Surefire Ways to Prevent Hunger Pangs From Being Your Downfall
How can you prevent hunger pangs from being your downfall, whether you're trying to lose or maintain your weight? No matter which diet plan you follow, and no matter how careful you are to watch what you eat, all your hard work can be undone in a moment of weakness when you reach for that calorie-laden snack. Most of the time, that happens when sudden hunger pangs overcome you. The HCG diet has a plan for handling these hunger pangs.
Sometimes, willpower isn't enough to make you ignore your body's insistent demands for food. It requires taking two approaches in tandem: preventing the pangs from occurring where possible, and dealing with them as best you can when they do arrive.
Avoiding Hunger Pangs
The kind of food you eat, and when you eat it, has a huge impact on the amount and strength of the hunger pangs you feel as you go about your day.
1. Fiber is Important
It's important to eat foods with high fiber content as much as possible. Dietary fiber slows digestion and spreads the release of your food's energy over a longer period. This keeps your blood sugar levels more even, avoiding the sudden dips that lead to intense feelings of hunger. We like to eat quinoa because it is high in fiber and recommend these two healthy, high-fiber recipes.
2. Eat Breakfast
Most nutritional experts agree that eating breakfast is important for a healthy diet. It provides the energy you need to kick-start your day. It also helps you to avoid tiredness-induced feelings of hunger and it reduces temptation to indulge in sugary snacks. However, it's important to eat a nutritionally valuable breakfast. Highly processed sugary concoctions may give a quick energy boost, but this will be followed by a crash in your blood-sugar levels, which will have you reaching for the cookie jar well before lunchtime arrives. We provide healthy breakfast recipes that will keep you full all morning. One of our favorite breakfast recipes is this Breakfast Casserole submitted by Sheila while she was losing weight with the DIY HCG Diet.
3. Avoid Sugar at Other Times Too
To prevent these same sugar highs followed by pang-promoting lows, you should also limit your sugar consumption throughout the day. Donuts and candy are not the only culprits when it comes to disrupting blood sugar, however. Fresh fruit may be healthy in many respects, but they also can play havoc with your energy levels. Compromise by eating relatively low-sugar, fiber-rich fruits such as berries or avocado, or balance the sweetness with a good source of dietary fiber. If you're still craving something sweet, try this Sugar-Free Banana Cream Pudding recipe.
4. Drink Green Tea
There are many benefits claimed for drinking green tea, some more realistic than others. One real advantage of green tea consumption, however, is that it stimulates the body's production of CCK. CCK is a hormone that aids weight loss. CCK smooths and regulates the digestion to prevent sugar spikes, and also acts as an appetite suppressant. Taking small amounts of green tea throughout the day can therefore greatly reduce your desire for snacking.
5. Avoid Caffeine
Although green tea may be the exception to the rule, it's important to avoid taking too much caffeine. This mild stimulant gives you that familiar buzz and suppresses your appetite immediately after drinking a cup of strong coffee, but once those effects wear off, you can feel unnaturally fatigued, weak, and hungry. It's also possible for excess caffeine to result in trembling and lightheadedness, which can easily be mistaken for hunger.
6. Stay Hydrated
An empty feeling in your stomach isn't always caused by a lack of food. Thirst can feel remarkably similar to hunger and lead to unnecessary snacking, so avoid confusion by drinking plenty of water to stay hydrated.
7. Get Plenty of Sleep
Lastly, tiredness increases the levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin. It also simultaneously reduces the production of leptin, the hormone that controls your appetite. Both these changes can make you feel intense hunger pangs even when your body doesn't need fuel for energy. If you're frequently tired, consider looking at ways of getting more high-quality sleep. Not only will you feel better all-around, but you also will experience fewer urges to snack.
Coping with Hunger Pangs
Even with your best efforts and organization, irresistible hunger pangs can still strike from time to time. If ignoring them isn't an option, how can you deal with them in a diet-friendly way?
1. Healthy Snacks
Try and keep a supply of healthy snacks convenient at all times. Nuts, high-fiber crackers, and hard-boiled eggs are all easy to carry with you and can calm the pangs quickly without causing disruptive sugar spikes.
2. Have a Cold Drink
Sometimes a hunger pang is only thirst in disguise, and so water can drive it away. If you're experiencing true hunger, however, a long, cold drink can disguise the feeling long enough to allow you to find a healthy snack solution. This is better than impulsively reaching for the nearest sugar-packed temptation.
3. Pause for Thought
When a pang strikes, take a mindful approach and pause for a second or two. Take deep breaths and think about the consequences of giving in to your snacking urge. It's surprising how quickly a pang will pass, especially if it's the result of habit or anxiety rather than a genuine need for nutrition.
4. Keep a Diary
If you continue to be plagued by hunger pangs, keep a diary of them, taking note of when they hit the most often. If you spot a pattern, you may be able to shift your regular meal schedule to accommodate them and lessen their effects. Alternatively, if you're forewarned about the most likely times to be overcome, you can ensure you have a healthy snack easily available.
Hunger pangs are perfectly normal; they'll happen from time to time regardless of how sensible your eating habits are. If you find they're a constant problem and don't respond to any of these tips, then you might want to consider speaking to your doctor to rule out any underlying health problem. For the vast majority of people, however, learning to deal effectively with sudden hunger will be a major step toward boosting your weight-loss success. We've had personal success with the HCG diet.