Why am I Always Hungry? (Part Three)

(See Part One: Always Hungry? and Part Two: Hungry All the Time if you missed these)

Another reason you may feel hungry all the time is because you are not eating enough food, not in terms of volume (as we saw in Part 2) but in terms of calories. You see, if volume of food was enough to keep you satisfied you could live on vegetables and salads with a tiny amount of protein and fat (just enough to stop you getting ill) and you'd never get hungry.

But the fact is that your body will soon tell you if you are not giving it enough calories by making you ravenously hungry. The problem is that when your blood sugar level drops, your body cries out for food to get the balance back. Yes, it will use up your fat stores (and your precious muscle) if you don't feed it but it will also let you know in no uncertain terms that you are starving it by giving you huge hunger pangs.

The danger is that if you have the willpower and you carry on like that you are behaving like someone who has a real eating problem and after a few days the feelings of hunger eventually disappear. But the damage you are doing to your body does not go away and if you take this starvation idea too far you can end up seriously ill.

I generally don't advocate counting calories as a weight loss strategy. Most people get it wrong and end up eating too much and NOT losing weight but if you are hungry all the time and think you may be eating too little then check out how many calories you are eating.

I like to see steady weight loss of a pound or two a week and no more (preferably a pound but I know you all want to see fast results).

With a pound a week that means a deficit of no more than 500 calories a day - and even with 2lbs a deficit of 1000 and no more.

That means eating about 500 or 1000 calories fewer than you are using in any 24 hour period. If you are also increasing your exercise levels remember to take that into account too when you calculate the minimum you should be eating.

Spread your calories out throughout the day so that you don't starve yourself all day and then splurge in the evening. It will keep your metabolism ticking over nicely and prevent hunger pangs during the day (and unwise choices at lunch and coffee time)

If you have a big night out on the cards where you know you will eat more calories than you want, I find the best way to deal with it is to eat a tiny bit less a couple of days running up to the night out and also a couple of days afterwards so that you can enjoy your event without guilt. And I'd also recommend you make it a 1lb weight loss target for the week instead of 2lb in advance so that you can still make it a successful week.