Are Hunger Pangs Real Or Fake During Fasting?
At the beginning of fasting, there may be dizziness, weakness, strong hunger, and strong appetite after fasting, which may trigger overeating, and many discomforts in between.
After adapting to fasting, you start to feel its charm, your mind is clear, you have more energy, your appetite decreases, you no longer feel like a starving person, you lose weight, and various health indicators are improved, such as blood lipids, blood sugar, and blood pressure.
From the beginning of fasting to adapting to fasting, the biggest feeling of change is the recognition of hunger, basically changing every day.
Recognize several levels of hunger
I was like ordinary people, loved to eat snacks, often bought fruits and nuts, had breakfast well, three meals a day, and sometimes ate late-night snacks.
By now, it’s usually two meals a day on workout days, and I try to make sure to have one meal a day on rest days, I suspect I’ll slowly transition to one meal a day in the future as this trend becomes more and more apparent.
Right now, it’s more comfortable not to eat than to eat, and it’s hard to eat a little bit more, so let me start by saying what I was like before:
→ Low-glycemic hunger
Most people’s first wave of hunger is from low blood sugar, rather than hungry, this belongs to low blood sugar hunger.
Long-term snacking, high-carb diet, when you start low blood sugar, you will feel unbearable, may appear sweating, dizziness, especially want to eat some food, flush blood sugar.
For the average person, the normal value of blood sugar is 70-100 (3.9 to 6.1), as soon as it is lowered to 60 (3.3), you may sweat, to 40 (2.2) you will go into shock, to 20 (1.1) you will die. So it’s perfectly normal for your body’s feedback to want you to eat after a low blood sugar, and if you don’t, you’re in danger. That’s what’s so awesome about a high-carb diet, it keeps you in this low glycemic starvation state.
That means you haven’t finished digesting what you’ve eaten and you start eating again, eating more food, which ends up being stored and turning into fat. If you’re adapting to the low carbon, your blood sugar will stay lower, and if you’re not sweating, it’s normal, and a little bit of hypoglycemia isn’t dangerous.
Most people, suffer from hypoglycemic starvation, which leads to gaining weight, various chronic diseases, and inflammation. After adapting to low carbon, you can experience a normal hunger.
→ Normal hunger
After trying low carb, your blood sugar will slowly stabilize, and it won’t spike or fall all over the place. At this time, you will feel normal hunger.
Normal hunger is the kind of hunger without hypoglycemia, no dizziness, no sweating sensation, no impatience, no anger, it is simply hunger, sometimes accompanied by the signal of an empty stomach.
This time can be tolerated for a while, most people at this time, will choose to eat because of several factors:
- It’s time, and you have to eat even if you’re not hungry.
Don’t eat because it’s time to eat, no meal is necessary to eat, eat only when you are hungry, to be healthy.
- Fear of malnutrition, must eat.
As long as you are eating nutrient-dense food, you won’t be malnourished. After eating real food, you will realize that you do not need to eat so much food, most people eat calories, not nutrition, just eat enough, not enough nutrition.
- Fear of not having enough energy to work.
In fact, in a state of hunger, your concentration will be more focused and your energy will not be affected, of course, you need time to adapt. This time, you may need to go through the next process.
→ Enduring Hunger
My advice has always been to adapt to low carb first, then try fasting. If you start fasting without low carb, it’s all about willpower, which is basically hard to accomplish.
Trying to fast after adapting to low carb also involves going through this process of enduring hunger, but it’s a lot easier than fasting while on a high-carb diet. The first time you fast for 24 hours, you will also need to endure, perhaps for 2-3 hours, a ravenous appetite.
When you fast, there will be three waves of hunger coming in at 11 pm, 6-7 pm, and 12 am in the middle of the night, and if you’ve endured that, the day is over.
The next day, this hunger will be less and less, because the effect of burning fat, producing ketone bodies, and suppressing appetite will be better and better, the brain will be more and more efficient in utilizing the ketone bodies, and you will be able to focus and have better energy. So, to try fasting at first, you need to endure hunger a few times.
→ Interpreting Hunger
This process is essential for many people who have a high appetite and eat emotionally. This process of interpreting hunger is a process of self-reflection and raising awareness of hunger, but very few people are able to do it.
People, in general, when they are emotionally unstable and anxious, want to find food, they are desperate to satisfy their appetite, and all other thoughts and rationality disappear.
When you learn to endure hunger, every time the appetite attacks, you can try to decipher the hunger, take out a pen, or a notebook, write down their feelings, and think of what to write.
Every time, when you calmly take out a pen and paper and begin to record their feelings, the problem has been half solved. Slowly learn to decipher the hunger and face the problem, believe me, you will find the answer, and you will be more and more calm to face the hunger and positive to face the problem.
Let’s be clear, food won’t solve the problem, it will only make you more and more anxious and make the problem worse and worse.
→ Enjoy your hunger
By the time you’ve resolved the hunger that was triggered because of various emotions, you’ll no longer overeat because of anxiety, and you’ll no longer eat because you’re bored.
You may start to enjoy hunger, now I am in this state, many times, I know I am hungry, but, there is no little desire to eat.
So, if you want to enjoy hunger, you must first keep hammering away at your problem-solving skills, so that you become confident, you don’t get anxious because you have problems, keep yourself busy, and don’t let yourself get bored. Keep on solving problems, keep busy, and slowly, you won’t be anxious because of stress, you will enjoy your hunger, and stop overeating.