7 Top Tips to Beat Hunger Pangs
We all know that feeling, we have started our new healthy eating plan, it’s the afternoon of the first day and we are already hungry. We can feel the pains starting to gnaw in our stomach and it is still hours until dinner time. What are we going to do? We can’t give in already and start eating – it is only day one! It must be a case of mind over matter, we’ll distract ourselves, use willpower…………. Nope, still hungry! Well here it is – my guide to the top 7 ways to reduce your hunger pangs……..
#1 – Eat a diet rich in whole grain carbs and high in protein
This is the time to start eating those whole grains such as barley, brown rice and oats and choosing a good source of protein at meal times. These foods take longer to digest and, while not making you feel as full when you first eat them, will keep you feeling fuller for longer. A good rule of thumb for how much protein you should eat is to eat a gram of protein for every kg you weigh. So a woman weighing 65kg would need to eat around 65g of protein a day. As a guide, 100g of chicken breast contains around 30g of protein, an egg around 5g.
#2 – Take steady exercise
One mistake people make when they want to lose weight is to ramp up their exercise levels. While daily movement is important for good health, heavy exercise can actually increase ghrelin levels. This is the hormone which makes us feel hungry. If you are trying to adapt to a new way of eating it is worthwhile cutting down on the strenuous exercise while you learn to manage your hunger pangs. Concentrate instead on moving your body, incorporate walks, stretches and body weight exercises in your new regime. These will all help to increase your metabolism without increasing your hunger levels.
#3 – Improve your sleep
Most of us know that we should be trying to get 7-9 hours of sleep a night. When your sleep falls below this level more of the hunger hormone, ghrelin, is released. The reason for this is to increase the amount of energy you have. All day your body will be sending the message that you need to eat more. Compounding this problem, the types of foods you crave will be high calorie and unlikely to be consistent with your healthy eating plan.
#4 – Limit your snacks
Constant snacking raises your hunger levels. Ghrelin production is time related so, if you always have a snack at 10am and 3pm you will always be hungry at these times, regardless of the efforts you have made to stick to steps 1 – 3 above. You should only need a snack if you have a large gap between meals, for example lunch is at 1pm and dinner isn’t until 8pm. If your meals are healthy and evenly spaced throughout the day then you shouldn’t need to snack to beat the hunger pangs.
#5 – Eat natural foods that your body recognises
Eating processed foods and foods that have been chemically altered to make them, for example, low fat, disrupts the hormone balance in your body. As a hormone, ghrelin interacts with the other hormones in your body and more ghrelin will be released as your hormone levels fluctuate.
#6 – Avoid very low calorie diets
While you can initially lose weight on these diets, they are so restrictive that they are not sustainable in the long term. During the course of the diet your ghrelin levels will increase to prevent you from starving yourself. Your body is effectively protecting itself from the threat of starvation by calling for you to eat more. When you return to “normal” eating habits your body will start to metabolise food more slowly to ensure that it has sufficient supplies if there is another “famine”. Known as the weight set point by Dr Andrew Jenkinson author of “Why we eat (too much)” this phenomenon, where the body slows down in order to conserve energy, is the reason why most extreme dieters eventually end up weighing more than they did when they started the diet. The only way to lose weight and keep it off is to lose weight slowly. This way your body does not take measures to fight the famine and you are able to gradually reduce your weight set point to within a healthier weight range.
#7 – Use a hunger scale
Try to visualise a scale between -5 and +5. 0 is that you have no thoughts about food/hunger, -5 is you haven’t eaten for a day or so (maybe you have been ill) and are starving and +5 is where you have eaten so much that you are too full to move. Using this scale you should eat when you are at a -3/-2 and stop eating when you are at a +2. It is natural to feel hungry before you eat but you should not feel starving! If you are regularly reaching a -3 hours before the next meal time, you should look at improving the quality and quantity of the previous meal (see point #1 above). If your meals are regularly spaced and your hormones are working effectively (see point #5 above) you should only be reaching -2/-3 about an hour before you are due to eat the next meal.
Bonus – #8 – Try time restricted eating
Increasing the time between your last meal of the day and your first meal of the next day to 12 hours or even 14 or 16 hours (if this is comfortable for you) has been shown to reduce hunger pangs during the day. It will take a week or so to get used to this pattern of eating and you may see your hunger levels increase initially after this period. But once your body has adapted, this method has proved successful in controlling appetite and aiding weight loss. Further reading A. Jenkinson, Why we Eat (Too Much), Penguin Random House UK 2020 https://www.whyweeattoomuch.co.uk
