Note to the reader — This a long article but the sections are not conitunous (they can be read in any order). I recommend reading a couple of sections a day to make reading the whole article more manageable. I also added summaries at the bottom of each subsection. In this way, you can get a quick idea for the topic of the subsection, and then decide if you want to read further. This can save you some time. Enjoy!
At the time of writing, I am 2 weeks and 4 days out from my first bodybuilding competition of the year. I have currently been dieting for little over 20 weeks, and now it is my job to get really lean. This is where things get tough, and you have to drop your calories low to get in shape. This type of transformation comes at a cost, thanks to homeostasis (the body’s attempt to keep everything balanced). When you start losing weight, your body will do what it can to resist losing more, since this is bad news from the body’s perspective. The most famous example of this when dieting is hunger. However, to my surprise, hunger has not been a major feature of my experience this year. My energy is low, my mood is down a bit, my food focus is up — but hunger itself has been almost entirely absent. Only now in these final stages is it starting to make an appearance, but even this is surprising given that my calories have been low, and I have been lean for quite a while now. For some reference, the picture below shows me at the start of my diet, where my normal daily consumption was around 4500 calories a day. The picture on the right is a recent picture, where my calories are in the ballpark of 1500 a day.
To go from such a high intake to such a low intake (with the corresponding low bodyfat) with hardly any hunger is not common. This got me thinking about all the things I was doing — conscious or otherwise — that led to this. Then I decided to write these out and share them in this article for others to learn from. Before we begin, let’s lay some things out.
If you’re dieting, you’re probably not going to be able to avoid all the negative effects of dieting entirely, no matter what you do. You will almost definitely have to make some forms of sacrifice and, at times, persevere through tough moments. But we can definitely take steps to minimise these. Doing so will make your diet experience more manageable and therefore increase your success. Terms such as hunger, satiety, satiation, fullness, all have subtle differences in their meaning. I am not so strict about this in the present article. I’m not an expert on this topic, and this article is written for the layman. Therefore, if at times my use of these terms does not exactly align with the proper form, forgive me. I am confident the meaning will not be altered significantly for the intended reader. One distinction I will make is that of hunger and food focus. Whilst hunger is the feeling to eat because of a possible necessity to fulfil energy requirements in the body, I use food focus to describe situations where one is thinking or focusing on food irrelevant of hunger or satiety status. It may co-occur with hunger, but hunger may also be absent during food focus (imagine you just finished a meal and, despite being full and not being hungry, you still want to eat more — this is how I use this term).
As mentioned in the note at the beginning, the article is long but is split into non-continuous sections. You can read it in any order you want. I’d advise reading it in chunks or skimming through the headings to see which you think you would benefit most from reading. I add summary sections at the bottom of each section so you can quickly extract the key points. Then, those you find interesting can be explored in more detail by reading the full text. This is the most efficient way to use the article. Beside each subsection heading, I write the effect I think the tip has on managing hunger. The effect size is ranked from Very Small — Very Large. I do not rank the tips in any kind of order; that is, their order of appearance in the article is random. Finally, although the article is focused on hunger, I very often elaborate on other health or diet effects of the tips I discuss, so there’s a good chance you will learn about some other things, too. Thus, without further ado, let’s begin!
Make your meals taste average — Moderate
Seneca on “The True Joy Which Comes from Philosophy”:
“pleasure, unless it has been kept within bounds, tends to rush headlong into the abuss of sorrow”
I began thinking a while ago now that part of the current obesity problem is the fact that in our society, we are surrounded by highly tasty foods that are very easy to overindulge in. Although part of this subsection is anecdotally based, there is also literature supporting this [1]. Especially think from the perspective of a child — why would you ever choose a healthy option that tastes like soil when you can have the dopamine explosion of a waffle… With ice-cream… And strawberry sauce. All at once. And once these food habits become ingrained from youth, they are much harder to relearn. And to be fair to children, indeed many adults struggle with this. Humans are not designed to be surrounded by such foods. In fact, if at points in our evolutionary history we were surrounded by so much high-calorie food, it would make a lot of sense to fill your boots since you don’t know when your next meal might come. This is something in our evolutionary hardware that has been a sensible adaptation over time but is now counterproductive. It is hard to say no to a delicious meal that we know will taste far better than the healthy option that, although suits our goals, will not taste as nice. I believe that part of this problem is the fact that so many people are habituated to delicious tasting food that the “step-down” on the ladder of taste is too large for them to handle, and they simply default back to their original (not so healthy) option. Take a look at this excerpt from [1]:
“excessive consumption of palatable food can trigger neuroadaptive responses in brain reward circuitries similar to drugs of abuse”
This is a cycle that should be broken and although it will take some effort to do so, it is worth the investment. I have always been able to eat a lot and have always appreciated the taste of good food. This has changed a little in the past few years, where now I’m a lot more relaxed (in control, I would say) with my attitudes towards foods. I remember going to college (high school) every day, telling myself I would have fruit instead of a glutinous flapjack at break time; that I would have vegetables and salad instead of a pizza at lunch, and frequently failing at being able to do this. Over the years I gradually worked on this because it became obviously apparent that my intentions and my actions were out of line, and this was not conducive to my goals. Although the various confounding factors that no doubt were part of this change (shift in environment, growing older, becoming more mentally disciplined and responsible for my goals, being more mindful, to name a few) make it difficult for me to be exactly sure, I do believe this desensitization also had a role to play. When I ate pizza and burgers and such regularly (~around twice a month), I felt like I was missing out when I wasn’t eating them. Now, such foods are rarely a part of my diet ever and I don’t feel like I am missing out. It may seem paradoxical, but my perspective on this that because I eat unexciting meals regularly, I don’t expect anything more; therefore, I am not disappointed when I am eating a bowl of vegetables. Instead, I am perfectly content.
This helps me greatly when dieting. In previous years when I’ve dieted, I have endeavoured to make my meals really tasty (“if I can’t eat a lot, then I’m sure as hell going to make it taste nice”). But, as I discovered, all this does is lead to more feelings of unsatisfaction, since I’m just left wanting more. Not only, but if I know I have a delicious meal coming up later in the day, my attention is likely to be taken hostage from whatever I should be doing, and I will find myself counting the minutes until it is time to eat. Such food focus and loss of the present moment is not a good sign for diet success (see the “Mindfulness” and “Keeping Busy” sections). I even had this idea reinforced in me recently when I accidentally used a larger than usual amount of sweetener in my protein (I have unflavoured protein, to which I add a little sweetener to make it “edible”). Sure enough, it was much tastier than normal, and I was on the verge of wolfing it down. As soon as I finished, the first thing in my head was a desire for more.
At this point, through necessity, I am forced to pre-emptively defend myself, otherwise I inevitably face the following hostilities (I’m speaking from experience here): “So you’re saying all your meals should be boring? How can you live without taste? Taste is life? I could never stick to a diet if I did that”. To be clear: I am not saying you should live without taste, that you should only eat foods you dislike, that every meal should leave you crying and devoid of positive sensation. I add things like spices and sweetener sometimes solely for the purpose of taste. But I aim to do so minimally, just enough that I can (and do) enjoy my meal, and then get back on with my life. Depriving yourself of any flavour in your diet like that is probably a very good way to set yourself up to feel repressed and depraved, to binge, and ultimately fail your diet. I think the relationship between how your meals taste and your focus on food is probably U-shaped, as you can see in the graph below. Naturally, then, from the perspective of combating food focus or hunger, it’s a good idea to try and be around the bottom of the U.
Some brief food for thought: What is easier to overeat on, a bowl of plain pasta, or a bowl of pasta covered in your favourite sauce, cheese, salt, seasoning, etc.? To quote [1] again:
“In general, bland tasting foods are not eaten to excess, whereas palatable foods are often consumed even after energy requirements have been met”
If your aim was to lose weight, wouldn’t it be nice to appreciate the blander foods more, meaning you’re much less likely to overeat and much less likely to be left in a state of craving for more? Desensitising yourself to gorgeous food and resensitising yourself to more modest tastes can help you become more fulfilled with the type of foods that will be more helpful to you when dieting.
A special note on sugar and processed foods
I had initially finished this section but wanted to come back and add a come more lines here on sugar and processed foods. Whilst this section applies to all types of morish foods, these two deserve a special mention. Firstly, I am not an anti-sugar or anti-processed foods zealot; you can eat these foods and achieve your health goals. But in the context of the current section, I believe these foods are particularly guilty. These foods are usually pretty addictive and, unfortunately, very easy to overeat. Their consumption usually does not end with satisfaction, but the desire to eat more. This can make dieting much more difficult. Because the effect these foods have on promoting food focus is particularly strong, I highly advise reducing how much you consume as a minimum. I am also confident that doing so will have an overall net positive effect, since it will allow you to break the cycle of craving ➜ eating ➜ craving more ➜ eating again.
