Transcription produced using AI transcription services; errors may occur. contact Mikki for clarification

00:10
Hey everyone, Mikki here. You're listening to another Mini Mikkipedia on a Monday. And today we are talking about hunger. And this was a request from a few people actually on the back of some of the other mini Mikkipedia episodes of doing my program Mondays Matter and just sort of how to deal with hunger.

00:33
Is it a bad thing to be hungry and all the rest of it? And it also sort of comes from some conversations I've had with some friends who are currently cutting for a physique show. And one in particular was chatting about how she, for her, her progress in terms of her cut is almost governed by, or she can tell, when she's going to be losing body fat because she feels hungry. So for her, it's a welcome.

01:01
sensation because it tells her that she's progressing with her weight loss goal. And I think this isn't just her actually, I think this is something that is quite common. But people fear being hungry. And in part because their previous hunger signals when they've been trying to improve their body composition or they've been just, you know, in general everyday life, their hunger is associated with hypoglycemia. So low blood sugar.

01:31
But that doesn't have to be the way. And hunger instead can be something that is easily managed and you can concentrate and go about your day, yet also know that you're likely potting yourself in this physiological state where you are tapping into your fat stores and you are utilizing energy that is already stored on your body in order to lose body fat, which is basically what you wanna achieve if you are...

01:59
looking at fat loss, which is how I'm going to be framing the conversation today. So what is hunger? In its simplest form, hunger is the body's natural signal that it needs more food. It's our physiological drive to seek and eat food, and it's typically accompanied by feelings of emptiness in the stomach, rumbling or growling noises, and even feelings of light-headedness or irritability when we've gone too long without eating.

02:30
That is where we can differentiate what is true physiological need for calories. So you actually need to eat food or what is actually hunger that is driven more by blood sugar regulation. If you eat a meal and you begin to feel hungry three to four hours later, yet you can easily sort of go into a meeting, you can concentrate on what's going on.

03:00
you can make good decisions, and you can sort of cope with being hungry. That's telling me that it's not a blood sugar response in relation to the food that you've eaten, and instead you are actually just needing to eat again. Whereas if you eat a meal and you feel satisfied for a couple of hours, but then suddenly you get this ravenous, like, oh my God, I've got to eat now, and you start noticing that you are distracted, that you cannot concentrate,

03:29
that you do feel that lightheaded and dizziness and you get that hangry, that irritability, that is telling you that is your blood sugar response. And so whatever you had in that previous meal, either it wasn't enough calories or there wasn't enough protein or fat to buffer that blood sugar response to the meal. So these are sort of two different types of hunger, but we don't just eat.

03:57
because we're hungry either. And this is another thing I think is worthwhile mentioning is that you of course have this physiological requirement for calories you need to eat. So your body's signals will drive you to seek out food. But of course there is that psychological appetite is different from what we actually need. We can have an appetite for food, even if we've just eaten. If you walk into a kitchen for example, and you smell toast, even if you just had breakfast, at least for me, I'm like,

04:26
I could go a piece of toast right now. So the smell of certain foods, which we, and everyone is different as to how this might look for you, but that can also drive appetite up. We also talk about having, you know, a treat pipe or a dessert stomach where you eat your fill of the main meal, but you can always fit in dessert. You know, that's not a physiological requirement for hunger. That is just your sort of appetite.

04:56
for these types of foods, which we might associate with social settings, feeling relaxed and happy and socializing amongst friends. These environmental cues and emotions. Stress is a big driver of hunger and I know that I have talked about this in a few episodes. When I say hunger, what I mean more is it's a big driver of appetite. So when some people feel

05:25
they're going to lose their appetite, not going to want to eat. And, you know, food is the last thing from their mind. Whereas other people, when they get stressed, food is their coping mechanism and they have an appetite, but they're not necessarily hungry. Understanding that will help you determine whether your hunger cues are from a true

