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.