Always Hungry When Trying to Lose Weight?

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Don’t worry, being hungry is normal.  It’s just the calorie deficit talking.

I felt like I was starving the first few weeks of my weight loss journey.   My body went from consuming 5,000+ calories a day to right around 2,000 — it started receiving less than half of the energy that it typically expected and it was pissed.

My stomach moaned.  It wanted food.

I knew I could function just fine off of 2,000 calories a day, but my body also knew that at 2,000 calories a day it would need to change.  So, it fought back.  My body was accustomed to getting 5,000 calories a day and it wasn’t going to let me take those calories away without a fight.  Our bodies don’t like to change.

Here are some things you can do to fight hunger while losing weight:

Keep your calorie deficit to a minimum.  You’ll see lot of advice around town that says you should only subtract 500 calories or so a day from your daily calories to lose weight.  That’s fine if you’re looking to lose 10 or 20 pounds.

I can’t tell you what you should do, but personally, weighing 344 pounds at the time, I wasn’t going to keep eating 4,500, 4,000, or even 3,500 calories a day and settle with losing weight at a slower pace.  Sure, I would’ve been less hungry eating 3,500 calories a day and still lost weight without a problem, but I lost 100 pounds in 6 months and I’m more than pleased with my weight loss progress.

Eat the right type of calories.  There’s no right or wrong type of calories to eat when it comes to strictly losing weight — you will lose weight if you eat the right amount of calories, regardless if those calories come from a bag of M&Ms or a piece of grilled chicken.  With that said, that piece of grilled chicken is going to make you feel full and give you a lot more energy than a bag of M&Ms.

The more fiber, water, and protein a food contains, the more satiety it has and the less hungry you’ll feel after you’ve finished eating it.

Take caffeine.  I’m not talking about a lot of caffeine, but just a little bit to get you up and moving when you’re dragging.  While the science isn’t definitive on what, if anything, caffeine does for weight loss, it’s obviously shown to give people energy.

I’m much less likely to snack and think about food when I’m up being active.