05:55
an appetite based on these other environmental or emotional cues, or if it's blood sugar regulation. So if I go back to what I was talking about with hunger and people's fearing hunger, people fear that low blood sugar feeling. And because it is a sort of danger signal goes straight to your brain because low blood sugar over a period of time is dangerous. And so

06:17
sometimes we eat to prevent that happening because we haven't yet learned or we haven't quite got the balance right in our meals to help avoid it and experience that other physiological requirement for calories and what hunger truly should be, what a true hunger signal should look like. And our body does communicate when it's time to eat through changes in hormones. So

06:44
You know, you've got a network of hormones including ghrelin and leptin, which work together to regulate hunger and fullness. So ghrelin is often referred to as the hunger hormone. It increases before meals, signaling to your brain that it's time to seek food. Conversely, leptin is released from your fat cells and signals to your brain when you've eaten enough. However, sometimes this happens in anticipation of food and not necessarily because you were really hungry. So your body is really routine.

07:12
So if you are used to eating breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner, then come morning tea time, despite really what you've eaten for breakfast almost, that ghrelin will get that circadian rhythm signal that it's time to eat again and it will start rising in anticipation of food. If you had to wait 20 minutes because you got stuck in a meeting, what you would probably find is that that hunger signal will diminish as ghrelin returns to normal.

07:41
And indeed, even looking at studies of prolonged fasting, we see that you do get an uptick in hunger hormones over that first 24 to 36 hours. But after about 48 hours, those hunger signals and those hunger hormones, including ghrelin, just go back to baseline. So you cannot always rely on these cues in order to know whether or not you need to eat. And this is particularly true if you are

08:11
If you have, for example, just started Monday's Matter, and I'm not a big fan of snacking because it's unnecessary for most people in most circumstances. But if you are adjusting the timing of your food and you're taking out those snacks, you could still feel hungry even if you don't necessarily need those foods or want the food because hey, part of that energy that you want to be burning is energy that you've already got stored on your body. So actually understanding that.

08:40
does allow for a better sort of approach or response to that hunger cue. And you know, what I'll also say is some people talk about, you know, eating a diet which is particularly low pleasure or quite bland or low hedonic. So it's not going to give you that sort of sensation of, oh, you really want this and it's sort of tied up into this desire to eat delicious food.

09:08
And some people do say, hey, you know what, if you sort of cut out that type of food so your diet isn't there to entertain you, then you're going to have more success at tapping into your actual hunger cues and then allowing you to eat an amount of food that helps with fat loss, for example, and prevents weight gain. And while I totally agree that dialing back that hedonic factor in food is certainly a strategy

09:37
can help with managing the amounts that you eat and portion sizes. There does have to be some sort of balance because I do think that you can still eat delicious food and not get these exacerbated sort of hedonic ratings from it. But it is worth mentioning that food manufacturers and processed food manufacturers particularly, this is what they work on maximizing in their products.

10:07
They are trying to create products that are going to cause you to overeat. So these products are designed and they're all pretty much the same ingredients. They are fat, refined fat, they are starch, so refined carbohydrate. They have sugar and they have salt. These are the four main ingredients of all processed food, ultra processed food, and then manufacturers will

10:34
bring in additives and flavors and preservatives and they will just essentially mimic what we might find in nature and what drives our brain to want to eat more of. And they create something called this bliss point which is the right flavor and the right texture to want to encourage your appetite to eat more. Now when we're talking about the hedonic factor of food, trying to eliminate and minimize those types of foods when you're losing.

11:03
when you're trying to lose weight, that makes perfect sense because you don't want to be eating foods that drive your appetite and want you to eat more. However, you can create food yourself and you can cook it from scratch where you can have elements of this deliciousness, but it won't necessarily encourage you to overeat. So there does have to be a balance. And what I find can work really well is to have small amounts of the stuff that you really love and is really delicious.

