One of the chief complaints most people have when they go on a diet is they don’t like feeling hungry all the time. To help with that, Greatist has a few ideas on how not to feel hungry. It starts with understanding the terms ghrelin and leptin, and how each plays a part in your feeding cycle.
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Simply put, ghrelin is what makes you feel hungry; leptin is what makes you feel full. The problem comes when the two become confused and don’t work synergistically. To get you back on track, Greatist suggests:
1. Starting with a diet you can stick to — Fads fade away and only add to your weight problem
2. Eating more protein — Protein helps make you feel fuller
3. Eating more fiber — Fiber fills in where carbs like sugar leave holes
4. Eating slower — Give your stomach a chance to catch up with your mouth
5. Avoiding emotional eating — If you’re feeling empty emotionally, all the food in the world won’t fill you up
These are all good ideas for helping you feel satisfied as you go through your day. But five even better ways to keep from feeling hungry, whether you’re on a diet or not, include:
1. Don’t take your fiber lightly — Indeed, as the featured article suggests, fiber is a cornerstone of your diet. Besides the health factor — high-fiber diets help reduce your risk of premature death from any cause — a high-fiber diet can also help you manage your weight. There are three types of fiber: soluble, insoluble and digestive-resistant starch, the latter of which has benefits that result from fermentation in your large intestine.
2. Remember that dietary fats play a HUGE role in how you metabolize your food — It’s not the disparity between food intake and energy expenditure that contributes to obesity, but how you view dietary fats, specifically omega-6s. Studies show a link between eating omega-3 fats and decreased fatty tissue and chronic inflammation.
3. Boost your metabolism with a ketogenic diet — When your body is able to burn fat for fuel, your liver creates water-soluble fats called ketones that burn fat more efficiently. By consuming healthy fats, minimal carbohydrates — including eliminating processed sugars from your diet — and moderate amounts of protein you not only can feel full, longer, but lose weight in the process.
A cyclical ketogenic diet is one of the most effective low-carb diets. Additionally, many experts now believe that your body develops a resistance to the benefits of ketosis unless you regularly cycle in and out of it.
4. Control your hunger with cyclical fasting — Right along with the cyclical ketogenic diet, if you implement a cycle of fasting you’ll find that you won’t feel hungry in the same way or as much as you would without fasting. Fasting also upregulates autophagy and mitophagy — natural cleansing processes necessary for optimal cellular renewal and function.
To implement an intermittent fasting schedule, eat all your meals — either breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner — within an eight-hour window each day. Fast for the remaining 16 hours. If all of this is new to you and the idea of making changes to your diet and eating habits seems too daunting, simply start out by eating your regular diet on this timed schedule.
Once this has become routine, move on to implement the ketogenic diet (step 2), followed by the cyclical component (step 3). You can take comfort in knowing that once you reach step 3, you will be able to cycle in some of your favorite healthy carbs once again on a weekly basis.
5. And last but not least, keep in mind it can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months before your body is able to effectively burn fat again. Again, cycling in and out of nutritional ketosis will maximize the biological benefits of cellular regeneration and renewal, while minimizing the potential drawbacks of continuous keto.