Natural Health July 2017

FITNESS & Weight Loss
Diets fail for a lot of reasons but one of
the primary ones is simply hunger. Going
on a diet means cutting down on
calories, which in turn means consuming
smaller amounts of food. This can result in
between meal hunger.
Believe me, this advice comes from a
person with extensive experience in
dieting. Let’s face the facts, we all, at
some point in time have undertaken the
task on going on a diet and experience
some kind of hunger issue. In my years of
practice, the most common questions I get
from my patients are usually:
• Do you have to feel like you’re hungry
all the time to lose weight?
• Does this mean you are doing
this right?
The answer to that is yes! You are going
to have to deal with a little hunger and
stomach grumbling while you’re trying to
lose weight but constantly being hungry
while being on a diet should not occur
and I would like to share some reasons
as to why you probably feel hungry all
the time.
These reasons are easily avoidable, so let
us look at how we can keep this hunger
monster at bay!
1.You are not consuming
enough protein
Protein takes longer for your body to
digest, so when you eat enough protein
throughout the day, you keep off having
hunger pangs. It also helps slow down
the digestion of carbohydrates.
Stick to healthy and delicious proteinpacked
snacks to keep the hunger
monster away.
Increasing amounts of research has
shown that higher protein intakes help
blunt hunger. It also helps that, as long as
you’re dealing with sources of lean protein
(low-fat fish, skinless chicken, even low-fat
red meat), it can be tough to get a lot of
calories from protein in the first place.
I’d also noted that there are many other
reasons to consume sufficient amounts
of lean protein on a weight loss diet
including blood glucose stability and
sparing of muscle mass loss.
Tip: Ensure your intake of lean protein
makes up 30% of your diet.
2. You are skipping meals
The one mistake that we tend to do
when starting a diet is to skip our meals.
When you skip meals, you put yourself
at a higher risk of eating more later. The
important thing to note is that you should
maintain a consistent meal schedule. You
tend to get hungry at the same time no
matter what, and keeping constant meal
times ensures you can eat when you’re
hungry.
Tip: Keep meals at a constant time to
reduce hunger pangs!
Natural Health * July 2017 VOL 82
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