How To Deal With Hunger While Intermittent Fasting

In an era where health and well-being are paramount, intermittent fasting has become a sought-after method with promises of weight control, improved metabolism, and overall health enhancement. Yet, beneath these benefits’ allure lies a common and often daunting challenge: managing hunger. Hunger can feel like a formidable adversary on your intermittent fasting journey, but with the right strategies, you can conquer it and make it work.

In this article we’ll dive into how to deal with hunger while intermittent fasting. At the same time, shed light on the various needs you might encounter and provide practical insights to master your appetite.

By learning how to deal with hunger effectively, you can transform it from an obstacle into a valuable ally, guiding you toward a healthier and more fulfilling life. Let’s embark on this insightful exploration of how to harness the potential benefits of intermittent fasting while taming the beast of hunger along the way.

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It doesn’t prescribe specific foods to eat but rather focuses on when you should eat. The primary goal of intermittent fasting is to change when you eat to promote various health benefits, including weight loss, improved metabolic health, and potential longevity.

This approach is rooted in historical circumstances where humans evolved to function effectively during extended periods without food. Occasional fasting aligns more closely with our natural eating patterns than the routine daily consumption of three to four meals or even more¹.

There are several popular methods of intermittent fasting:

16/8 Method: This method involves fasting for 16 hours each day and limiting your eating to an 8-hour window. For example, you might eat between noon and 8 PM and fast from 8 PM to noon the next day.
5:2 Diet: In this approach, you consume your regular diet five days a week and significantly reduce your calorie intake (usually around 500-600 calories) on the other two non-consecutive days².
Eat-Stop-Eat: This method involves fasting 24 hours once or twice a week. For instance, you would refrain from eating after dinner and resume eating only after the same time the next day.
Alternate-Day Fasting: With this approach, you alternate between fasting and regular eating days. On fasting days, you significantly reduce calorie intake or consume no calories3.
Warrior Diet: This diet entails eating small amounts of raw fruits and vegetables during the day and having one large meal in the evening.
OMAD (One Meal a Day): As the name suggests, you eat only one large meal within a short time window, often 1-2 hours, and fast for the remaining 22-23 hours.

Understanding Hunger While Intermittent Fasting

If you’ve ever ventured into any variation of intermittent fasting, you’ve likely encountered a common challenge—hunger. This challenge can be particularly pronounced in the initial days of your fasting endeavor. Here are the things you need to know that can make dealing with hunger during fasting more manageable for you:

Is Hunger Normal During Intermittent Fasting?

Feeling hungry during intermittent fasting is entirely normal, and this holds true even for individuals with prior fasting experience.

While it may seem like common sense, the science behind this phenomenon can provide a deeper understanding of why it occurs.

In simple terms, hunger is primarily regulated by hormones in your body. Two key hormones are crucial in managing hunger—ghrelin and leptin⁴.

Ghrelin, often called the “hunger hormone,” communicates to your body that it’s time to eat. In contrast, leptin instructs your body when it’s time to stop eating⁵.

When ghrelin levels in your body are elevated, you experience hunger. Your stomach releases ghrelin based on your habitual eating schedule, and its classes typically begin to rise just before your usual meal times.

After you’ve consumed a meal, leptin levels increase, signaling to your brain that you’re full and should stop eating⁶.

Indeed, it’s entirely anticipated to confront hunger while practicing intermittent fasting. The reassuring news is that you can manage and mitigate needs by adhering to specific strategies. In a subsequent section, we will delve into techniques for alleviating hunger during fasting, ensuring you can effectively accomplish your fasting objectives.

Reasons You Feel Hungry While Fasting

Experiencing hunger to some degree is a regular aspect of intermittent fasting. Nevertheless, inevitable mistakes or missteps can exacerbate this hunger. Here are the primary reasons why you might be feeling starving during your fasting period:

Your Body Is Still Adapting to Your New Eating Schedule

This is not so much a mistake as a natural part of the initial stages of intermittent fasting. When you embark on intermittent fasting, your digestive system anticipates your upcoming meal and generates ghrelin, the hunger hormone. With no leptin to counteract this hunger, you may experience these pangs until your hormone levels stabilize⁷.

