Why Am I Always Hungry (Part 1)

​Why am I always hungry? Why am I always reaching out for food or looking at my pantry think about what I can snack on? 🍟🍕Ugh... Hunger is always calling my name even after I've just had a big dinner.

Hunger is not as straight forward as you think. You can't just look at the biological factors, but to also look at the psychological factors as well. Our thoughts💭 emotions and habits surrounding food impacts why we feel hungry🥦🥒 We want to understand and be mindful about what’s happening in our body as we start to feel the peep of hunger and reach for that chocolate bar🍫

First let’s explore the different types of hunger due to biological factors:

1. Thirst: Many people respond to thirst by eating instead of drinking🍶 You might be surprised to learn about this but it makes sense as our hypothalamus gland regulates both hunger and thirst. Many of us tend to misinterpret the signals sent by out hypothalamus and end up reaching for food when our body sends out the signal that we are dehydrated.

Make sure you hydrate yourself by drinking water throughout the day. Next time before you reach for a snack, have a drink of water first and observe your hunger levels after 30 min. It is also recommended that you drink a cup of water first half an hour before your meals🍵🍶 If you are sick of drinking plain water, you can make red dates and goji berry tea or even detox water where you infuse your water with fruits and herbs.

 

 

 

​2. Nutritional Hunger:

  • You are not consuming enough calories: When you skip your meal or if you follow a calorie-restricted diet, your body’s blood glucose stress start to deplete. This causes a spike in your body’s hunger hormone, which in turns increases your appetite. When your hunger increases, you will tend to overeat during your next meal or you may even end up not being able to control yourself and overindulge before your next meal.
  • Heavy exercise: Your hunger may also go through the roof if you have had a day of intense workout or had a long run thus burning a whole load of calories. So good news is you get to indulge and volume eat! You may notice that on those days, you may actually eat healthier and crave less junk food.
  • Eating low fat foods: Studies suggest that fat plays a role is keeping you full as it help increase the production of satiety hormones. When you are eating low-fat foods, you may experience a significant increase in cravings for carbs and high sugar foods as you don’t feel as satisfied compared to the full fat version of the food even though you may have consumed quite a high amount of calories.    
  • Not enough fibre: your body digest refine carbs very quickly as they are  highly processed and stripped of fibre, minerals and vitamins. Once digested, your body will no longer feel satiated and you will feel very hungry in a short amount of time. Not only that, this lack of fibre causes blood sugar.

3. Hormonal Reasons:

  • Eating too fast: It takes time, usually about 20-30 minutes before the hunger hormones is able to relay the message to your brain that you are full. If you have a habit of eating too fast and inhaling your food down, start to cultivate a habit where you slowly and mindfully chew your food.  We will tend to overeat as our brain isn’t aware that our body is already satiated from the meal we just had.

  • Insufficient Sleep: According to PLos Medicine study, when one doesn’t get enough sleep🛏️ the levels of leptin in the body drops. As leptin is the hormone that causes people to feel full, with a drop in the levels of leptin, the person will experience more hunger and tend to overeat.

    Not only that, adequate sleep regulates ghrelin levels, the appetite stimulating hormone. Lack of sleep leads to higher ghrelin level and hence making you feel hungrier.

If you find that you have difficulty sleeping or that even after sleeping through the night you wake up tired, try practicing yoga and meditation to help improve your sleep. Yoga and meditation helps your body and mind to relax and help ease stress related ailments.Yoga and meditation also helps boost melatonin levels which leads to better sleep.

Long deep breathing which is practiced during yoga and meditation further helps your relax your sympathetic nervous system and at the same time stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system to help you better relax. Your heartbeat and inflammation systems also slows down as your vagus nerve is stimulated through yoga and meditation, allowing you to fully relax. So put on your yoga pants and have a go at yoga and meditation before going to bed. One of the exercises you can do upon waking or before going to bed is the Breath of Fire.

 

Breath of Fire 

Breath of Fire is an amazing breathing technique practiced in yoga which has numerous benefits for the practitioner. One of the benefits are expanded lung capacity as well as your ability to handle stress as your nervous system and immune system strengthens. Through experience, when practiced regularly, the Breath of Fire helped me reduce my cravings for unhealthy food. Practicing 3 minutes of this breath every morning upon waking really helped with my energy levels as well as reducing my cravings for junk food. You can give it a try too.

How to do the Breath of Fire?

  • This is a fast breath where you breath about 2-3 breaths per second. Both the inhale and exhale are of equal length and is done through your nose.
  • The Breath of Fire is powered through the navel where you pull your navel in powerfully whenever you exhale. This action causes your diaphragm to contract rapidly, expelling the air in your lungs.
  • When you are doing the Breath of Fire, just focus on your exhale. Your inhalation will be very relaxed and natural as you abdominal relaxes and your diaphragm extends downward.
  • Some people may find that they get a bit light headed during the exercise, due to the rush of oxygen to your brain as well as stimulation to your nerves. After a few sessions, most people will no longer experience this as their body get’s use to the new norm.
  • It is advice that kids under 12 or those who are pregnant or menstruating to not practice the Breath of Fire.