncontrollable hunger may have health-related reasons, such as problems with hormones or hypothalamic regulation.
< p>Comment from Elena Truskova, nutritionist:
The reasons for constant hunger can be hidden both at the level of functioning of organs and systems, at the level of psychology, and at the level of an incorrectly formulated diet .
Of endocrine health problems, the feeling of hunger and satiety is affected by insulin resistance, prediabetes, uncompensated diabetes mellitus, chronic stress and lack of sleep, imbalance of hunger and satiety hormones (ghrelin and leptin).
Lack of sleep or complete absence of sleep leads, for example, to a disruption in the circadian rhythms of hormone production such as cortisol and melatonin. It’s not without reason that in the morning after poor quality sleep, we most often experience a pronounced and difficult to control feeling of hunger, and also have trouble coping with our emotional background.
It is important to understand whether you are hungry or just an emotional appetite. The fact is that ignoring problems, trying not to notice and not solving them, often leads to eating. Food replaces our target actions and also increases pleasure hormones for a while, which creates a feeling of stability for a short period of time and improves our mood.
How to get rid of hunger
If you have no health problems, but you don’t feel full after eating, pay attention to your diet. Sometimes we skip lunch and then snack on quick carbohydrates to replenish energy reserves, such as baked goods, chips, and sweets. Such bad eating habits lead to the fact that the body lacks energy, metabolism slows down and the body begins to store fat for future use in case of starvation again. Therefore, it is necessary to eat right and eat every 4-6 hours during the day.
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Don’t skip meals
In order to provide the body with energy and strength, you need to eat well three times a day, and add healthy snacks between main meals. Regularity is important in nutrition. The main meal should be in the morning, at breakfast. If instead of a nutritious meal you limit yourself to a cup of coffee or add a sweet roll to it, the body does not receive nutrients.
The morning portion should consist of nutritious food, as it saturates the body with energy for the whole day ahead. After a hearty breakfast, you won't be hungry until lunch.
Fried eggs, boiled eggs, fresh fruits, vegetables, cereals, whole grain toast, cottage cheese, yogurt are suitable as a healthy breakfast.
Lunch can consist of boiled or stewed meat, a portion of stewed vegetables, salads, soups.
Many people skip dinner because of the desire to lose weight, but this is harmful to their health. Prolonged fasting until the next day slows down your metabolism and increases your hunger. In addition, without proper nutrition, you will not get enough vitamins and minerals. For dinner you can eat lean dietary meat, fish, vegetable salad, buckwheat, kefir.
Skipping breakfast can increase the risks of cardiovascular diseases, and missing lunch or dinner increases the risk of developing all diseases. Therefore, if you are wondering how to eliminate the feeling of hunger, remember that you need to watch your diet.
Choose the right snacks
In the video, the presenter of the Doctor TV channel, Elena Voitsekhovskaya, tells how to choose the right foods to fill yourself up without gaining weight, and why you need to snack.< /p>
Snacking is important because eating small amounts of healthy food helps reduce hunger, resulting in you feeling full more quickly during your main meal. In addition, it helps speed up metabolism, improves metabolic processes in the body, accelerates metabolism and maintains nutrient levels at a more even level.
With healthy snacks, there will be no sudden spikes in blood sugar, and you will be less likely to feel hungry .
Carbohydrates, or a combination of carbohydrates with fats or proteins, are suitable for breakfast.
During the day, it is useful to have a snack with protein, or proteins in combination with fats, as well as fiber.
In the evening it is better to eat dishes with dietary meat.
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Eat protein foods
Such products are suitable for both main meals and snacks. Protein is an important source of energy; it is necessary for the normal functioning of the entire body. In combination with carbohydrates, it slows down the absorption of sugars, protects against changes in blood glucose and prolongs the feeling of fullness. When answering the question of how to suppress hunger, include more protein in your menu. For example, lean meats, including turkey, as well as legumes, tofu and nuts.
Add fiber and complex carbohydrates
Foods such as brown rice, buckwheat, legumes, bread and whole wheat pasta are complex carbohydrates. They are digested slowly in the body because dietary fiber must first go through a process of breaking down into small particles in order to be absorbed. With such food you feel full for a long time, and the sugar level rises slowly.
Fiber is not digested in the stomach, but fills its volume and helps cleanse the intestines of toxins and harmful microflora. When consumed, the stomach remains full for a long time and hunger is reduced. It is found in bran, fresh vegetables, fruits and flaxseed.
Include healthy fats in your menu
For the body to function properly, a balance between proteins, fats and carbohydrates is necessary. Healthy types of fats are necessary for the normal functioning of the heart, brain, and lungs. Without them, the immune system, nervous system and digestion suffer. If you give up fat, the risk increases that you will eat something unhealthy to quickly replenish your energy reserves. Therefore, try to ensure that you have a balanced diet according to the KBJU.