Insufficient Food Intake During Your Eating Window

One straightforward reason for experiencing hunger during your fasting period is not consuming enough food during your designated eating window. This can occur when you overly restrict your caloric intake in the pursuit of rapid weight loss or if you’re new to the intermittent fasting routine and are uncertain about the appropriate meal portions8.

Drastically reducing your meal sizes to achieve rapid weight loss is generally not advisable. To facilitate a smoother transition to intermittent fasting, you can gradually adjust your portion sizes to maintain a moderate calorie deficit while ensuring you feel satisfied during fasting.

Consuming Excessive Carbohydrates and Insufficient Protein

Studies indicate that high-carbohydrate diets lead to rapid drops in blood sugar levels, which can result in increased hunger sooner compared to low-carb diets. Additionally, inadequate protein intake has been associated with elevated ghrelin levels, intensifying the urge to eat^9,10.

Inadequate Hydration During Fasting

Ghrelin levels can rise when dehydrated; sufficient water can help reduce these levels. On some occasions, when you think you’re hungry, it may actually be due to thirst caused by insufficient water intake¹¹.

Inadequate Sleep

If you’ve ever experienced intense hunger after a night of poor sleep, you can attribute this to hormonal changes. Insufficient sleep has been associated with elevated ghrelin levels in the bloodstream and reduced leptin levels, resulting in increased feelings of hunger¹².

How To Deal With Hunger While Intermittent Fasting

Certainly, hunger plays a role in intermittent fasting, but it’s probably not what you might expect.

If you’ve ever grappled with hunger pangs or experienced “hanger” (that irritable feeling when hungry), you might assume that fasting worsens these sensations. However, this is not the case.

Hunger while fasting is fleeting, typically lasting only around 20 minutes. Surprisingly, many people remain unaware of this fact because they don’t allow hunger to persist for long.

In certain instances, some individuals never truly experience genuine hunger since their appetite keeps them consistently satiated. Appetite is the desire to eat, and it can be triggered by various factors such as hormones, sensory cues (visual, olfactory, and auditory), or emotional states like boredom, appetite suppression, and stress.

On the other hand, genuine hunger represents a physical need to eat, often accompanied by stomach noises and discomfort. Distinguishing between these two states is crucial because understanding why you feel less hungry empowers you to take control of the situation and manage your hunger effectively¹³.

The early stages of fasting can unquestionably be the most testing, as your ingrained eating habits will tempt you to consume food, and adapting to authentic hunger can be an adjustment.

Nevertheless, numerous strategies can assist you in navigating through the initial pangs of enthusiasm with ease. Let’s delve into seven effective methods for controlling your appetite, ultimately enabling you to achieve your fasting objectives.

Opt for a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet

With intermittent fasting, your choice of food matters as much as your eating schedule. Remember that intermittent fasting should not be an excuse to consume low-quality or unhealthy food. Instead, use it to maximize the benefits for your diet and overall health.

Intermittent fasting often naturally complements a well-established low-carb diet, as it frequently reduces feelings of hunger. Regardless of your reasons for practicing intermittent fasting, adopting a high-fat, low-carb diet can enhance your results, helping you lose weight and achieve your health goals more efficiently¹⁴.

Initiate Low-Carb and Fat Adaptation

Building on the previous point, an intelligent way to begin intermittent fasting is to burn fat and lay the foundation with a low-carb diet. Once your body has become “fat-adapted,” meaning it efficiently uses fat for energy rather than glucose, you’ll find that your appetite significantly diminishes, making fasting feel more intuitive and effortless¹⁵.

Give yourself at least two weeks to adapt your diet in this manner before introducing intermittent fasting.

