Six Easy Ways To Control Hunger On A Weight Loss Diet
If you’re on a weight loss diet, there’s a very good chance that you’re experiencing at least some level of hunger – hunger that can, at times, make it seem very difficult to say no to foods you shouldn’t.
The best way to combat this is simply going to be not letting hunger get the best of you. If it isn’t in the picture, that weight loss diet is going to be a hundred times easier to follow.
Here are six quick tips that you can use to fight the hunger demon when it strikes.
Drink Warm Liquids
The first technique you can use to help kill hunger on a weight loss diet is to drink warm liquids. Coffee, tea – both are great options providing you’re not dumping loads of cream or sugar into them. Instead, flavour it with one of the many sugar-free syrups that are available or opt for a calorie-free sweetener or cinnamon.
The warm liquid tends to do a good job at blunting your hunger level and if you choose a decaf variety, it will also help to hydrate you.
Eat More Vegetables
You’ve probably heard it before and now you’ll hear it again, when dieting you want to ‘eat your vegetables!’ These words of advice that you likely heard from your mother more times than you want to remember really hold true for those on a weight loss diet.
Vegetables are very low in calories, high in protein, and will fill the stomach up quickly. One note with them though is that for most people they don’t have much ‘staying power’ when eaten alone, so you’ll want to pair them with a source of protein and a small amount of healthy fat (if you can budget it into your calorie intake) so you stay satisfied for a longer period of time.
Ensure You Don’t Low Carb For Extended Periods of Time
Third, while low carbohydrate diets do tend to really work well at blunting hunger levels, when they are carried out for extended periods of time the opposite tends to occur. You’ll likely notice that around week four to six you’re starting to always feel hungry regardless of how much protein you’re eating.
This then is a strong signal that it’s likely time for a ‘carb load’ (otherwise known as a ‘carb up’ or ‘refeed’). At this point, have two days of much higher carbohydrate and calorie eating to help put a stop to this non-stop hunger feeling. Doing so will also help to reset some of the thyroid hormones that could be causing your metabolism to be sluggish as well.
Space Your Meals Evenly
While the notion that eating more frequently throughout the day will skyrocket your metabolism is mostly false, what eating more regularly will do for most individuals is help keep hunger under control.
You can likely illustrate this principle yourself. Think back to a time when you were feeling hungry but the opportunity to eat didn’t come for a few hours later. When you did finally get a chance to eat, how much did you consume? Chances are lots.
If you eat when you’re moderately hungry though (say a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1-10), it seems hunger is much more manageable and you never go into one of those periods where you’re really packing the food down.
Five to six meals a day seems to work very well for most people.
Eat More Protein
Lastly, consider consuming more protein rich foods. Protein is the macronutrient that offers the greatest satiety, therefore is the one that will prevent hunger from creeping up on you.
You should always have some form of lean protein with each meal or snack you eat, not only to help with hunger but to keep your blood sugar levels stable and help meet the protein requirements of the diet itself.
So give these tricks a try next time your stomach starts letting you know loud and clear that it wants more food.
What hunger-busting tricks do you use most often?
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