Healthy types of fats are found in avocados, olives, egg yolks, fatty fish, such as tuna, mackerel, as well as walnuts, vegetable oils and in red meat.
Eat less refined foods
There are no coarse fibers in such food, so it is quickly absorbed. This causes a sharp jump in blood glucose levels, which then drops just as quickly, and hunger returns. It is better to avoid quickly digestible foods in your diet. Refined foods include baked goods, milk chocolate, bread and pastries made from white flour, pasta made from premium flour, white rice.
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Drink more water
To control hunger, it is important to establish a drinking regime. The body may confuse the feeling of hunger and thirst, and a glass of warm water will reduce your appetite. In addition, water is necessary for all metabolic processes. When dehydrated, metabolism slows down.
It is best to drink plain water at body temperature. You should drink the first glass in the morning, half an hour before meals, to speed up your metabolism. Let's figure out what suppresses appetite and dulls the feeling of hunger, besides clean water. In order to more effectively curb your appetite, you can add ginger, cinnamon or lemon juice to the drink. These nutritional supplements reduce hunger and accelerate metabolism.
Comment from Elena Truskova, nutritionist:
For better control of appetite, it is important to pay attention what you eat and what products you buy to fill your refrigerator and kitchen cupboards, because when hunger strikes, we eat what is within reach.
A properly composed diet is the basis of health and normal weight. That is why such great importance is attached to it in drawing up weight loss programs. Some people have to recommend two meals a day, and others five meals a day, it depends on the goals and initial level of health. For better appetite control, it is important to choose foods with a low glycemic and insulin index. This way we reduce fluctuations in blood glucose levels, which allows us to better control our appetite.
If you like to snack, then it is better to choose not cookies or cakes with tea, but to create an additional meal based on the principle of combining long-term carbohydrates with protein and healthy fats. For example, a sandwich with boiled turkey and mashed avocado.
Do breathing exercises
On video expert shows how to do a breathing exercise to get rid of hunger.
Proper and deep breathing is useful because our body needs to receive enough oxygen for metabolic processes. It is this that helps maintain the required level of alkali, which is needed for the breakdown of fats.
With shallow breathing, metabolism can slow down by 30 percent, and the processing of nutrients is reduced by 70 percent.
In addition, breathing exercises relieve stress and normalize the functioning of the nervous system. In 10 minutes of deep breathing, the level of the stress hormone cortisol drops by half. This also reduces the risk of overeating.
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Adjust your sleep schedule
Getting eight hours of quality sleep is essential for health. With an inadequate night's rest, overwork occurs. The hormone grenaline, responsible for hunger, is more actively produced, and leptin, responsible for satiety, decreases. Therefore, you may feel the urge to eat, although in fact your body is not lacking nutrition, but sleep.
The less sleep you get, the more likely you are to overeat the next day. In addition, lack of sleep affects the desire to eat something harmful, and the hand reaches for fast carbohydrates. This is how the body tries to make up for the lack of energy.
At the same time, insufficient nutrition affects sleep problems. If your last meal was 4 hours or more before bedtime, the risk of insomnia increases. In a hungry body, melatonin is not produced, since first of all it is necessary to replenish the supply of nutrients.
It is advisable that the night break in food should be no more than 12 hours: for example, if you have dinner 4 hours before going to bed and have breakfast immediately after waking up 8 hours later.
Control stress
Often in a stressful situation there is a desire to snack or eat something harmful but tasty. Our brain associates the rise in blood sugar levels and the production of insulin with reward, and resorts to this method when stressed.
In addition, if after a hard day you want not just dinner, but a chocolate bar or a bun, it’s more likely It's not all about physical hunger, but emotional. This is a psychological habit that has nothing to do with feeling full. In this case, it is advisable to choose other methods of encouragement: for example, go for a walk, dance or get new experiences.
Recommendations from Elena Truskova, nutritionist:
Based on the above reasons for increased appetite, it is important to control it:
Adhere to a complete diet, where the amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates is balanced, and the necessary caloric intake is also taken into account.
Regularly undergo medical examination programs, in order not to miss health deviations that can negatively affect the level of hunger control and lead to weight gain.
If necessary, involve a psychologist or psychotherapist for help.
Using an integrated approach to solving the problem, it will be possible to get rid of or significantly reduce the manifestations.
Sources and literature:
1) Bronnikova S. Intuitive nutrition – M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2022.
2) Giyanei S. J. Hungry Brain. How to outwit the instincts that make us overeat – M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2018.
3) Meglinskaya E. Stop breakdowns and overeating – M.: Phoenix Publishing House, 2021.
4) Olbers S. Hunger management. How to curb your appetite and stay happy – M.: Portal Publishing House, 2022.