Minimize Stress, Prioritize Sleep, and Limit Alcohol

Inadequate sleep, high-stress levels, and excessive alcohol consumption can disrupt hormonal and blood sugar control, leading to increased feelings of hunger. To avoid these hunger triggers, improve the quality of your sleep, practice stress reduction techniques, and cut back on alcohol.

For improved sleep quality, ensure your bedroom is cool and well-ventilated, maintain a consistent bedtime that isn’t too late, block out noise and light, avoid eating at least three hours before bedtime, steer clear of screens and blue light for an hour before sleeping, unwind with a good book, and incorporate regular exercise into your day.

Improving sleep quality will have a positive ripple effect on stress and energy levels. For an extra dose of calm and a boost of serotonin (the “happy hormone”), consider engaging in stress-reduction methods such as yoga, meditation, exercise, journaling, and counseling¹⁶.

While it’s advisable to limit alcohol consumption, especially the day before a fast, if you choose to drink, opt for low-carb options and do so in moderation.

Stay Hydrated

Thirst is often mistaken for hunger, so it’s crucial to maintain proper hydration with an adequate water intake. Kickstart your hydration routine by drinking one to two glasses of water when you wake up. Aim for a daily total of around 2 to 3 liters of water, but avoid excessive consumption as it can deplete essential electrolytes.

Drinking water can also create a sensation of fullness, which helps alleviate genuine hunger pangs. Regardless of the type of hunger you experience, water is your ally during fasting. If you struggle with drinking water, try adjusting the temperature to make it more palatable based on your preference for warm or chilled water. Alternatively, consider sparkling water with a mint and lemon infusion17.

Replenish Electrolytes and Incorporate Salt

Loss of electrolytes is a common and expected occurrence during intermittent fasting, leading to symptoms like dry mouth and increased thirst. Even if you drink plenty of water, these symptoms persist, as thirst is often mistaken for hunger.

Maintaining proper electrolyte levels is crucial for overall health and well-being, ensuring they balance well before any symptoms arise. To replenish electrolytes, you can consume bone broth and liberally salt your food during your eating window. Additionally, consider taking magnesium and potassium supplements during fasting to help maintain electrolyte balance18.

Sip on Tea or Coffee

Replace the absence of food with freshly brewed black tea or coffee. Like water, a hot beverage can provide a sense of fullness while engaging the “hand-to-mouth” action, creating the illusion that you feel you’ve eaten.

Try bulletproof coffee if you find it particularly challenging to manage hunger during intermittent fasting. Add butter, coconut oil, MCT (medium-chain triglycerides), or ghee to your coffee. These fats will help keep you full while preserving ketosis and autophagy—two crucial processes underlying fasting and its benefits. It’s worth noting that for fasting purists, consuming a single calorie will break a fast. However, if adding fat to your coffee makes it easier to adhere to your fasting regimen, it can be a valuable tool^19,20,21,22.

Stay Distracted

Schedule physical activity, engage in enjoyable activities, or spend time with friends during your usual meal times or whenever hunger becomes challenging.

As mentioned earlier, ghrelin levels tend to rise around traditional meal hours, so plan and ensure you have pleasant distractions during these times. When you’re fully absorbed in these activities, any hunger induced by ghrelin will come and go without you even noticing. Whatever you do, don’t let boredom set in, as it can open the door for hunger to sneak in²³.

Summary

Intermittent fasting, a popular weight control and health enhancement method, comes with the challenge of managing hunger during fasting periods. This article offers practical insights for effective hunger management.

Intermittent fasting involves alternating between fasting and eating, inspired by historical food scarcity practices. It’s essential to differentiate between appetite and genuine hunger, as appetite is a desire to eat, while hunger is a physical need.

The article outlines seven strategies to control hunger during intermittent fasting, including dietary choices, stress reduction, hydration, electrolyte balance, tea or coffee consumption, and staying distracted during meals. Feeling hungry during intermittent fasting is expected due to hormonal factors like ghrelin and leptin. Implementing these strategies can help you better cope with and succeed in achieving health and wellness goals.