I’m dieting and I’m hungry – what can I do?

By Aadam | August 26, 2019

Here are some tips:

Increase fibre intake – One of the ways our brain determines fullness is the physical stretching of the stomach. Foods high in fibre, such as vegetables and whole-grains, help stretch out the stomach and signal to the brain that you’re full. Fibre also tends to slow down digestion – when you add in fibre to your meals, the rate at which the body digests the food takes longer. The longer this food sits in your stomach the fuller you’ll feel.

Set a consistent meal frequency – Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, controls when you get hungry. Fortunately, ghrelin can also be ‘trained’. Training yourself to eat at set times will keep Ghrelin consistent and will create consistent hunger patterns – you’ll get hungry at similar times in the day – this will reduce the risk of falling off plan.

Skip breakfast – Restricting your eating window to a shorter time frame by skipping breakfast will mean you can eat larger meals which in turn will help keep you full, both mentally, and physically. While people freak out at the idea of skipping breakfast, it isn’t the most important meal of the day, and it won’t ruin your metabolism.  Instead of eating 4-5 small meals at 200 calories, eating 3 large meals at 500 calories will result in better satiety.

Don’t be extremely restrictive with your diet – What happens if I tell you that you can’t have something? You’re more likely to want that thing, right? This is why unnecessarily restrictive diets don’t last long. Don’t needlessly remove foods from your diet.

But, restrict some things – No,  I’m not contradicting myself, fuck you. Some foods trigger cravings and can cause you to overeat. If you have foods like that in the house, you will be best served to remove them, and the temptation that comes with them.

Diet drinks – As I mentioned earlier, diet drinks can be a great aid during low-calorie periods. Just make sure you’re keeping a tab on these – while you would need to drink a lot (like, really, A LOT) of diet drinks for them to even have the potential to be harmful to health, the main reason for limiting intake is due to hedonic adaptation.

Coffee –  Coffee has great appetite suppressant effects and has also been shown to improve health. Is there anything coffee can’t do? No, it’s basically Jesus in a cup.