Struggling Losing Weight and Always Feeling Hungry | AD

*This is a collaborative guest post

What’s the worst thing about losing weight? Ask most people, and they’ll tell you that it’s the constant feeling of hunger. It seems like your body fights you every step of the way, compelling you to raid the fridge and munch your way through slice after slice of decadent, calorie-laden cake.

Worse still, when your body gets the better of you, you feel guilty. You imagine that there must be something wrong with you, that you’re a glutton who can’t control herself.

Of course, all of this is nonsense. That’s not what’s really going on. The truth is that your body is just trying to maintain its weight to protect you against a possible lack of calories in the future. It has nothing to do with you as a person.

The trick to successful weight loss, therefore, isn’t to starve yourself: it is to do things that help you avoid hunger entirely. There’s actually no need to be hungry all the time when losing weight. It’s something that you can do comfortably and, dare it be said, enjoyably too.

Here are some tips to lose weight fast.

Use Supplements

While you might want to lose weight “au naturel,” there’s a lot of utility in using supplements. Most of the best appetite suppressants sold in the UK contain natural ingredients anyway, like green tea extract, that help with the fat-burning process.

Supplements are, as the name would imply, best thought of as being supplementary to your program of diet and exercise. They’re something that you heap on top of your regime for added fat-burning. Supplements often contain ingredients that blunt the body’s hunger signals, helping to make the entire process feel so much better.

Fill Up on High Fibre Foods

Back in the 1990s, scientists tried to see whether they could get people to eat 2,500 calories worth of high-fibre whole plant food per day. At the outset, it seemed like it would be easy – after all, that’s what most people consume. But as the experiment progressed, it proved to be exceptionally difficult. Stuffing people with fruits, veggies, and beans all day long proved to be much harder than they ever imagined. People just couldn’t bring themselves to eat so many high-fibre foods. Many had to leave the experiment altogether!

The experience revealed something interesting: eating these kinds of foods made people feel full, even when their calorie intake was quite low. What’s more, people could eat as many veggies and beans as they liked and never gain weight. The foods took up an enormous volume in the stomach, preventing it from ever issuing a hunger signal. It was almost magical!

Practice Mindfulness

Hunger is as much a psychological process as it is a physical one. It’s essential, therefore, to be mindful of what you’re eating as you eat. All too often, you can grab a quick bite to each for lunch and not actually be paying any attention to the food itself.

Research, however, indicates that people should pay more attention to what they’re putting in their mouths at any given moment. Mindfulness helps to increase the pleasure of food and, interestingly, reduces the amount you need to satisfy your cravings.

Include Ginger in Your Cooking

Ginger isn’t just a delicious ingredient that lowers blood sugar levels; it also helps to reduce hunger too. Studies show that people eating two grams of ginger – or about a teaspoon of powdered ginger – don’t get the same extreme feelings of hunger before meals.

Do Some Exercise

Exercise is a great way to beat hunger pangs and, at the same time, amplify the effect of your diet. But why?

It all comes down to how the body interprets exercise. It sees physical activity as a signal that it’s time to work, not to eat. In response, it reduces the activation of brain regions associated with hunger and releases satiety hormones that make you feel fuller than you are.

What’s so interesting about the effect is that you can try it for yourself. If you start getting hungry at lunchtime, go for a brisk walk, cycle or jog and then see how you feel. Often, you’ll find that when you get back to your home or desk, you feel much less hungry than when you started, despite burning lots of extra calories.

Cut the Stress from Your Life

Stress is related to the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is usually behind feelings of anxiety, panic and tension. Interestingly, if you go without food, it also elevates the level of this hormone in your system. In other words, the body releases this hormone in stressful situations to provoke you to do something, like eat. Cutting down on stress, therefore, can help you to fight back against the hormone and cut your overall food intake.