I'm always hungry: tips and remedies to alleviate the sense of perennial hunger
At least once in our life, we found ourselves saying to ourselves: "I want to lose weight", and then off with more or less rigid diet attempts, which however very often end with another great classic: "but because I always hunger?".
Don't worry, this is quite normal: the more you deprive yourself of food, the more you find yourself craving it. After all, it is known that with very strict diets, immediate results can be obtained which, however, are not maintained over time; on the contrary, after a weight loss of 2 or 3 kilos, unfortunately there is a rapid recovery of all the weight lost. and a consequent frustration that makes us lose hope.
Let's start by saying that regardless of the diet you choose, there are foods that should never be missing on our table, such as those in the video that follows.
As anticipated, fast diets, with an immediate and fictitious result, increase overweight, cause medical complications, eating disorders and psychological difficulties, therefore it is good to avoid following them and instead focus on a balanced diet, tailored to our needs and preferences thanks to the consultation of an expert nutritionist.
In this way, following a diet that takes into account our tastes and still allows us to think of food as a gift and a pleasure, and not just as a necessity made up of continuous sacrifices, we will be able to follow the diet in a more constant and attentive and with a calm and positive attitude.
The results will come more slowly, but they will be a more stable achievement and will allow us not to immediately regain the pounds lost with fatigue.
I am always hungry! But is it always about real hunger?
Whether you are on a diet or simply, whether you are trying, as it should be, to follow a healthy and balanced diet, it often happens that it is enough to open the refrigerator or the cupboard to feel the hunger that increases.
But be careful not to confuse hunger with gluttony. In fact, it is good to remember that you have to wait 2 hours after eating to know if you are hungry again.
Sometimes hunger can be a kind of emotional reaction, the physical response to a sense of boredom or a simple gluttony to fill gaps and deficiencies.
Learn about your hunger from childhood
We begin in infancy, and even in early childhood, to know hunger and the sense of satiety; the role of parents in the first years of children's life is therefore fundamental to determine their future eating habits and the relationship they will have with food .
In fact, throughout our life, we carry with us the reminiscences of the first food experiences: excessive rations, fear of not eating enough or on the contrary of overeating, forcing, constraints to eat at full speed and inability to stop are just some traces of the situations, more or less unconscious, which we experienced in the first two or three years of life.
Here is the attitude parents should adopt:
- Do not use food to comfort or distract a child.
- Do not choose the menus to be offered to children based on the preferences of the parents themselves; it is good to involve them and take their tastes into consideration.
- Don't insist that they finish their plate at all costs. And, conversely, don't stop them if they're not done.
- Don't congratulate them on eating this or that dish. They might eat it to please the parent and not because he is hungry.
- In this case too, parents become the model to follow, so it is good that they set a good example; Furthermore, we must not forget that the control of hunger must be the responsibility of the child, therefore it is essential to listen to his requests and needs and not to impose oneself on them.
Psychological hunger: when we eat out of stress, anxiety or boredom
When a person is on a diet, he tends to spend a lot of energy controlling hunger; but often, the result is that the only desire remains the need to eat foods that are loved and satisfying, both physical and psychological.
To avoid this type of reaction, if you are on a diet or are particularly stressed, try to relax by going for a walk, a sport you love or, if you are at home, simply dancing to the background of the music you like. It is up to you to choose what makes you feel good: the important thing is to lose calories, rather than take them.
Along with stress, other emotions can be real enemies in these cases, such as anxiety, sadness and boredom. These are moods that push us to find comfort and sweetness in food.
The only way to fight them is to relax, go out and clear your head, or spend time in pleasant pursuits that stimulate us and make us feel good about ourselves. Any activity that reactivates and allows us to mentally and physically escape is an excellent antidote. to nervous or psychological hunger.
Eat at set times to control hunger
According to some scientific studies, it would appear that eating too much during meals or eating out of meals would cause rapid weight gain.
Specifically, the scientists looked at the number of meals in a day and the times they were ingested and noted that people who ate up to 6 times in a day, even late at night, disrupted their circadian cycles. and favored weight gain, with a real impact on overall health, brain function and even gut microbiota.
But how can you stop being hungry?
A fundamental aspect is to always eat at the same times, respect a 4 hour break between each meal and ideally 12 hours between the evening meal and breakfast the next day.
Experts then recommend dedicating at least 30 minutes to the meal: it must be consumed with tranquility, possibly without distractions that do not allow us to fully enjoy the flavors we ingest, inducing us to eat more and more. Paying attention to what you eat, and savoring it in its entirety, is in fact an effective way to avoid making our meals interminable.
Knowing how to listen to your body so as not to always be hungry
Don't follow any diet to lose weight! To control hunger, you should learn to listen to your body.
At what pace is it good to feed yourself, in what quantities and how to recognize the food you need more or less?
First of all, it is advisable to avoid products that our body cannot tolerate.
Often in fact, some foods, as much as we may like them, have a negative effect on our physical well-being, also causing fatigue, anxiety and irritability. To know the foods we should stay away from, it would be good to contact a nutritionist who indicates specific tests to do and a suitable diet, able to make us feel good both physically and psychologically.
Sport, an antidote to hunger
A super effective remedy for not feeling hungry is sports.
Exercising while on a diet doesn't necessarily increase your appetite. In fact, neurotransmitters (dopamine, adrenaline or noradrenaline) prevent the brain from receiving the hunger signal.
Sometimes, however, sport stimulates the appetite. Intense training in fact pushes the body to spend maximum energy to compensate and the brain sends a signal to the stomach to ask it to store as much energy as it will have to spend during the workout.
What do we do then? If you want to lose weight, don't starve before the session, rather make sure you eat protein foods at least two hours before exercising to be ready to perform at your best.
At the beginning of regular sports practice, if you gain weight, it is normal, do not be alarmed: this is because you gain muscle, always heavier than fat!
> Protein and sugar-free snacks