Summary — Making your meals taste plainer can help prevent cravings when dieting.
Sleep — Very large
Coincidentally, at this time of writing I am someone who slept poorly last night. Because of this, basically every aspect of my normal being is affected: my mood, concentration, breathing, energy. Unexempt from this is my hunger. And this is not a one-off. So far in my preparation for my competition, the factor that has had the most consistent impact on my hunger (sometimes, even more so than decrease in calories themselves!) has been my sleep. If I sleep less/poorly, I am reliably hungrier the following day. And as scientific literature has shown, I am not unique in this regard. In studies where people are deprived of sleep, people report more hunger and more food cravings especially of calorie dense foods [2, 3]. Decreased fullness is also reported [4]. These findings are supported by physiological rationale. Perturbed sleep leads to changes in brain activity responsible for the appetite evaluation regions (frontal and insula cortex), which result in your brain being less effective in regulating appetite [2].
These changes were associated with increased desire for calorie dense food and correlated to the magnitude of sleep deprivation. This is particularly bad news if you’re dieting without a structured plan or if you’re not weighing your food, because it means you’re much more likely to overeat and make poorer meal choices (poorer decision-making behaviour in general is also another symptom of poor sleep [5]). Hormonal such as GLP-1 and peptide-YY (the satiety hormones we mentioned above in the section “Increased fibre intake”) are also decreased, again promoting a hunger environment in the body [3]. Although some of these studies used rather harsh sleep deprivation (ranging from 2–24h), the correlation seems to be dose-dependent. Certainly, in my personal experience, even slight deprivation by an hour or so is enough to induce these effects. Thus, it is not surprising at all that there is such a strong link between poor sleep and obesity [6]. In fact, I believe this to be a large contributing factor to the obesity epidemic the world is facing.
Whilst we’re here, sleep loss also has a bunch of other negative effects that you don’t want to incur whilst dieting that, although maybe not exactly related to hunger, you’d want to avoid. For example, we see things like increased sympathetic activity (the fight or flight mode of the body) with sleep deprivation, promoting anxious and depressed thought processes. With this also comes metabolic effects and pro-inflammatory responses that are not favourable for fat loss of body composition (e.g., such as insulin resistance) [7]. Poor sleep interferes with energy balance processes such as tendency to engage in physical activity and activity generally across the day [8]. Anecdotally, this is something I can also attest to; I am obviously less enthusiastic about moving around right now and would rather remain relatively motionless compared to previous days. There is also evidence that poor sleep interferes with resistance exercise specifically, such as via reduced force output (particularly on big, compound movements) [9]. As we will see below, resistance exercise and retaining muscle is a good idea when dieting, so this is especially disadvantageous.
The scope at which sleep influences health is staggering and covers just about every cause of death you’re likely to hear from in the modern world [10]. Clearly it is something that everyone should be making sure not to neglect. However, it is all too easy to do so due to the seemingly harmless nature of sleep interruption on a day-to-day basis. At the risk of simply regurgitating what you already know, we should try to get about 8h of sleep a night (this is an approximation, as really “adequate” sleep time varies between people and circumstances — however 8h is a good number to try and aim for). Not only quantity, though, but quality is also important. This involves creating an environment that allows good quality sleep, such as one without disturbance, noise, too much light, poor room temperature, etc. You want to reduce stimulation before bed. This includes phone use, exciting or intense conversations, intense television or films, video games, and so on. Better would be reading in dim light or listening to a slow-paced podcast. Since sleep is something I’ve struggled with and something that is particularly important to bodybuilding, I’ve done some reading on this topic and arrived at some helpful tips for improving sleep. I will lay out the ones I’ve found most helpful below in bullet points (in no particular order):
· Make your environment as dark as possible about 1–2h before bed. This is best done with the gradual darkening of light outside. If you must use light to see inside, use dim, warm lights and not bright, white coloured, or fluorescent ones.
· Make your sleep environment cool since cooling of body temperature is imperative for sleep-onset.
· Use blue-light blocking glasses if you must use screens. Get apps for your phone or laptop, such as Flux.
· Avoid being too full or too hungry when trying to sleep, if possible.
· Destress BEFORE you get to bed, not whilst in bed. If things are bothering you, try to mentally process them before getting into bed and trying to sleep. Try writing things down on a notepad for yourself to deal with tomorrow.
· Reserve your bed (and bedroom if possible) for only sleep.
· Make use of naps. Naps are an excellent way to combat tiredness when used correctly. Limit naps to 30 minutes (so as not to interfere with sleep-wake cycle) in the early afternoon.
· Don’t stress about sleep difficulties. This will likely magnify the problem. Instead, do something until you feel sleepy, such as mediate, reading, listening to audiobooks or podcasts, etc.
· Sleep and wake at the same time every day. This routine will tell your body when is sleep time and when is wake time, improving sleep onset, waking, and sleep quality.
· Expose yourself to light early in the morning. This anchors circadian rhythm and tells your body it is time to wake. Failing to do this may confuse your body somewhat, meaning it doesn’t know it’s time to sleep on the night.
Summary — Better sleep, either in quality or duration, reduces hunger, cravings, improves energy, fat loss, mood, and health in general.
Food Selection — Very large
A huge mistake that many people make when dieting is that they reduce their food intake to reduce their calories without also changing the content of their diet. This results in a situation where portion sizes become smaller and smaller over time. This has a couple of effects worth mentioning. First, you are physically consuming less food in terms of volume, meaning your stomach is less full. Part of the feeling of fullness originates from stretch receptors in the stomach being activated and sending signals to the brain that the stomach is filling up with food. This is the reason why drinking water before and after meals can be a good way to temporarily reduce hunger. Next, there is the psychological element. You can visibly see the reduction in food on your plate, and it takes you much less time to eat it. This latter point is relevant when you consider eating speed goes up when dieting anyway due to increased hunger, food focus and digestive efficiency. This can lead to a situation where you feel less satisfied and contribute further to feelings of hunger and energy depletion.
Ideally, what we want to do, is create a situation where we modify our food choices to mitigate these changes by introducing foods lower in calories but higher in volume (low cal/high volume). And even more ideally, we want to introduce these changes so that they match the decreases in calories over time. That is, we don’t want to instantly swap all our high cal/low volume granola for low cal/high volume oats right away, because then we still have the situation where, as we reduce calories, food content also decreases. Shooting for something roughly like the graph below is a good idea.
How can you implement this, then? Well, it’s a great idea to start looking into some low cal/high volume foods and start to utilize them when making your calorie decreases. Let’s say you’ve been dieting on the same calories for a few weeks now, and weight has somewhat stabilized, but we would like to keep losing weight. One of our meals contains 100g of rice. What we could do is, instead of simply decreasing the rice to 80g, we could decrease the rice to 70g and add in 100g of carrots. Carrots have approximately 10% of the calories of rice per gram. In this way, although we have decreased our caloric intake, our total food volume intake is preserved somewhat. It will still take you a similar time to eat and there will be more content in your stomach. We can consider changes like this with many different foods at every point we need to reduce our calories. For some suggestions on low cal/high volume foods, check the post in the picture below from my Instagram page @trentiron.
Summary — Increasing high volume/low calorie foods as you progress further into your diet is a good way to continue remain fuller, extend the eating period, and reduce hunger.
Some of these options are truly excellent. Look at mushrooms, or eggplant, some massively underutilized foods in western diet culture. Cucumber is even more impressive, and also delicious. How can these foods offer such low calories despite being sometimes fairly sizeable? They are mostly water, although some of them also offer lots of fibre. Fibre is great for dieting because it is multifaceted. Firstly, it adds volume to foods, but secondly may also have direct impact on satiety signalling. You can read more on fibre in the “Increase fibre intake” section. This tip — increasing food volume to match calorie decreases — is like magic. It feels like cheating, especially when you find low cal/high volume foods that you like (and I’m sure you like at least a handful of those listed above). I’ve done diets in the past where I find myself having 4 rice cakes or 25g of rice to get 20g of carbohydrates. That is rough. It’s like eating baby portions. Why the hell would you not make those carbohydrates up instead with 250g eggplant or 250g watermelon or 300g of strawberries (all of which equate to roughly 20g of carbohydrates, but feel much more satisfying to eat)? This is sensible dieting.