11:29
but it is sort of couched in a meal that also contains good protein, also contains good fiber, good low energy, high volume foods that help fill you up and feel satisfied without overeating calories. Because many of, and most of those processed foods that have that fat sugar start and salt, these types of foods...

11:54
are energy dense, so you don't have to eat a lot of them in order to get a lot of calories. Foods that fall into this category, which we might consider, quote unquote, healthy or sort of diet foods, if you like, would be things like protein bars as well. Bliss balls, like even those low sugar bliss balls, those 50% vegetable bliss balls or whatever they look like. Or you might have protein balls, which are...

12:21
you know, slightly bigger, but they might have a monk fruit or a stevia in them, but they're made with almond flour and whey powder. They're pretty calorific for the amount that you get. So whenever you're eating things like this, they're much better to be sort of tacked on at the end of a meal. So you're not relying on them to fulfill your sort of hunger and to have half of one or even do what I have always talked about or not always, but over the last couple of years.

12:50
cut up these things and you pop them in the freezer. Now that is not gonna work for everyone, but for some people, grabbing out two or three of these small bites to have with a hot drink after your meal, it's a really good way to get some of what you want, but not rely on it to satisfy your hunger cues. So, how to determine if you're really hungry. Now I've already described the sensations that occur when you really require calories, or when it's

13:17
you're on the edge of that glucose cliff and you're about to fall off. So those are sort of two of those things. And I think we can all appreciate then when you walk into a room and you really, you smell a delicious food or you see something in your eyes, sort of see some sort of advert for your favorite sort of burger or something, that you do get that sort of hunger response. But you probably, you could probably even just track back to your last meal and go, okay, well, hey, look.

13:46
I don't need to eat right now. So it's having that awareness of what is an appetite response based on your environmental cues, what is an emotional response based on how you're feeling, what is the blood sugar response based on your blood sugar regulation, and then, you know, are you actually just hungry? So awareness is definitely one of those first things. And you can use something like a hunger scale, which is this visual analog scale.

14:13
And so basically it's a straight line. And on one end, you've got super hungry, number one. And then at the other end, you've got absolutely stuffed, could not eat anything. And sort of where you wanna be on this hunger scale after a meal might be about eight. So you're satisfied, you feel full, but you don't feel so stuffed that you couldn't eat another thing. Like that's not a comfortable way to feel. And then...

14:40
You don't really want to get yourself out of one, which is, oh my God, I'm so starving. I cannot concentrate, I cannot do anything, or I'm gonna faint because I just desperately need food. But you want to sort of have it so when you are, say, a two or a three, that's sort of, you're like, cool. Okay, now I can eat. You want to assess your hunger. Are you really hungry? Is it the environment? Is it my appetite?

15:07
Or can I leave it for another 30 to 40 minutes or that kind of thing. You don't want to go so long that you get to that point where you're absolutely ravenous and you're just going to eat everything in sight. But you don't always want to have to just give into your hunger every time you feel hungry because that makes weight loss really difficult because as I said, feeling that sensation of hunger could be a good cue for a lot of people that they are going to be progressing in their weight loss goals. So

15:35
The other thing I'll mention here is that sometimes when we are thirsty, we think it's hunger. And in fact, you probably just need to drink. And preloading water actually is one of the things that can help with minimizing calories at a meal, like 500 mL of water before you eat. But if you think you are hungry, have a drink first. And that is something that you always hear. How many of us actually do it? Have a drink.

