No More Diets

How can I stop feeling hungry? I have hunger all the time even after a real meal.

This type of hunger is quite a common problem if you are trying to cut down on food. You see we are programmed to want to eat - it is part of our survival and if we don’t get enough food (or feel we are depriving ourselves) we just want to eat and eat.

So more often than not this kind of hunger is generally not physical but psychological.

You are fighting your natural instincts to want to eat as much as you can.

In fact even if you are not trying to cut down on food, the causes may be psychological - you may be trying to fill some kind of “gap” that exists in you or in your life. You are eating for comfort - and as food can never offer more than temporary solace you can never quite fill the space in you.

This “gap” can be caused by loneliness, boredom, unhappiness, stress, anger - any emotion which you would like to get rid of, you may try and mask with food.

The answer, of course, is to tackle the root of the problem and not the symptoms - often easier said than done - but until you do something about the root cause of your emotion, you are likely to continue to try and plug the comfort gap with food and remain hungry all the time.

If you feel you can’t tackle the root cause and just have to live with the situation then it’s important to work out how to identify difficult situations and patterns when these emotions will occur and look for other ways to feel better.

See also this 7 part series Hungry all the Time on my Think Slim blog as this may help you too.

How can I lose weight without giving up junk food?

I really wonder about this question but more about that in a moment.

First I’ll say that it’s perfectly possible to lose weight without giving up junk food. You can either

a) reduce your portion sizes so that you are eating fewer calories than you need

This means looking at how many calories you need to lose weight and then seeing how much of your normal foods will give you that requirement.

Advantage - you don’t need to change your food choices at all
Disadvantage - junk foods are high in calories so you will be able to eat very little in terms of quantity and will be hungry all the time

or you can

b) reduce the amount and frequency of your junk food eating

With this option you eat junk food less often than you used to, for example, allowing yourself one cheat day a week or one treat a day or whatever.

Advantage - you eat healthily most of the time
Disadvantage - you feel deprived during the times when you are not having your fix

Actually I recommend neither. Why is that? - after all anyone who know me knows that I like chocolate and I certainly haven’t given it up! I don’t like the first suggestion because before long you will give in to real physical (and potentially sugar-induced) hunger and I don’t like the second because imposes rules and restrictions on you which will probably make you feel deprived and rebel in the end.

What worries me however is where the question is coming from.

I normally get asked - how can I give up this or that unhealthy habit….not how can I keep on wrecking my health and still look good.

As a weight loss coach, I’d really want to explore where that drive to keep up something that does you harm comes from. If it’s just a casual question about wanting to eat the odd cookie now and again - then that’s fine - no need to go ” completely cookieless” as part of a healthy diet.

But if you are wanting to feed yourself junk all the time then that is generally more than a food preference issue but a self-esteem issue. If you love and care for yourself in a healthy way, then you want to give yourself the best possible nourishment and find the ways to make that nourishment taste good too.

Now why do you not want that for yourself? Just something to think about….