Increase Fibre Intake — Questionable
Since we just touched on this above, let’s elaborate on fibre and your diet success now. Fibre is broad category of dietary substance that is resistant to digestion. Briefly, we digest proteins in the stomach with proteases, and we digest most of our carbohydrates and fat in the small intestine using other enzymes, primarily those released by the pancreas. Fibre is a group of carbohydrates that have a composition that means they cannot be broken down by the enzymes humans secrete. Thus, by the time they reach the large intestine, they are intact (whereas protein, digestible carbohydrates, and fats have almost entirely been absorbed). Fibre now makes its way to the large intestine, where they are fermented by bacteria that take residence there. Whatever is left at the end of this process is excreted out.
Fibre in the large intestine is beneficial for gut (and therefore, overall) health. It contributes to faecal bulking and can improve bowel movement habits; it is fermented by bacteria (bacteria do have enzymes to break fibre down), which promotes a healthy microbiota population and balance; the fermentation products of bacterial breakdown — called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) — have various beneficial effects such as anti-inflammation, reducing pH (this interferes with pathogenic infection), increased nutrient absorption, provides energy for cells of the colon, anticarcinogenic, and more [11]; and finally, relevant to our topic, fibre may promote satiety and affect energy balance.
The topic of fibre can be quite complicated, since there are many different types of fibre and they do not have the same properties or structure, do not act in the same way in the body, and do not have the same effects. Unsurprisingly, then, studies investigating fibre are not straightforward and do not always show the same results. Whilst some show fibre can influence satiety or satiation (these terms are different but often used synonymously) [12], others do not [13;14]. There’s physiological rationale for fibre impacting these two things. On the topic of satiety/satiation, fibre increases time food is spent in the mouth and chewing, increases gastric distention, delays gastric emptying, and may reduce digestive transit time after the stomach, all of which could decrease food intake. The SCFAs we just discussed above also bind to cells in the large intestine (L-cells) causing release or hormones (peptide YY and glucagon-like-peptide 1; GLP-1) that influence appetite regulation [12]. Thus, whilst none of these points guarantee food intake will be decreased and satiety will be higher, they do suggest it could occur, and there is the possibility that the studies of the meta-analyses mentioned above [13; 14] contain studies that do not have enough power to show this. This is not a knock at those performing the studies or the meta-analysis — again, this is a complicated topic, and it may be that we need a few more years to begin running studies that can generate sufficient power.
Regardless, increasing fibre intake is not likely to increase energy intake. Although some fibres do supply calories (whilst not digested in the small intestine, SCFAs do contribute to energy balance), the overall contribution to diet will be small (and some fibres actually negatively impact energy balance). But with the additional psychological effects that fibre and increased food volume that fibre contributes to, I’d argue it’s still worth at least trying to implement more fibre during your dieting phase. At the very least, you’re going to get all those cool healthy effects we discussed earlier that fibre comes with (in addition to others [15]), and these really are significant.
So, how do we implement this? Well, we all know vegetables, fruits, wholegrains, cereals, etc., all offer fibres of different forms. After reading the section on food volume, we’re probably going to be increasing our intake of those anyway, so that’s not going to be too much of an issue. However, there are other tricks, too. One is making use of something called retrogradation. When we cook foods like pasta, the starch molecules are uncooked and cause the product to be hard and rigid. Upon heating with water, a process called gelatinization occurs — this is where water is absorbed by the starch, and swelling occurs. The food product will get softer making it easier to eat. If, however, you leave this food a little while after cooking, it will cool, at which point some of the starch will revert back to being indigestible. This is retrogradation. This is a simple and easy trick to bring the calorie content of your starchy foods down a bit. Just cook your starch-containing food a little earlier and allow it to cool. A great implementation of this would be, for example, making your pasta or potatoes on the morning to have a lunch.
An even more direct way to make use of fibre is to simply buy it. Various types exist to account for the various fibres that exist, but I’ve found psyllium husk to be great. My favourite use for this product is to add to by protein powder. This changes a running, quick to digest protein powder into a thick, dessert-like food product that takes much longer to eat. In my experience, this makes a huge difference to the psychological component of dieting. I also make use of the mushroom konjac, which provides almost all of its calories in the form of the fibre glucomannan. I buy this in the form of a pasta/rice imitation from the brand seen in the picture below. This is nice, as you can add various spices to it, so it also tastes a little better. Try different products see what works for you.
Summary — Fiber probably increases satiety and decreases hunger. It also increases the eating window and has multiple beneficial effects on gut and overall health.
Maintaining Oral Health — Small
The title of this subsection is kind of a joke. It represents different tricks that both relate to good oral health, so I just grouped them together. Chewing sugar free gum after a meal is a good way to remove some bits of trapped food in the mouth and enhance the secretion of saliva, which contains enzymes like amylase which can break down some of the sugars left in your mouth after eating, leaving less available for harmful bacteria. However, it’s also a nice way to keep your mouth busy after you’ve finished eating which can prevent you from picking at snacks. Plus, who even thinks about eating food whilst chewing gum? If I wanted to eat something whilst I was chewing gum, I would have to take the gum out and then eat the food. Such a small additional step might be enough to prevent additional, mindless snacking. On top of this, gum is sweet and can satisfy a sweet tooth that some people have after eating a main dish. The final bonus is it gives the mouth a fresh, clean feeling which is desirable to maintain. That is, you’re less likely to want to eat more.
This brings me on to the next point, which is similar: make use of teeth brushing after eating. To reiterate, having a fresh mouth (i.e., one that has just been cleaned) is desirable and something people would like to maintain after doing so. You probably also have the mental association of teeth brushing with the cessation of eating (e.g., just before bed). Brushing your teeth soon after eating can capitalize on that association of clean mouth with “eating is over”, taking your mind away from food. I advise this tip with caution, since teeth shouldn’t really be brushed too soon after consuming food since the enamel is more sensitive to destruction. However, in the short-term towards the end of a diet and for a temporary time only, it could be a tip to be considered.
Summary — Giving your mouth a fresh feeling after eating, such as via brushing your teeth, using mouthwash, or chewing chewing gum, can all tell you brain the eating occasion is over. This prevents snacking and may reduce cravings for more food.
Mindfulness — Very large
Probably one of the trendiest words of the past decade. If you’re not familiar with it, you might think it is some hocus pocus, maybe even religious nonsense. You may be sceptical of it, and at the very least you may be wondering why the hell it is on a list of ways to help you manage hunger whilst dieting. All of this, I understand. But I’d encourage you to remain open-minded about this topic because, in my opinion, this point has the potential to have a larger effect on managing your hunger than every other item on this list. Allow me to explain my reasoning.
I read a few definitions online whilst writing this that have little differences. My favourite was this one from Headspace:
“Mindfulness is the idea of learning how to be fully present and engaged in the moment, aware of your thoughts and feelings without distraction or judgment”
So many people — my younger self included — are entirely unaware that thoughts or feelings happening and you reacting to them are two separate things. Because the two happen so fast, it seems that a thought/feeling instantly initiate a reaction in your body. For example, you dropped a glass and it smashed:
Your brain processes this (thought) ➜ you get annoyed and become frustrated (feeling).
However, there is an extra step to this that you may not realise exists: your reaction. Your reaction to the thought is what allows and then perpetuates the feeling. An alternative sequence of events — one which occurs under a mindful state — would be:
Your brain processes this (thought)➜ you perceive the thought without judgement ➜ you remain unperturbed, as the thought passes, and you choose not to react to the event.
For further clarity, I also made the little figure below. This may help visualize how this works if you’re new to this concept.
This may seem a little complicated if you’re unfamiliar with it, but it is really just a case of stepping back from what is happening and dissociating yourself a little. This step back gives you some time to decide what is worth responding to or not. This is where the magic of mindfulness comes in. Once you realise that thoughts/feelings and your reaction to them are separate phenomena, you suddenly become much more liberated from your emotions. The common analogy in writings on mindfulness is a rock in a fast-flowing river: although the river (your thoughts/feelings) is flowing fast and in different directions, the rock (your experience in the present moment) is not changed. It sits in the river, with its head peeping out, and is not influenced by the flow of the stream.
Imagine if you were watching your life from a third-person perspective and could choose the events in your life that wish to affect you emotionally. Obviously, you would choose not to be affected by situations that make you suffer. If someone cuts you off in traffic and you get angry; if there’s a long queue for lunch and you get frustrated; when you snap at someone “in the heat of the moment”, something you will regret afterwards. And obviously you would allow yourself to feel happy under circumstances of the opposite nature.
