So you’ve had a hard day at work and now you’re tired and it’s time to eat.
And you’re really hungry just salivating at the thought of food. Does thinking hard increase your appetite?
It seems so. Researchers found that mental work destabilizes your insulin and glucose levels which in turn suggest that this state is why your appetite increases.
So how does your mind make you hungry?
Well, stress for one plays a big part. When rats are chronically stressed, they release a special hormone that leads them to seek pleasure behaviors of which high energy foods are high on the list.
Ok, I know we’re not rats, but our behavior is very similar when it comes to stress. We look for foods such as greasy pizza or chocolate chip cookies to satisfy our senses. Our stress gets some relief but this behavior causes abdominal obesity just as was observed in the rat experiment.
The researchers concluded that craving and eating comfort foods may actually “apply the brakes on a key element of chronic stress.”
This is all very well but is your health at risk if belly fat is the result? We all know about the increased risk of heart attacks, diabetes, strokes and more associated with visceral fat.
So what’s the answer?
Well, nip that stress in the bud for a start. Get a massage, take time to relax, whatever you need.
Meanwhile, stress is not the only emotion that leads you to eat. A 2004 study by British researchers found that about half of adults turn to food not only when stressed but also when lonely or bored.
There can also be other reasons that make people feel hungrier, such as:
• The time of day. I know I feel hungry when meal time hours roll around
• The drinking of alcohol which can trick you into being more hungry than you really are
• Eating refined carbs that can cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, more quickly followed by a low later than if a complex carb had been eaten
• Eating too fast which won’t allow your body the time to get that full signal which takes 20 minutes to happen
• Not getting enough sleep can trigger hormone imbalances to make you want to eat more
Therefore, knowing that your appetite can be stimulated by all that was mentioned above can be good to help you control your response to these cravings.
There’s nothing wrong with being hungry, just make sure that you are actually giving your body what it needs.
That’s why I rely so much on specifically formulated organic meal replacements that give me all the nutrients my body needs to rejuvenate and thrive without the worry of gaining weight.
[...] then using a psychiatric drug to “solve” the problem, in no way addresses the real problem of fat loss but certainly lines the pockets of interested [...]
[...] then using a psychiatric drug to “solve” the problem, in no way addresses the real problem of weight loss but certainly lines the pockets of interested [...]
[...] The drinking of alcohol which can trick you into being more hungry than you really are • Eating refined carbs that can cause a rapid rise in blood sugar, more quickly followed by a low later than if a complex carb had been eaten … More [...]