Fasting on occasion has become extremely popular among healthy living enthusiasts due to benefits such as improved metabolic flexibility, lower insulin levels, weight loss, and the maintenance of a healthy gut microbiome. While some people find fasting easy, others find it difficult to control their hunger during long fasts. In this article, I’ll share strategies for making your fast as comfortable as possible, as well as tips for tailoring them to your specific fasting goals (e.g., autophagy, gut repair, fat loss, etc.).
In this article, we’ll go through strategies to make your fasting experience more manageable. Furthermore, for those seeking an effective ways to reduce food cravings during these periods, there are tailored approaches that can be synced with your distinct fasting objectives
Why Do You Get Hungry While Fasting?
There are several reasons why you could feel hungry when fasting, including:
Your body is running out of fuel. If your body isn’t metabolically able to burn its fat for fuel, it must rely on the glucose (carbs) you consumed at your last meal. When that glucose runs out, you become hungry.
Your body thinks it’s time to eat. When you eat at the same times every day, your body becomes accustomed to being fed on that schedule. As a result, it increases the hunger hormone ghrelin levels, pushing you to give it sustenance.
You’re dehydrated. The human brain might confuse dehydration with a lack of fuel (which is one of the reasons why it is critical to drink plenty of water during fasting times).
You’re worried. As I outlined in my post about the top reasons why you’re not losing weight, stress raises cortisol and ghrelin levels, which increases your desire to eat.
You’re exhausted. Sleep deprivation makes you hungry because your body tries to compensate for a lack of energy by consuming extra calories.
You are on medication. Some medications, such as antipsychotics (e.g., clozapine and olanzapine), antidepressants, mood stabilizers, corticosteroids, and anti-seizure medications, may cause hunger and make it more challenging to keep a fast.
The microbial diversity in your gut is modest. Your gut flora affects hormones and other substances that cause hunger and food cravings. While a healthy stomach has a diverse population of helpful bacteria, studies have shown that a lack of microbial diversity might increase the sensation of hunger. So, if you’re experiencing overwhelming hunger while fasting, there’s probably something wrong with your gut microbiota that needs to be addressed.
You consumed an excessive amount of alcohol before your fast. Alcohol lowers the amounts of several hormones that control your hunger, such as leptin. As a result, if you drank too much alcohol before beginning your fast, you may feel hungrier than usual.
Top Tips to Curb Hunger When Fasting
1. Protein-Rich, High-Fat Food While Not Fasting
Allowing your body to burn its own fat for energy is one of the most efficient strategies to reduce hunger when fasting. That’s because even our providers have more fat than glycogen stored in our systems, and this fat may be used for energy in the absence of food. Reduce your carbohydrate consumption and eat more fat and protein to allow your body to burn fat for energy.
Moreover, for some individuals who still find it challenging to curb their appetite during fasting windows, considering hunger control supplements, under professional guidance, can be an added strategy to optimise their fasting experience.
It’s also the underlying idea of the ketogenic diet. Sadly, we lose our mobility over time as we train our bodies to rely on glucose, which we give through a steady stream of carbohydrates. As potent as metabolic flexibility is, it usually takes a few weeks to achieve if you’ve been eating a standard American diet that includes a lot of processed carbs (glucose). As a result, it is not a quick fix, but one that will pay off in the long run.
Having said that, consuming extra fat and protein can still lessen your appetite while fasting even if you are not yet metabolically flexible. This is because the body takes longer to metabolize fat and protein than carbs, so you’ll likely feel full and content for longer after eating a meal high in these macronutrients.
2. Use Exogenous Ketones
The human body can use a variety of different fuel sources. Ketones, which are molecules produced by the liver from fatty acids, are the brain’s preferred fuel source since they enter the brain according to their plasma concentration, regardless of glucose availability. In other words, ketones can reduce the brain’s use of glucose while delivering sufficient energy to prevent cognitive impairment. If your brain has enough fuel, you are less likely to feel hungry and, thus, less likely to seek food.