Without exaggeration, this is what mindfulness facilitates. People who have practiced this for years are capable of reaching a situation where they reach mental states hard to imagine, where for them the flow of the river of thoughts and feelings is like a small stream off in the distance. A friend of mine once described mindfulness as being “like a cheat code for life”, which I think is a very interesting way to perceive it.
Now, to bring this back to the topic at hand, hunger is just a feeling. It is a strong one, at times, due to the evolutionary importance of it, but it is a feeling, nonetheless. This means we can decide how we react to it, if at all. Without mindfulness, we may allow the feeling of hunger to instantly take hold of our emotional state, allowing ourselves to feel bad about being hungry, frustrated that we are dieting, and pity ourselves for feeling this way (thus reinforcing the feeling). Without mindfulness we may also be swayed under the impulse of birthday cake of a colleague to instantly indulge, and even if we don’t indulge, we may allow ourselves to feel bad for missing out. With mindfulness, all of this goes. We see these events, such as hunger, as just events, separate from ourselves. We don’t have to be swayed by them at all. We just acknowledge their existence and continue focusing on whatever we were doing. Hunger is actually a really nice feeling to practice the skill of mindfulness on because it actually comes in waves. This means that if we “ride it out” for a period of time, soon after we won’t even notice that it went.
Since I was also a sceptic at first, I feel compelled to add some scientific references to boost the credibility of my words. Fortunately for me, research on mindfulness and its beneficial effects on health are not hard to find. There is research specific to mindfulness and eating behaviour, in that mindfulness can help decentre individuals from food cues (decentring is defined by the authors as: “the meta-cognitive insight that all experiences are impermanent in nature, rather than them being permanent or reflecting an objective reality”) [16]. So, put briefly, just because you have a food thought or see or smell some food, does not mean you must react and immediately feel the drive to eat. You can decouple those things and prevent yourself from being swayed by them. This can also be applied to an eating experience. Whilst you can allow yourself to enjoy eating, you can also decentre yourself from desires such as cravings for certain (unhealthy) foods or the desire to continue eating, even if you have already satisfied your energy requirements. Imagine being in a situation where there are unlimited chips (fries) on the table. You may wish to enjoy a few, or even entirely resist (without the feeling of suffering from missing out that could come with it). Whatever the case, it would certainly not be desirable to be so captivated by your urges to eat that you eat excessive amounts and regret having done so afterwards. Cultivating the habit of mindfulness can help with basically all aspects of this [16].
The effects of mindfulness in health in general are also abundant. Particularly in mental health, mindfulness is highly effective at bringing about positive changes and a reduction in symptoms of poor negative health, such as depression and anxiety [17]. It can improve pain management and improve symptoms of stress-related disease outcomes. This applies specifically to patient groups such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), psoriasis and PTSD where there is a large psychological element [18]. There has also been research performed that shows the beneficial effects on substance use and addiction and disordered eating and obesity [19]. This is really just a small number of reviews, but there is much to be read out there. Whilst we should also be careful of hype in trendy topics like this, it’s also possible that the results are more pronounced that they first seem, since mindfulness can require a long time to cultivate before being truly effective (longer than the duration that many randomized controlled trials allow). In any case, I recommend exploring for yourself. Though there are many resources online, the book of Danny Penman “Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World” is a nice starter. Although deeper into the philosophy of Buddhism, I also found “The Noble Eightfold Path: The Way to the End of Suffering” by Bhikkhu Bodhi available free online at Access to Insight really very helpful [20] — I intend to read it again soon for a top up.
Summary — The practice of mindfulness can help you deal with feelings of hunger. Additionally, it can have profound positive effects on your mental well-being.
Animal Protein Consumption — Moderate/Large
Last year when minicutting (a term used to describe a short but intense diet, designed to cause rapid fat loss), I had some brutally low calories in the range of 1600, every day for 6 weeks. This might sound rough, but to my surprise it was very manageable. I noticed that — like my diet this year — my hunger was virtually non-existent, especially in comparison to previous years. Naturally, I racked my brains to think what the reason for this could be. Fortunately, I was also working on a university project at the time that dealt with antinutritional factors (ANFs) in food. These ANFs are present in plant proteins and virtually absent in animal proteins. Well, that year was the first year in which I obtained basically all of my protein from non-animal sources. Thus, a connection seemed plausible. After a minicut, it is normal to then begin the next phase of muscle growth, known as bulking. This led to another observation of interest: bulking was much harder than the previous year. I found it harder to get as many calories in, and again the only significant change I could notice was the replacement of animal proteins. Recently, a friend gave me some whey (animal-based) protein they had left over that would have gone to waste. At times, I’ve utilised this in my current diet and noticed I am usually hungrier in the time following than I am if I consume my plant-based protein shake. Now, I want to acknowledge that there are other confounding factors in this (including placebo), so it wouldn’t be fair to pin all of this on swapping animal proteins. However, we also know there is rationale for this.
Firstly, animal feed companies actively look for ways to select foods without ANFs, or process them to minimise ANFs, because they cause reduced consumption of food in the animals (this is bad when you want to produce lots of meat to sell). ANFs are a broad category of food substances, but some have appetite inhibitory effects and cause spontaneous reduction of food intake [21]. Not great if you’re a farmer looking for fat pigs, but a nice effect if you’re dieting. Trypsin inhibitors are a commonly found ANF in plant-based foods. Trypsin inhibitors lead to an increase a hormone called CCK (cholecystokinin) that is released in the small intestine in the presence of partially digested proteins. CCK is a satiety hormone — it stimulates satiety centres in the brain to reduce food intake [21, 22]. Potatoes are a particularly rich source of trypsin inhibitors [21], which may explain their strong satiating abilities. Lectins, another ANF particularly common in cereals and grains, also has CCK stimulating activities and impairs ability to gain weight in animal models. Other ANFs such as Kunitz trypsin inhibitor and Bowman-Birk inhibitor affect enzymes in the intestine responsible for breaking down carbohydrates. This slows digestion time, which may not only be advantageous from a satiety perspective but also from a blood-glucose spike perspective, which is beneficial for those looking to manage blood-sugar regulation, i.e., those with type 2 diabetes or prediabetes [22].
At this point it would be unwise of me not to mention that these ANFs also have negative health effects worth being aware of — science is hardly ever black and white, and we shouldn’t try to paint a perfect picture of things. Although these ANFs can be helpful to your weight loss goals, we also should be aware of how they can detract from health in other ways. Focusing on those mentioned in the previous paragraph, the mostly likely effects that you may encounter are reduced protein absorption and sequestration of vitamins and minerals [22]. Unless you’re eating very large quantities or eating many of these vegetables in an undercooked state, you’re unlikely to experience other negative health effects. The solution to this, as I see it, is fairly straightforward — just ensure you’re eating a little more of these nutrients than you normally would. For example, with myself, although the upper bound for optimal protein intake is 2.2g/kg/day, I consume little more than that (around 2.35g/kg/day). I figure this covers me for any losses that will occur to digestion inhibition. I do the same with my vitamins and minerals, most of which are fine to be consumed in slight excess anyway.
Obtaining most of protein from plant sources seemed like a bit risk for me when I decided to do it; however, I have not only managed to continue progressing at a more than adequate rate, I also now realise how useful the consumption of plant-based proteins can be when dieting.
Summary — Obtaining more of your protein from non-animal sources can reduce hunger via the action of antinutritional factors that stimulate sateity and by providing more volume and fibre.
Control Speed of Eating — Small
A theme throughout this article is managing speed of eating. This is partially physiological, in that satiety signals will not reach the brain immediately so eating fast might lead to more consumption than is necessary for energy balance purposes; and partially psychological, in that you may be left feeling as if the food you just consumed didn’t really fill the void you had. Extending the eating occasion can help with this. Other parts of this article will address ways to do this with your food (see: “Food Selection”, “Increasing Fibre Intake”, and “Make Your Meals Spicy”), but you can also employ helpful behavioural tactics.
A famous example of this that I’ve heard used in bodybuilding community is using cutlery for children, reminding (or forcing?) you to consume at a slower pace. Indeed, using a big spoon to take big mouthfuls of your rice might mean you finish your food pretty quickly. Other good ones include only adding another spoonful to your mouth when you’ve finished the food that is currently in your mouth. One that I am currently using is, when I’m eating finger foods such as nuts and olives, I will only eat a maximum of two at a time, and I will not pick up another one until I’ve finished the ones I’m currently eating. This type of behaviour might also have the effect of encouraging you to appreciate your food a little more and help you form a better relationship with it. Instead of wolfing it down, you may appreciate and experience more the food in your mouth and the meal you’re eating, leaving you feeling more satisfied afterwards.
