How to lose weight While controlling hunger

Sometimes you have to do something you don’t to want to do and be hungry, unfortunately lose weight most likely means some level of hunger.

However you can minimise the hunger by eating specific foods, quantities and other techniques.

First we can go over to hunger and techniques of how to control it when you do get hungry.

So when those hunger pains comes on, you can control it by first drinking water. I don’t mean a sip, I mean half a glass to a full glass of water, a lot of the hunger feelings are actually just first, think about when you last drank some water, if it was more than 1 hour ago definitely have a drink, if it was less than 30 minutes then maybe it is actually hunger, which we’ll go over later.

Another thing to do when you get hungry is Nap! It sounds strange and you might not be able to do it however, research has shown that a lack of sleep can lead to 2 things! Firstly you’re more liking to pick ‘comfort’ foods, I.e chocolate, cookies, high calorie, poor food quality food, and secondly, your hormones ‘ghrelin’ and ‘leptin’ (appetite hormones) don’t balance each other out, so you’re more likely to still be hungry after a meal and not be able to be full or feel full. So if you had a really crap sleep the night before try and nap, try and catch up and it might help you with the deficit, it will also make you more productive.

The third and last suggestion is to eat, however and it’s a big however, you can only eat very low calorie, high fibre fruit/veg, things like, celery sticks, apple, strawberries, if you make room in your calories for higher calorie fruit and veg that would be better do you can have a fruit salad or something like that but if you haven’t, stick to celery!

Actually I’ll sneak another quick point, hey don’t say I don’t give you value!

The last one is walking! Go for a walk, get some fresh air, do something, sometimes you get hungry through boredom, it isn’t true hunger, it’s just ‘I’m bored, I want some food’ this happens all the time at the weekend for most people. There’s only so much Netflix you can handle.

Alright, now we have gone over what to do when hunger strikes now we can learn how to minimise getting it in a first place.

The first thing to do is plan your food for the day, plan breakfasts, plan sacks, plan meals everything, that way when you can eat when you know when you get hungry, I don’t get the 3/4pm hunger, but I know a lot of people do so you would put a snack there. Learn your food habits and use the habits that’s already there, changing a habit is easy compared to creating a new habit, so if you get up the photocopier, the stock cupboard,the meeting room where ever, you put a habit on top of that, so you get a glass of water before the meeting, you get the lift 2 floors below and walk up the stairs to the meeting room. Whatever you can do to add a healthy habit on top of a existing habit do, it’s called habit stacking and it’s an incredible tool.

The second thing you can do is eat high volumes of food, things like soup, you can eat a highly flavoured soup and 3 litres worth and still keep it under 100 calories.
Soups with slow cooked meats can be a very easy and great way to add high volumes of food, same with low calories veg, things like mushrooms, spinach, can be a really easy way to add a lot of volume too food to keep you fuller for longer.

The third thing is that magic pill again... water!!! Have a glass of water before, during and after a meal, and I can almost guarantee you will feel very full and will stay full for some time after!
A study was done, with the same technique but with a segment of Apple, before and after the meal, and participants found they couldn’t eat as much, this is a great way to control your appetite before an evening meal, eat some fruit, veg before you go out you won’t eat as much and thus hopefully stay in your deficit.

I hope these help you, please let me know if I can help you more, just send me an email at dangrimes@applied-fitness.co.uk

Have a great week, Go get your goals!


Dan