Cutting calories while dieting might help you lose weight, but it can also leave you feeling hungry and deprived. Giving into hunger pangs can sabotage your diet and ultimately make your weigh-loss efforts seem ineffective. To avoid getting hungry, eating too much and gaining weight, adjust your eating habits and lifestyle.
• Consume Solid Foods
Rather than getting your calories from liquids, get them from solid foods. Solid foods require chewing, which is associated with feeling full. Solids also take longer to consume and are more filling. Chew each bite of food at least 20 times to help keep hunger at bay. Chewing your food thoroughly results in better digestion.
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• Add Fiber and Protein
Adding fiber and protein to your meals can help prevent hunger, because they digest slowly and trigger the secretion of fullness hormones. Additionally, they keep your blood sugar stable so you're less likely to experience cravings. For protein, consume foods such as skinless poultry, fish, nuts and egg whites. Get your fiber from foods such as oats, plums, brown rice, oranges, whole grains and vegetables.
• Drink Water
Because thirst is often mistaken for hunger, it's essential to recognize whether you really are hungry. If you think you're hungry and feel tempted to reach for food, drink a glass of water instead. Your urge to eat might be gone afterward. If you're not sure whether your hunger is real, wait 20 minutes to see if you still feel hungry. If it's been longer than three hours since your last meal, you might actually be hungry.
• Manage Stress
When you're stressed, your body produces cortisol. Nutritionist Marilyn Glenville, founder of The Natural Health Website For Women, notes that high levels of this stress hormone trigger hunger and hard-to-control cravings for unhealthy foods. Glenville recommends managing stress by delegating tasks, practicing relaxation techniques and getting enough sleep. She also suggests not skipping meals and eating often, about every three hours, to help stabilize your blood sugar so you don't get hungry.
• Get Enough Sleep
Hormones in your body control whether you feel full or hungry. Sleep influences these hormones. If you lack sleep, leptin levels, which signal your brain that you're full, decrease, and ghrelin levels, which tell you that you're hungry, increase. You start craving fattening, unhealthy foods in the hopes to get a quick energy boost. To avoid this, get between seven and nine hours of sleep each night, as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation.
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