Summary — Eating slowly and mindfully can help with feeling more satiated after eating, especially as meal portions get smaller in a diet.
Make Your Meals Spicy — Small
Although I think the effect size of this is fairly small, I’ve still found it very valuable to make use of on my current diet. Spices are a nice way to improve the taste of your meals whilst few calories. I’ve found, however, using foods or spices that are spicy has additional benefits on food consumption. Think back to the last time you ate something really spicy. You probably had to pause multiple times and breathe through your mouth to cool things down. You certainly won’t have been able to eat the meal rapidly. The concept here is the same. When your food is spicy you will increase the amount of time you spend eating, which as we have seen in various sections of this article is a helpful tool when dieting. Moreover, if you’re not weighing your food or on a strict diet plan, this may prevent you from overeating, since eventually the spice might be too much (of course this may also result in seeking other foods to counteract the spice, but if you can resist this, the tip is helpful).
Some will tell you that spices also increase thermogenic rate and contribute to enhanced fat loss. This is probably not true, and even if it is the effect will likely be very small and not worth relying on. Remember, even if thermogenesis increases due to spicy foods around the time of eating, energy will probably just be conserved in the time period after to account for the losses. I like to use chili powder, hot curry spices, garlic, and raw(ish) onions to make my meals spicy.
Summary — Making your food spicy can extend the eating window and increase feelings of satiation.
Meal Timing — Very large
This is really an effective one, in my opinion, and is one of the things I’ve capitalized on most this year to help keep hunger at bay. It’s a simple concept: eat more during times of the day that you’re hungrier and eat less during times of the day when you’re less hungry. Using myself as a case study, I am naturally less hungry during the morning and get hungrier as the day goes on, being my hungriest in the evening. So, a natural response to this is place more of my calories at the end of the day. At the present time of writing, my first meal consists solely of protein shake (with psyllium husk fibre) and strawberries. In total it is probably around 250 calories. This is really not a lot, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Then, my pre-bed meal is my largest, and since I’m much hungrier at this point in the day, it is more satisfying that I can eat more food at this point.
But how can I be confident about this? Maybe I am only hungrier later in the day because I ate less earlier, right? Well, at least in my experience, I can attest to this not being entirely the case. On the weekends, due to different gym opening times, I must train in the morning. When dieting, it is beneficial to place more of your daily calories (particularly carbohydrates) before and after training. Since my carbohydrate are not in abundance at the moment, this means most of calories are spent by the early afternoon. When it comes to the evenings on Saturdays and Sundays, I notice I am significantly hungrier than through the week.
You may be limited by factors such as work or training, but where possible you should consider paying attention to your hungry times and placing more of your calories there. It’s important to remember that the calories we consume across the day is numero uno for energy balance (and thus weight loss or gain). How we distribute these matters much less, so much so that I’d argue the majority of people should simply look at how they can distribute their calories most optimally. Intermittent fasting — although trendy over the last few years and frequently exaggerated to be more than it is — can be a pretty useful tool in this pursuit for some people. If your primary goal is fat loss and you’re less concerned about muscle retention, you could consider implementing intermittent fasting to help maintain a negative energy balance. It’s probably going to be much hard to eat more calories than you expend if your eating window every day is only a few hours — especially if you fill most of that eating window with fruits and veg. This point is highly individualized, and whilst you can take inspiration, the best way implement this potentially powerful tip will be to experiment on yourself.
Summary — Timing your daily food to place more calories at times of the day when you are more hungry, and less of your food at times of the day when you’re less hungry, is a great way to manage hunger across the day.
Coffee, Caffeine and Herbal Teas — Moderate
Caffeine a useful tool to increase wakefulness when tired and unable to rest, such as at work. Even when you’re not particularly tired, the release of neurotransmitters (dopamine, noradrenaline, glutamate, as well as adenosine inhibition) that caffeine causes have been shown to have positive effects on mood [23] — something I personally can testify to; I feel amazing after a cup of coffee. But aside from these effects, caffeine also has some nice appetite inhibitory effects [24; 25]. This is unsurprising since it is a stimulant, and this switches the body away from a relaxed, food-seeking mode to a “doing” and “going” mode. I am very much in the ritual of a daily cup of coffee through the working morning (which I have around 11am, since it is not a good idea to have it too early after waking) and it does a really good job at making me more focused on my work and less focused on how long is left until lunch.
Caffeine, however, is not all good. As with most drugs, we should look to use caffeine and not abuse caffeine. Caffeine’s stimulatory effect is not only strong but also long lasting and remains active in the body sometimes up to 10h after consumption (depending on a variety of factors). After reading the section on the sleep, we should know that abusing caffeine in a way that it interferes with sleep is not a good idea. For that reason, use should be restricted to at the latest the early afternoon, although ideally only in the morning. It would also be unwise to abuse caffeine by use copious amounts in an effort to suppress hunger out of existence (or give ourselves a heart attack?). Since tolerance varies between people, general recommendations are arbitrary, but I’d put a limit for most people at around 300mg, which is maybe something like 5 small cups of coffee. If, like me, you usually have a double, then limit yourself to two. I’d also definitely advise keeping on the lower side whenever you can and not using it if you don’t feel like you need to, since in this way you preserve your receptors and make caffeine more useful at the times when you really do need it.
A final note here: although most people’s primary way of obtaining caffeine is coffee, be aware of other products that may contain caffeine such as soda drinks and workout supplements. If you are really feeling the need for more coffee but you’ve had a lot or it is relatively late in the day, consider decaffeinated coffee. Coffee is full of polyphenols which have desirable health effects, and good coffee tastes really nice. In this way, too, since you probably already have the association in your head between coffee and appetite suppression, you may even be able to capitalize in the placebo effect and blunt your hunger without the caffeine (or with a much lower quantity).
And what about herbal teas? Although a few do contain caffeine (green tea being one example) many do not. I’ve found tea to be a nice little way to satisfy the desire for flavour in one’s mouth whilst contributing 0 calories (in most cases). They can be a nice filler between meals; something you can slowly sip on if you find yourself watching the clock wondering when the next time to eat will be. The water in tea will also fill your stomach a little. Although this effect will be short-lived, you may find it helpful. Some teas also taste really good, and you’re probably already aware that many of them contain components beneficial for health. To add a little warning: you can drink too much of certain teas, which can lead to certain health consequences. With normal consumption, this will not be an issue. However, if you find yourself in the range of several cups a day (or making a large flask and sipping across the day) this is something to be aware of.
Keep Yourself Busy — Large
I won’t spend long on this one because it’s probably something everyone intuitively knows. Boredom eating appears to be pretty commonplace, in my experience. People often mistake genuine hunger for the sake of energy balance with a desire for stimulation in the form of food. If you’re dieting and you’ve got not a lot to do, what else are you going to do other than focus on being hungry and what or when you can eat? I’ve lived through this during my last competition preparation, and I learned that lesson. These days, I’m a lot busier through the day — mostly with things I choose to do — and I believe this has had an impact my diet success thus far.
Contrast the following situations with one another: lounging around on the sofa watching uninteresting television, or playing a game (video, board, cards, whatever) that is intensely interesting to you. In these situations, which do you think you will be more food focused and in which do you think you will notice your hunger more? I am dieting as a write this article, but having the article to focus my attention is indeed helpful for passing the time and keeping myself focused on something. So, I recommend finding some hobbies and making use of them to keep your mind present and off your hunger. I put together a list of recommendations below. As an additional bonus, some of them also involve some physical activity, which may even help you shed off a few extra calories and take you closer to your goal. You’ll also notice many of them have other beneficial impacts — I’m a big advocate of habit stacking, and this is a great way to kill multiple birds with one stone!
Keep On Top of Your Environment — Small
When you’re dieting, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to entirely eliminate hunger or an increased focus on food even if you use all the tricks in the book. That being said, you shouldn’t also make things harder by surrounding yourself with an environment that magnifies these feelings. If you’ve ever been dieting and are sat next to those eating pizza, you’ll know what I mean — your urge to eat will likely increase.
