Intermittent Fasting: Dealing With Hunger

[spoiler title=’Click for video transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] let’s talk about intermittent fasting and hunger learning how to deal with hunger has been a really important part of success with intermittent fasting for me now to be clear I don’t experience hunger all that often but even though I’m very very used to intermittent fasting I still sometimes do and certainly in the beginning I experienced a lot of hunger and I used to be so afraid of hunger you know like I had this thought in my head of you know like oh man if I feel hungry then that means I’m not eating enough and that means you know it’s gonna slow down my metabolism I’m gonna put my body in starvation mode it’s just gonna hang on all the fat but what I started to understand was that was really not the case at all in fact a lot of times the things that I thought were hunger weren’t really true hunger for me I experienced like four different kinds of hunger and so I’ve learned how to you know deal with those different kinds and I’ve learned how to recognize you know true hunger from other types the first type of hunger is habit hunger that is what I experience usually on Monday mornings because Sunday you know I take the day off from fasting a lot of times I’ll have breakfast on Sunday well without fail Monday morning at usually the same exact time that I had breakfast the day before that’s when I feel hungry but really that’s not true hunger for me that is just habit and I found for me you know habit hunger goes away really quickly you know it’s just one of those things I recognize it as habit and then it just goes away usually within you know I would say 30 minutes at the longest the next type of hunger I learned to recognize was boredom and the way I started because in the beginning you know I tried to figure out like am I really feeling hunger and so what I would do is I would tell myself okay thirty minutes from now if you’re still hungry then you can eat something and so what I would do is I would get busy doing something you know I would clean house or I would you know read a book or whatever and what usually ended up happening was I would look up and it’d be three hours later and I would think oh wow you know I was hungry and and now I’m not anymore and so what I started to realize was those times I wasn’t actually hungry I was bored the key to getting rid of boredom hunger is just to stay busy but there are times where I’m still hungry after that thirty minutes I’ll say okay hmm you know I’m still feeling hungry and so then I’ll think you know is anything bothering me because I’m the type of person who tends to stress eat you know and intermittent fasting has been fantastic because it stopped my stress eating it was just you know I started realizing I have to work through these things instead of just you know putting food in my mouth if I ask myself okay you know how are you feeling are you upset about something are you stressed about something if the answer was yeah I’m stressed about you know this that or the other then you know I’d say okay you got to figure out a different way to deal with it a lot of times what I’ve found the best thing is just to go for a walk most of the time just getting out and getting some steps in it just clears my mind and it helps ease any stress I have I’ve also found that journaling helps or just talking you know to my husband or whoever about the thing that’s bothering me another thing that I’ve done actually that has been helpful with that is negative visualization which is basically like thinking of the worst case scenario and then accepting it and then trying to improve upon it okay but you know sometimes I experience what I would call true hunger true hunger to me is like when you are actually hungry it is persistent your stomach is growling and it won’t stop you have the actual hunger and even when I feel true hunger I don’t eat I obey my fasting window one thing that really helps me a lot is that I drink coffee I drink coffee with half and half but even if the coffee doesn’t you know curb the craving I still just won’t eat you know like I know that I’m gonna be okay and that’s something that intermittent fasting has taught me that you know like whereas I used to be so afraid to let myself get hungry I realized like just because you feel hungry and you don’t eat it doesn’t mean you’re gonna die one important thing I do is if I am feeling true hunger then I remind myself that my next meal I really need to do a better job of eating this does I have them very often because I can sit down and really put away the food and what helps me also is I realize like hey you know my body knows what to do here it stored fat for a reason you know and the whole thing is at once it doesn’t have any food and it’s gonna start burning the fat so I look at it as like okay well you know I’ll sit here and burn some fat right now what have your experiences been with intermittent fasting and hunger you know a lot of people I’ve talked to kind of have the same experiences but I’d be curious to know do you feel hunger a lot during your fasting window or have you found that your body adjusts really quickly have you found that you you know have a lot of like stress hunger or I heard somebody call it head hunger the other day and I thought that’s a really good way to describe it okay well thank you for watching be sure to LIKE comment and subscribe down below [/spoiler]

Video Recap

I’ve found that I experience about 4 different types of hunger:

Habit Hunger
Boredom Hunger
Stress Hunger
True Hunger

Habit Hunger

This type of hunger happens to me on Monday mornings, since Sunday is my day off from fasting. I generally get hungry on Monday morning at whatever time I had breakfast on Sunday. I’ve found Habit Hunger goes away within 30 minutes of recognizing it.

Boredom Hunger

In the early days, I found that I would get hungry during my fasting window. I would tell myself, in 30 minutes if I still felt hungry, I’d allow myself to eat something. I would then keep myself busy. What usually happened was I’d look up 3 hours later and realize I wasn’t hungry anymore. And then I started to understand that type of hunger I had been feeling was simply boredom. The key to getting rid of Boredom Hunger is to stay busy!

Stress Hunger

I’ve talked before about how intermittent fasting stopped my stress eating. If I still feel hungry after waiting 30 minutes and being busy, I check in with myself. I ask myself if anything is bothering me, or if I’m worried. If the answer is yes, I have to deal with it in a way other than eating. I’ve found the following things helpful:

Going for a walk (my favorite!)
Journaling
Talking to my husband or someone else about what’s bothering me
Negative visualization: the process of figuring out the worst case scenario, accepting it, and then trying to improve upon it, which is a technique I originally found in the book How To Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. That book has helped me tremendously.

True Hunger

I occasionally experience true hunger. It’s persistent stomach growling, true blue hunger. And I simply don’t eat. I do remind myself to eat more at my meal, because I want this to always feel easy. And I also remind myself that this is the very reason a body stores fat: so that it can burn the fat as fuel when it’s not being given food. I look at as, I’m sitting there burning fat. I do not feel true hunger very often, because at this point I’ve learned just the right amount that I can eat and feel full all day, and still lose weight.