Why do you constantly want to eat? Nutritionist tells how to prolong the feeling of satiety

medical practitioner, nutritionist, current member and certified consultant of CSNN

“True hunger occurs 3.5 to 4 hours after a full meal. It is accompanied by a feeling of emptiness in the stomach, rumbling, and weakness. But there are factors that can disrupt the physiological rhythm”.

• Causes of a constant feeling of hunger

• Recommendations to stay satiated longer

Causes of constant hunger

Nutrient deficiencies

If your body is in a nutritional deficit, it will “beg” to eat to replenish its resources. Without normalizing the menu, it is difficult to give up snacking.

Excess carbohydrates

The second frequent cause of hunger is the consumption of foods with a high glycemic index, usually light carbohydrate foods (cookies, sugar, bars). After eating them, blood sugar levels rise sharply, causing insulin to peak, which quickly “utilizes” glucose. When its level drops, we are hungry again.

It is generally believed that with a balanced diet, sugar levels reach their highest point in the first two hours after a meal. For some people, it drops significantly two to four hours after the peak, and they start to feel hungrier.

In addition, people then begin to eat more and more often, consuming an average of 300 kilocalories more than those who do not experience such a dramatic drop in sugar.

Stress

The third frequent factor of constant hunger is the so-called psychological hunger – a simple desire to eat something or something to snack on, provoked by any emotion: stress, anxiety, sadness, overstrain.

With severe and even more chronic stress begins to actively produce cortisol, acting as a kind of signal to “mobilize” resources. And at this point, you want to eat something very unhealthy and caloric.

Lack of regimen

Hunger can also occur due to a violation of the duration or quality of sleep. In this case, there is an imbalance between the hormones ghrelin (hunger hormone) and leptin (satiety hormone). That’s why after a sleepless night each of us can eat everything but not feel satiated.

Hormonal imbalance

Do not discount other reasons – the metabolic rate is directly affected by the hormones produced by the thyroid gland. It happens that some of them the body produces in excess, in which case a person may constantly feel hungry.

For example, in hyperthyroidism (lack of thyroid hormones). Each meal should cause a relaxing feeling of satiety and a logical desire to stop eating for at least three to four hours. This feeling arises due to the activation of the satiety center, which is located in the ventromedial nuclei of the hypothalamus.

The hunger and satiety centers are interconnected by a relationship where activation of one inhibits the other. The feeling of satiety, which acts as a signal to stop eating, is driven by neural impulses from receptors in the mouth, esophagus, and stomach.

This constant stream of nerve signals activates the satiety center and stops the hunger center. These signals cause initial satiety and stimulate an increase in nutrients in the blood.

Recommendations to stay satiated longer

The rate of digestion of foods is not equal to the rate of hunger. For example, freshly squeezed vegetable juices are digested very quickly, but due to their nutritional richness can maintain a feeling of satiety for a long time. But a burger will be in your digestive tract for several hours, but after half an hour you will feel hungry again.

The fact is that the sauce with added hidden sugar, as well as white bread contribute to a sharp increase in blood glucose and trigger the mechanism described above.

There are a few simple ways to help eliminate the feeling of hunger for an extended period of time.

• Adjust your diet and the quality of the food you consume. Try to eat a full meal three times a day, do not skip meals, especially breakfast. Regularity helps keep blood sugar levels stable, which prevents constant spikes in appetite.
• Choose snacks correctly – they should contain only those components that will help satiate the body for a long time (proteins, fiber, vegetable fats and complex carbohydrates). Fast carbohydrates (sweets and flour, fresh fruit juices) tend to make you hungry again after a short time.

• Drink more fluids. Often the feeling of hunger can be caused by severe dehydration. The thirst and hunger centers are next to each other, and very often our body “asks” to eat, when in fact the cause is dehydration.

The adult norm is 30 ml of clean drinking water per one kg of weight. Remember that this is a very approximate figure, and it varies greatly depending on your living conditions, physical activity and diet. A competent nutritionist will help analyze your diet and drinking regimen, offer options, taking into account all your individual characteristics.

• Be attentive to your emotions. Perhaps a strong appetite is associated with stress, lack of sleep and other negative emotions. Therefore, it is important to control yourself, use breathing practices, herbal teas, which will help not only to cope with stress, but also to normalize sleep phases.

If you have an unreasonable feeling of hunger, adopt products that will help to remove it instantly: you can hold a stick of cloves in your mouth. It has an “anesthetic” effect, as if freezing the taste buds.

You can also use a couple of cubes of bitter chocolate with a cocoa content of at least 80%. And, of course, it is necessary to reduce the consumption of alcohol and salt, which stimulate the appetite.