Now, I don’t think you should excessively actively avoid situations where food, smells, eating imagery, etc. might be around, since I think this can have the opposite effect and make you more focused on it. If you find yourself in these situations, employ a mindful state (see the “Mindfulness” section of this article) and remind yourself that you’re working to produce a better (in a competitive sporting sense) or healthier version of yourself. However, equally, you can add some control to some of your daily situations. If you know there are free doughnuts in the break room at work, consider taking your break outside in the sun today. In this way, you can entirely avoid that FOMO and not have to go through the thoughts of “I wish I wasn’t dieting”. Equally, when shopping, don’t buy snackable or moreish foods. In this way, they won’t be in the house, and you will be much less tempted engage in food-seeking activity. If you have biscuits or snacks in the house for other members of your living space, consider discussing with them putting them out of sight or in containers that are a nuisance to open. Such small reductions in accessibility can be enough to prevent you from acting impulsively and making food choices counterproductive to your goals [1].
I rated the effect size of these tips as “Small” because their effect on actual hunger is probably not large. The effect they can have on your diet success, however, is a different story. This is especially true for those prone to snacking or eating out of boredom rather than to satisfy energy requirements in the body. So regardless of your hunger state, I advise considering tactics such as these to help fulfil your body composition goals.
Resistance Training — Questionable
Our understanding of exactly how energy balance occurs is far from perfect. Thus, it is likewise also not so surprising that our understanding between exercise and appetite — two core components of energy balance — is also incomplete. This is a complicated topic which could have an article all on its own. It’s also a field I’m not an expert on and at the present time cannot truly delve into. From the reading I have done, however, I feel I can share some thoughts that will be more constructive than not for my readers.
Firstly, there’s been somewhat of a discussion in the fitness community in recent times as to whether exercise is even an effective mechanism for regulating weight. This speculation is probably untoward, as robust studies have shown that exercise generally tends to have a positive effect on body composition and that this is fairly dose-dependent [26]. An interesting observation is that, although energy intake increases in response to increased energy expenditure, it appears to do so only partially. And whereas food intake regulation is sound when physical activity is increased, the opposite is true in sedentary behaviour; appetite is not inhibited as would be expected [27]. In short, this says that decreases in energy expenditure are not accompanied by decreases in food intake. However, there is an important piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked in these studies: interindividual variability. The tendency in scientific is to take the average to assess the effect. Doing so is convenient, but masks how responses vary between individuals. I wrote about this extensively in my article which on precision nutrition [28]. Indeed, the same is seen in exercise. Look at the graph below of weight changes following a 12-week supervised exercise program from [29]:
Unsurprisingly, most lose weight. But look at the variability between how much weight is lost, and the fact that some people gain weight (presumably muscle) and one person gains almost entirely in fat. Outlier results can be expected everywhere, so this is not a great surprise — if we exclude the first and last four results from each side, we retain >70% of the results and things don’t look so surprising anymore. But still, the point stands that exercise will not have the same effect body weight and appetite regulation on everyone, so broad statements or recommendations should be heard with a critical ear.
It is very likely that long-term exercise in general will have a positive effect on body composition, even if appetite is increased — remember, this may not be a problem unless you overcompensate with your food intake, something that is not so likely based on the literature [29; 30]. But putting this aside for a second, I would like to focus on a specific type of exercise that I believe you should incorporate, especially if you’re not doing any type of exercise currently: resistance training exercise, such as the time you would see people performing in a gym. This is the type of exercise that will force adaptations in the form of strength or muscle gains. It is in contrast to aerobic exercise, which mainly trains the cardiovascular system (although people entirely new to training will experience some increases in strength and muscle).
This type of training is a little different to exercise in the broader sense exactly because of the adaptations it causes. Muscle and strength do not just make you look strong; they also promote health and longevity [31; 32; 33; 34]. This is because, in part, muscle is metabolic organ that releases and responses to signalling molecules. Muscle, for example, is the largest reservoir for glucose deposition in the body, which is great news if you’re trying to stay on top of your blood-sugar, which many people currently are. As a metabolic organ, muscle in the body increases resting metabolic rate (RMR), which is the number of calories you expend whilst simply at rest. RMR is also responsible for the largest percentage of energy you expend everyday (around 60–70%) [RTA]. On top of this, if you have more muscle and are stronger, when you train at the gym, you will likely also utilise more energy since the weights you are lifting will be heavier, meaning again your calorie output will increase. One optimistic way to interpret this would be that can you eat the same amount of food whilst gaining less fat (or losing more fat), since your requirements are simply higher. Aside from all the other potential benefits of resistance training on health and your dieting success, I see this as a win and something to consider.
Due to the complexity and interindividual variability of the topic, I would not predict with certainty what your hunger/satiety response to exercise would be if you began exercising. However, I would take a guess that performing regular resistance training and gaining muscle in the long term will help you with managing your weight. Even if it doesn’t, you’re still likely to be healthier from it since many of these benefits occur independently of weight change. What if you really don’t like spending your time in the gym and training in that way? This is totally understandable — it’s not for everyone. However, I recommend you find some way to expose yourself to this type of training due to the unique advantages it offers over the more varied in nature aerobic exercise training. It could be something less regimented, such as crossfit, gymnastics, or calisthenics, and maybe even things like rock-climbing (although less so than the other options mentioned). As long as there is an element of progression that forces strength and/or hypertrophy adaptations in the muscle, you should be fine. But I do encourage you to find something that allows you to achieve this, since it will do wonders for your health and likely help you with your dieting success.
Meal Frequency — Moderate
One of the most common conceptions of bodybuilders is probably their tendency to eat many times a day, historically claimed to be helpful for dieting by “boosting metabolism” (a myth that has been debunked [35]). Indeed, whilst preparing for my first competition I was eating six times a day! However, contrary to what you might expect, this did not reduce my hunger/food focus — I believe it actually accelerated it. When you’re having meals every 2 hours, your life literally becomes orientated around food. Before you’ve even finished one meal, sometimes it is almost time for the next one. This type of thing seriously distracts you from whatever you are currently doing (see “Keeping Busy” section to know why this is bad). And distracts you in the worst possible way: by making you constantly think about food. In the time following my show I reduced my meal frequency down to 4 without noticing any reduction in progression, but whilst certainly noticing a reduction in food focus.
There is also scientific support for this. Ohkawara investigated this with a randomized cross-over design (this type of study design is explained here: https://online.stat.psu.edu/stat509/lesson/15). Subjects were placed in a whole-room calorimeter — a very effective way to measure energy expenditure [36] — and 24h fat oxidation, hunger, fullness, and “desire to eat” were measured when consuming three meals a day versus six. After a washout period (a small break of 1–2 weeks), the groups swapped places (hence, the cross-over). No differences were seen in fat oxidation or fullness (which is not surprising since calories of the meals were the same in both groups), however both hunger and desire to eat were higher. That is to say, despite having the same effect on energy balance in the body, eating more frequently made the participants hungrier and want to eat more [35]. These results also align with other studies quoted in their discussion. Perrigue performed a similar study and found similar results, although their “higher frequency” group consumed 8 meals a day [37]!
However, I’m not trying to sell you on the idea that less is more. My work on the personalised nature of nutrition has convinced me that we should keep an open mind to the personalised response that people demonstrate to all sorts of things in biology [28]. What works for you might not work for someone else, and vice-versa. And indeed, whilst some studies show increased hunger with high frequency, others show the opposite [38]. Other studies have also shown the difference, if any, to be minimal [39].
It should also be added that eating too low a frequency can also cause greater hunger [39]. This means that even if you did find a definitive answer on what the literature suggests is best, there’s no way of knowing whether that will actually work for you. Thus, I impart my experience and what I think is likely to be best, but you should really experiment and find what works for you. A big problem in the fitness and nutrition world is people want black and white recommendations on what they should do — however, it is rarely the case that these can be prescribed. The individualised response that we all show due to our genes, microbiome, food consumption, lifestyle, environment, sleep habits, and various other factors mean self-experimentation to discover methods that you find to be conducive to your goals will be more effective than taking an average value from a bunch of random people generated in a study. Whilst it is wise to do this to find a starting point, one must develop this further based on one’s own results.
Diet Breaks, Refeeds, and “Cheats”
All three of the terms titled in this subsection relate to a similar thing — changing your diet in someone to in order to have some type of a break from being in a calorie deficit, with the intended effect being that it is beneficial to your long-term diet progress. Whilst they all contribute to a similar goal, they have differences. First, let’s define the three terms above as I see them (since there are no hard definitions, as far as I’m aware):
Diet break — A period of time, usually between 1–8 weeks, where a calorie deficit diet is replaced with a maintenance diet (a diet that contains an amount of calories that causes neither weight loss nor weight gain). Since the goal is to achieve maintenance calories, diet breaks are tactically calculated in their setup.
