By Hunger can ruin your nutritional goals. Here’s how to get hold of it before it takes hold of you
As we all know, hunger is a big deal when controlling our appetite and sticking to our weight loss goals. Hunger rises from our gastrointestinal tract to tell the brain it needs some nourishment. If you regularly fast, you will experience those stomach contractions that remind us we need to eat.
Some days, this signal can be a lot easier to ignore, whist during others, it can become overwhelming and downright distracting. Fullness, known as satiety, is the complete opposite. After a meal, you feel full and satisfied. Our GI tract plays a significant role in managing that hunger. When this all runs according to nature, your stomach and intestines will send the necessary signals to the brain to regulate food intake.
There are a couple of ways you can regulate hunger that helps with weight loss and maintenance.
One: Filling your stomach with liquids or liquid foods, such as water, coffee, protein powder smoothies and so forth. These impact by making you feel satisfied, despite the low levels (or no levels) of calories it contains. Two: Certain nutrients that make the gut release chemicals that halt hunger and, therefore, lower food intake.
How to feel full
As the stomach fills with food, you will experience a dullness or cessation of hunger. Therefore, it’s recommended that you aim to provide about 400ml of food and liquid with each meal you consume. This is a lot easier with vegetables — but next to impossible when you indulge in a junk food meal of potato fries, various cakes and other deficient dense, sugar-filled and processed foods.
How to further increase your chances of satiety — without much effort
We all want to find ways to decrease our hunger, and there is a simple and effective way to do so. A particular nerve called the vagus nerve is stimulated during eating. This enhances your feeling of fullness and lowers the amount of food you are eating. When activated and in a calm state, you can expect the body to engage in indigestion, repair, and recovery from stress. This is the way our bodies are supposed to react naturally. In saying that, the excess levels of stress most of us experience daily cause the opposite effect — especially when we eat under stress too! We may not even be aware of eating under stress because it’s now become a symptom of everyday life in our world. You can do to overcome this is actively practise meditation, deep breathing, and slow, mindful eating to continuously activate the vagus nerve. This is not always easy, but it’s essential to understand that any snacks or food consumption should be done in a relaxed and calm state. If you can avoid it, do not eat during moments in which you are highly stressed. Aim to chew your food thoroughly every time you eat — and also, try to eliminate distractions such as phones, laptops or any other devices that can cause you to lose focus. It’s always a lot nicer (although not always convenient) to share a lovely meal with friends, family or colleagues. That way, you may engage in a pleasant conversation and, therefore, take regular pauses to chew your food.
Takeaways
It’s important to eat protein-rich foods, as well as vegetables and fibre-rich meals. This will increase your feeling of fullness and provide the necessary volume of liquid needed to feel satisfied without consuming more calories. It always helps to drink water before a meal as well. Drinking 2–3 glasses before you eat can stop overeating abruptly and allow you to stay hydrated throughout the day. If you would like to read more articles like this or start writing your own, please sign up via my link. I’d love to see you on the other side. Sign up here for your medium subscription