One of the great things about intermittent fasting is that after being on the plan for a while, your hunger pangs will lessen. However, until then it’s important to know how to deal with it if and when it happens.
Hunger Is Not Bad
You’ve been told your entire life that hunger is a bad thing. Of course, starvation is a bad thing. But being hungry before a meal is normal. You should be hungry long before you sit down to eat each day. That ensures that you can digest your meal properly and that you need to eat. If you’re not hungry, you really don’t need to eat. Your body knows what is best when you allow it to.
Eat Balanced Meals
A body can get hungry even when it has consumed thousands of calories if there is not enough nutrition in the food. This explains why after eating fast food, you can get hungry in an hour. It also explains why it’s so easy to eat an entire bag of chips but not so easy to eat the same amount of broccoli in calories.
Drink Enough Water
Sometimes hunger is really thirst. Most people have been ignoring thirst cues since they started kindergarten. You can retrain your body. Start by measuring out the water you want to drink each day in the morning. That way you can see it all together and can choose to drink before you eat to ensure you’re hungry.
Drink Flavored Sugar-Free Zero Calorie Drinks
Sometimes you just want to taste a flavor, but you’re not really hungry. Drinking flavored zero calorie and no-sugar beverages like green tea can help. However, for some people, it causes cravings so you may want to test this out. Start out with only water, then try flavored waters (with berries, citrus, or other fruit), then move on to the prepackaged types as a last resort.
Brush Your Teeth
You may really just have bad breath. Try brushing your teeth. Go get your teeth professionally cleaned too. Then buy a Water Flosser and clean your teeth with water every night to get all the meat and things out of your teeth. This may seem strange, but it does help.
Eat More Fiber
If you’re not including enough vegetables into your diet, you can end up getting hungry too. We all need fiber. Try incorporating veggies into every meal. Put chopped veggies in your eggs, shredded into your chili, and just get more in. You can also try a supplement.
Be Active
Time flies when you’re busy. The more active you are during your fasting times, the better. You won’t even notice the time if you’re busy doing things. You can be active doing things you like; it doesn’t have to involve working out at the gym (although that is certainly an option).
Sleep Enough
How much you sleep plays an important role in ensuring that you avoid too many negative side effects from life. If you have low energy due to lack of sleep, your body will send more signals to feed it to get more glucose. But you don’t need it if you sleep enough.
If you can start thinking of hunger as a good sign that your body is working properly, you’ll be able to deal with hunger pangs a lot better. Most of us think of hunger as something that is bad, but it’s not bad unless you will never get food again. However, you live in a situation where you will eat again, so the hunger is okay. Once you accept that, it becomes almost unnoticeable except right before a meal.