Refeeds — A period of time, usually 1–2 days, where food (usually in the form of carbohydrates) increases. This can range from a modest increase to a large increase. Refeeds are tactical in their set up, though more flexible than a diet break tends to be.
Cheat meals or cheat days — A single meal (or day of eating, in the case of cheat days) which is entirely off track, and the effect on the diet is largely ignored. Cheat meals or days are usually a lot more haphazard and less calculated.
As you may now expect after having their descriptions outlined, their effect on progress can differ. Moreover, the fact that their precision differs makes it also difficult to generalize. For example, a cheat meal for one person may be a hundred extra calories, whereas for another it could be thousands. Whilst they all have their utility in various ways, we will focus on how we can use them in managing our hunger on a diet.
Essentially, they all offer some type of psychological relief from dieting. When you’ve been dieting a long time or on rather low calories, it can be psychologically satisfying to enjoy a day of eating more food than usual. This can help with adherence in the long term, kind of like a checkpoint where you take a small break before getting back to it. You wouldn’t work all day every day without having a tea break — why do the same with your diet? However, their effects on how they affect hunger can differ.
Diet breaks, being longer in duration, have much more of an opportunity to reset some of the metabolic adaptations that occur during diet, which can also mean alleviating some of that hunger. This means when you return to your diet, you’re not battling to fend off hunger and instead can focus on getting the job done. This approach is best applied in those on longer diets, such as someone looked to lose weight permanently or perhaps a bodybuilder with a long competition prep.
Refeeds are less predictable. Whilst they can have an outcome of curbing hunger due to the increased food intake, they can also increase food focus. You can imagine it in this way: when you’ve been dieting on some very low calories, then suddenly you have a whole day or two with some excess food, it becomes very easy to be constantly focusing on your next meal (this is similar to the concept I propose in the section “Making Your Meals Average”). In my experience, at least, the difference lies in how far along your diet you are. If you’ve been dieting less or you’re carrying more bodyfat, a refeed is probably not going to have these food focus stimulating effects. When you’re deeper into your diet, however, it’s these effects will be stronger. This can actually, paradoxically, make these days harder than your lower calorie days. Despite this, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take them. They can still have positive effects on appetite regulation in the proceeding days and can still have other desirable physiological effects that make them worthwhile. But it is something to keep in mind.
Cheat meals I think less fondly of, and cheat days even more so. Even the name — which has been criticized in the fitness industry — has negative connotations; “cheat”, as if you’re doing something wrong. Really, they’re just a different form of supplying extra calories which, as we have established, can be beneficial when used correctly. The difference with cheat meals and days is that they tend to be less calculated, which leaves the door open to recklessness. If one single meal is consumed, purely to provide some psychological relief, and then you get on with your diet — great, that’s sensible use. But the difficulty sometimes lies in defining that “one meal” — what if it’s a buffet? Or a whole family-sized pizza? People can sometimes use these meals to absolutely splurge, which is problematic not only for progress but because of the psychological effect this can have. Indeed, stories reverberate around the fitness industry of people abstaining from eating all day in order to gorge out at their evening cheat meal. This is not a healthy relationship to have with food or your diet. By extension, cheat days simply amplify this by dragging this possibility out across an entire day. To return to our subject matter, it’s also not likely that cheat meals will have much of an impact on your hunger. A cheat day is more likely to, but I would defer the reader to the points made in the refeed subsection.
It is certain that “cheat meals” have their place in dieting. But the thing is with dieting is you’re probably going to have go through some form of restriction, craving and hunger in one form or another, regardless of what you do. Many people believe that they can satisfy these desires once they’ve finished their “cheat meal” — this is not always the case. Before you know it, that meal is gone, and you’re left with the same feelings you had before it. Nothing is likely to be cured. For this reason, I insist with clients and those I discuss this matter with to think instead more carefully about their internal relationship with food.
Number of Courses — Moderate
Here I refer to how many different types of food one consumes in a single sitting. This is a tactic I employ, so I put an example below for clarity:
I find this very helpful. It’s kind of like when people eat tapas and have the sensation, they’ve eaten a lot because they’ve eaten 6 or 7 different individual foods, when in reality the total amount of food they’ve consumed is not much. This approach has this effect on me. I could, for example, in the picture above, add the olives to my main dish, and then add the strawberries to my protein powder (in fact, this is what I would normally do when not on a weight-loss diet to save time eating). However, as discussed in other sections, increasing the eating window when dieting is a good idea from a psychological perspective. Combining the aforementioned foods would not make me feel like I’d eaten more (quite the opposite) and would probably decrease the eating window. Thus, I see it as a much more sensible option to separate these foods out. The calories remain unchanged, but the psychological effect is different.
A word of warning — this works well with me because I’m on a fixed diet. This means that no matter how I eat my calories, I know they’re always going to the be the same. If you do not follow such a strict eating regime, it’s very possible that eating in courses like this might encourage you to eat more of each, and then you eventually consume more than if you ate them all together. This is something to be careful of. Think first about your own situation and then see how you can apply this tip, or whether you’re best of leaving this one out.
Managing Stress — Large
Stress is often thought of as a binary occurrence — I am stressed or not. Really, though, it is more of a gradient in that you have a level of stress. This is relevant for this part of the discussion because the different levels of stress have different effects on hunger and food intake. Moreover, we have acute and chronic stresses which again demonstrate different effects on hunger and food intake. I wrote an article which included a discussion on this a few years ago which I intend to adapt and publish soon, but I can make some summary points here.
In stressful situations, around 40% of people increase caloric intake; 40% decrease; and 20% do not change their caloric intake [40]. Hormones released during stress (glucocorticoids, in humans) are energy mobilisers in the body. This is logical, since if there is a threat in your vicinity you need energy to be able to respond to it. These same hormones, however, also stimulate drive to eat since this energy will have to be replaced. When stress is chronic, this drive to eat — particularly that of highly palatable, calorie dense foods — can remain even after the initial removal of the stressor and this causes weight gain in individuals [40]. There are probably many people who can relate to this. I absolutely can. In fact, I notice sometimes that within a very short time frame after receiving a minor stressor, I instantly want to eat. Usually for me, these occasions are short-lived. However, I can also see how if your work environment was intense and you had to deal with those sensations frequently across the day, every day, you might make food choices non-conducive to your goals.
It should also be mentioned that some individuals do not increase food intake in stressful situations. You may be one of these people that, when stressed, forgets to eat. This is also not particularly healthy. That weight loss will come from a greater proportion of muscle than fat, and if you’re still in the stressed state when you eat then you will replenish less of the muscle and more of the fat. So, although you may notice hunger is lower, this doesn’t necessarily mean it will help you with your diet. Besides, stress is absolutely unhealthy for basically every bodily system, so I wouldn’t recommend this tactic.
What can you do to manage stress? Mindfulness is a great one. This doesn’t necessarily mean sitting and meditating, but it does mean becoming more aware of your thoughts and detaching yourself from them. It is okay to feel the urgency of an upcoming deadline, but that doesn’t have to come with stress, too. That’s an extra step that you (whether you realise or not) choose to take by responding the way you do (see the “Mindfulness” section for more). Finding pockets across the day — sometimes of only 10 seconds or so — can help you realise how stressed you are and allow you to take a few deep breaths to release this, instead of letting it build up. It can be so easy to get caught up in your work and power through, without even realising that every muscle in your body is tense and your breathing is shallow. These small breaks can really help you release everything (and probably increase your overall productivity). Learn to switch off when you need to; don’t be always checking emails or phones. Get outside, take walks in nature, exercise, play with a pet, listen to some soothing music. Find your ways and utilise them. Your health depends on it!
Conclusion
Weight loss is not easy. Whatever you do, your body will resist it. It’s unlikely you’re going to be able to diet without paying some type of a cost, be it lower energy, compromised mood, brain fog, or hunger. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t use tactics to make the ride smoother. I think a lot of people struggle with dieting because they use extremes or reckless tactics, when really it doesn’t have to be this way. If people knew ways in which they could make their dieting experience more manageable, their weight loss success would also probably increase. I hope this article manages to help those reading it by providing you with such tools to add to your box.