Exogenous ketones offer fuel to your brain and other tissues without boosting insulin levels or interfering with autophagy, fat loss, or endogenous ketosis (the body’s oetone generation) While following a low-carb diet (such as the ketogenic diet) assures a steady supply of endogenous ketones, you can also utilize exogenous ketone pills to fuel your brain and other cells that can use ketones for fuel. One thing to keep in mind is that, while I used to believe that taking exogenous ketones would break a fast, I no longer do.
This is due to the fact that exogenous ketones had no detrimental influence on any of my fasting goals. Exogenous ketones, in other words, do not inhibit autophagy (the body’s cell recycling program), do not hinder the liver from producing endogenous ketones, do not impede fat burning, and do not affect the gut flora. As a result, I think that using exogenous ketones is entirely safe, especially if they allow you to fast for longer periods than you would ordinarily.
3. Boost Your Electrolyte Intake
When you fast, you probably take fewer electrolytes like salt, potassium, and magnesium. Furthermore, as your body uses liver and muscle glycogen for fuel, it flushes away water and electrolytes. This combination can cause an electrolyte imbalance, causing you to want salty meals and experience weariness, sleeplessness, or brain fog.
While cravings and hunger are not always the same thing, they both make fasting more challenging. Furthermore, when you’re tired and low on energy, your brain may try to compensate by releasing appetite-inducing chemicals like ghrelin. You may, however, build your electrolyte supplement at home, as discussed in my post about why electrolyte supplements are necessary on keto.
4. Consume Acacia Fiber
In place of fat, soluble fiber (such as acacia fiber) can help you satisfy your hunger without breaking your fast. Soluble fiber appears to suppress ghrelin levels in the body, resulting in less incentive to eat. Furthermore, it gives the digestive system something to work on even though your body cannot digest or extract nutrients from fiber.
This is useful because your hunger hormone levels alter whenever your digestive system is working (although with a few minutes of delay). As a result, you feel less hungry until your body realizes that what you ate didn’t deliver enough calories (or any calories at all) to meet its demands. Furthermore, a recent study released in Nature found that high-fiber diets can feed specific types of bad bacteria that produce inflammatory substances that aggravate illnesses like rheumatoid arthritis.
5. Subject Yourself to Mild Stressors
A long-term plan for minimizing hunger during fasting should include an emphasis on reducing chronic stress, which produces an increase in the hunger hormone ghrelin. Yet, there are some modest stressors that not only make you more resilient (called hermetic stressors), but can also be excellent appetite suppressants.
If you’re not used to hermetic stresses, you’ll probably have to experiment with which dosages work best for you and alter them over time as your body grows more resilient.
6. Plan Your Fasting Hours Overnight
One of the most effective strategies to fast intermittently is to plan your fasting hours around sleep. That’s because your brain is preoccupied with other things when you sleep, such as physical recuperation and building up your memory, rather than seeking food for fuel. In this case, if your objective is to fast for 16 hours, you can have dinner three hours before going to bed. If you then sleep for 8 hours, you will have fasted for 11 hours by the time you wake up.
However when fasting and aiming to curb hunger effectively, incorporating effective appetite suppressants and hunger control pills into your routine can be a strategic decision to curb hunger and If you’re like me, you’re probably not hungry right away in the morning, making it simple to extend your fast by a few hour with the help of some beneficial supplements can help you alot.
Final Thought: How to Curb Hunger When Fasting
True hunger occurs when your body has depleted its resources and requires nutrition to avert starvation. Depending on your energy consumption, this may take many days or weeks. The good news is that cravings are considerably easier to control than actual hunger.
One of the most efficient strategies to combat hunger when fasting is to keep your brain supplied with ketones constantly. Fasting without experiencing out-of-control hunger levels is pretty simple if your brain is happy.