16:02
and assess after 10-15 minutes. And if you are hungry, cool, maybe it is a time for you to be eating. How to manage hunger during weight loss. Now, a lot of the things that I've discussed over the last few weeks, talking about food types and how to have a good volume of food, that really will play into how to manage hunger during weight loss. But I will just mention again, so for most people,

16:31
Having an eating window that is no longer than about 12 hours is a really good way to help manage hunger signals. Because if you're eating all hours of the day, your hunger signals can be pretty out of whack. So that is one of the first things. The only sort of exception to this, I would say, is that if you get up early and you train, and you're in a calorie deficit, then don't worry about that eating window. Because you actually do need to recover and refuel from that because going for extended times without eating

17:00
can blow out later in the day with regards to your appetite and the amount that you eat. Obviously I talked about hydrating properly, that's super important. Prioritizing sleep and stress management because both of these things impact on how much food you wanna be eating and it's got nothing to do with calories. When you are sleep restricted or sleep deprived, your insulin goes up, your cortisol response goes up,

17:28
you cannot access the same amount of energy from food because it takes more insulin for your body to sort of react or respond to the nutrients in the bloodstream. So you can end up overeating and you're just your appetite and your hunger just increases. Of course over time actually that appetite signal does diminish with chronic sleep sort of restrictions. So this is not something that happens all of the time and I'm not saying it's a good thing to be chronically sleep deprived.

17:57
to control your appetite, but be mindful that if you have one to two nights a week where you don't have a great sleep, you will feel hungry the next day. That's why prioritizing that protein in food, having those low volume, high satiety, fibrous sort of vegetables, having full meals but making them low energy dense, these are the things which are going to help you control your appetite, not just when you are tired, but on any given day.

18:25
Eating mindfully is also really important. So we know actually there's good research to show that if you, the quicker you eat, the more hungry you will feel later. And so try to put your fork down between bites, chew your food properly when you do have a mouthful of food, swallow that mouthful before putting your fork back up to your mouth.

18:51
Try to eat in a non-distracted way, even if you are reading something or you're watching something whilst you eat. That's normal, people do that all the time. Of course I could say don't do that, but I'm also a realist, that will just happen. Try to still be engaged in that eating process and then wait five to ten minutes before you go and have some more food if you haven't had enough. But nine times out of ten if you have the protein.

19:18
If you have the vegetables, if you have the low-volume food, sorry, if you have the low-energy, high-volume food, you will not feel hungry after your meal. And my last tip will be, of course, keep that food diary and keep track of what you're eating because you could probably even just look at your, for those of you on a weight loss journey, if you've got a meal plan like in Monday's Matter, you will know that hey, you've

19:45
had what you're going to eat and now you're just going to ride it out basically. Riding it out isn't a bad thing. And of course there are nuances to this and there are individual differences to how much people actually need. But you know when you're following a plan that's sort of already been laid out for you and that means that that decision of whether or not you should eat again has sort of been removed. The same thing with macro tracking like if you are tracking your calories and you've got a set calorie limit for the day then pre-logging your food can really help.

20:13
actually so you know exactly what you've got to play with and what your meals account for. But then also you'll have a visual of what you've eaten and this will help you sort of tap into, okay cool well I've had the number of calories that I need in order to sort of progress my weight loss journey so now I'm just going to write this out. And that's you know you can totally do that and for a large part that gives you the confidence that know that this hunger is expected and in fact this is helpful.

20:43
Of course, you don't need to be tracking your calories to do this. You could just be writing it in a food diary as well. And that is something else which I really encourage. So again, you get that visual of, OK, well, I actually have had enough now and I don't need any more food. And this takes time, you know, like so we are so removed from our hunger signals in this food environment and we use, you know, our emotions as a crutch. So.

21:09
it can be difficult to tap into your hunger cues. And so that's where that visual analog scale could be really helpful. You might just do one in your daily diary every day, or may have one in your computer, or Google it just so you know what I'm talking about. So these things can really help. But you don't have to fear hunger. If you have based your diet on the principles that I've talked about, being hungry isn't a bad thing, and it's probably just beneficial in terms of your overall weight loss.

21:39
goal. So those are some things on hunger. I hope that has been a little bit helpful. DM me if you've got any questions. You can catch me over on Twitter at Miki Willardin and at Instagram at Miki Willardin, over on Facebook at Miki Willardin Nutrition, or head to my website and book a one-on-one call with me or sign up to one of my meal plans or 18. Enjoy the start of your week.