References
[1] Kenny, P. (2011). Reward Mechanisms in Obesity: New Insights and Future Directions. Neuron, 69(4), 664–679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.02.016
[2] Greer, S. M., Goldstein, A. N., & Walker, M. P. (2013). The impact of sleep deprivation on food desire in the human brain. Nature Communications, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms3259
[3] Yang, C. L., Schnepp, J., & Tucker, R. (2019). Increased Hunger, Food Cravings, Food Reward, and Portion Size Selection after Sleep Curtailment in Women Without Obesity. Nutrients, 11(3), 663. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11030663
[4] Hibi, M., Kubota, C., Mizuno, T., Aritake, S., Mitsui, Y., Katashima, M., & Uchida, S. (2017). Effect of shortened sleep on energy expenditure, core body temperature, and appetite: a human randomised crossover trial. Scientific Reports, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep39640
[5] Alhola, P. A., & Polo-Kantolo, P. P. (2007). Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 3(5), 553–567.
[6] Cappuccio, F. P., Taggart, F. M., Kandala, N. B., Currie, A., Peile, E., Stranges, S., & Miller, M. A. (2008). Meta-Analysis of Short Sleep Duration and Obesity in Children and Adults. Sleep, 31(5), 619–626. https://doi.org/10.1093/sleep/31.5.619
[7] Medic, G., Wille, M., & Hemels, M. (2017). Short- and long-term health consequences of sleep disruption. Nature and Science of Sleep, Volume 9, 151–161. https://doi.org/10.2147/nss.s134864
[8] Kline, C. E. (2014). The Bidirectional Relationship Between Exercise and Sleep. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, 8(6), 375–379. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827614544437
[9] Knowles, O. E., Drinkwater, E. J., Urwin, C. S., Lamon, S., & Aisbett, B. (2018). Inadequate sleep and muscle strength: Implications for resistance training. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 21(9), 959–968. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2018.01.012
[10] Institute of Medicine, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research, Altevogt, B. M., & Colten, H. R. (2006). Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem (Illustrated ed.). National Academies Press.
[11] Barber, T. M., Kabisch, S., Pfeiffer, A. F. H., & Weickert, M. O. (2020). The Health Benefits of Dietary Fibre. Nutrients, 12(10), 3209. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12103209
[12] Hervik, A. K., & Svihus, B. (2019). The Role of Fiber in Energy Balance. Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism, 2019, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/4983657
[13] Clark, M. J., & Slavin, J. L. (2013). The Effect of Fiber on Satiety and Food Intake: A Systematic Review. Journal of the American College of Nutrition, 32(3), 200–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/07315724.2013.791194
[14] Warrilow, A., Mellor, D., McKune, A., & Pumpa, K. (2018). Dietary fat, fibre, satiation, and satiety — a systematic review of acute studies. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 73(3), 333–344. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-018-0295-7
[15] McNabney, S., & Henagan, T. (2017). Short Chain Fatty Acids in the Colon and Peripheral Tissues: A Focus on Butyrate, Colon Cancer, Obesity and Insulin Resistance. Nutrients, 9(12), 1348. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu9121348
[16] Keesman, M., Aarts, H., Häfner, M., & Papies, E. K. (2017). Mindfulness Reduces Reactivity to Food Cues: Underlying Mechanisms and Applications in Daily Life. Current Addiction Reports, 4(2), 151–157. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-017-0134-2
[17] Keng, S. L., Smoski, M. J., & Robins, C. J. (2011). Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(6), 1041–1056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.04.006
[18] Creswell, J. D., Lindsay, E. K., Villalba, D. K., & Chin, B. (2019). Mindfulness Training and Physical Health: Mechanisms and Outcomes. Psychosomatic Medicine, 81(3), 224–232. https://doi.org/10.1097/psy.0000000000000675
[19] Wielgosz, J., Goldberg, S. B., Kral, T. R., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2019). Mindfulness Meditation and Psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15(1), 285–316. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093423
[20] Bodhi, B. (1999). The Noble Eightfold Path: The Way to the End of Suffering. Access to Insight. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/waytoend.html
[21] Cristina Oliveira De Lima, V., Piuvezam, G., Leal Lima Maciel, B., & Heloneida De Araújo Morais, A. (2019). Trypsin inhibitors: promising candidate satietogenic proteins as complementary treatment for obesity and metabolic disorders? Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry, 34(1), 405–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/14756366.2018.1542387
[22] Samtiya, M., Aluko, R. E., & Dhewa, T. (2020). Plant food anti-nutritional factors and their reduction strategies: an overview. Food Production, Processing and Nutrition, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43014-020-0020-5
[23] Cappelletti, S., Daria, P., Sani, G., & Aromatario, M. (2015). Caffeine: Cognitive and Physical Performance Enhancer or Psychoactive Drug? Current Neuropharmacology, 13(1), 71–88. https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159x13666141210215655
[24] Harpaz, E., Tamir, S., Weinstein, A., & Weinstein, Y. (2017). The effect of caffeine on energy balance. Journal of Basic and Clinical Physiology and Pharmacology, 28(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1515/jbcpp-2016-0090
[25] Schubert, M. M., Irwin, C., Seay, R. F., Clarke, H. E., Allegro, D., & Desbrow, B. (2017). Caffeine, coffee, and appetite control: a review. International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, 68(8), 901–912. https://doi.org/10.1080/09637486.2017.1320537
[26] Shaw, K. A., Gennat, H. C., O’Rourke, P., & del Mar, C. (2006). Exercise for overweight or obesity. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Published. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.cd003817.pub3
[27] Blundell, J. E., Gibbons, C., Caudwell, P., Finlayson, G., & Hopkins, M. (2015). Appetite control and energy balance: impact of exercise. Obesity Reviews, 16, 67–76. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12257
[28] Kirk, D., Catal, C., & Tekinerdogan, B. (2021). Precision nutrition: A systematic literature review. Computers in Biology and Medicine, 133, 104365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104365
[29] King, N. A., Hopkins, M., Caudwell, P., Stubbs, R. J., & Blundell, J. E. (2007). Individual variability following 12 weeks of supervised exercise: identification and characterization of compensation for exercise-induced weight loss. International Journal of Obesity, 32(1), 177–184. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0803712
[30] Gonzalez-Gil, A. M., & Elizondo-Montemayor, L. (2020). The Role of Exercise in the Interplay between Myokines, Hepatokines, Osteokines, Adipokines, and Modulation of Inflammation for Energy Substrate Redistribution and Fat Mass Loss: A Review. Nutrients, 12(6), 1899. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12061899
[31] Srikanthan, P., & Karlamangla, A. S. (2014). Muscle Mass Index As a Predictor of Longevity in Older Adults. The American Journal of Medicine, 127(6), 547–553. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2014.02.007
[32] Newman, A. B., Kupelian, V., Visser, M., Simonsick, E. M., Goodpaster, B. H., Kritchevsky, S. B., Tylavsky, F. A., Rubin, S. M., & Harris, T. B. (2006). Strength, But Not Muscle Mass, Is Associated With Mortality in the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study Cohort. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 61(1), 72–77. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/61.1.72
[33] Metter, E. J., Talbot, L. A., Schrager, M., & Conwit, R. (2002). Skeletal Muscle Strength as a Predictor of All-Cause Mortality in Healthy Men. The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, 57(10), B359-B365. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/57.10.b359 [MMD] [34] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29641540/
[35] Ohkawara, K., Cornier, M. A., Kohrt, W. M., & Melanson, E. L. (2013). Effects of increased meal frequency on fat oxidation and perceived hunger. Obesity, 21(2), 336–343. https://doi.org/10.1002/oby.20032
[36] Chen, S., Scott, C., Pearce, J. V., Farrar, J. S., Evans, R. K., & Celi, F. S. (2020). An appraisal of whole-room indirect calorimeters and a metabolic cart for measuring resting and active metabolic rates. Scientific Reports, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71001-1
[37] Perrigue, M. M., Drewnowski, A., Wang, C. Y., & Neuhouser, M. L. (2015). Higher Eating Frequency Does Not Decrease Appetite in Healthy Adults. The Journal of Nutrition, 146(1), 59–64. https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.115.216978
[38] Raynor, H. A., Goff, M. R., Poole, S. A., & Chen, G. (2015). Eating Frequency, Food Intake, and Weight: A Systematic Review of Human and Animal Experimental Studies. Frontiers in Nutrition, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2015.00038
[39] Leidy, H. J., & Campbell, W. W. (2010). The Effect of Eating Frequency on Appetite Control and Food Intake: Brief Synopsis of Controlled Feeding Studies. The Journal of Nutrition, 141(1), 154–157. https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.109.114389
[40] Yao, Y. H. C., & Potenza, M. N. (2013). Stress and Eating Behaviors. Minerva Endocrinologica, 255–267.
