Are You Always Hungry? Here's Why!

MMMMMMMMMM food!!! Food is everywhere nowadays and but if you’re hungry all the time there could be some reason why you’re feeling that way!

Many reasons can cause us to be hungry…anything from being stressed, thirsty or tired. Maybe it’s the types of food you eat OR…its because of social media. Seeing what we now call food porn, can send signals to our brain that makes us want to eat when we see food pics!

Olivia Tarantino from Eat This, Not That at Time.com  put together a great article outlining the reasons we might be hungry all the time along with some tips to stop the bad habits!

1. You eat a lot of refined carbs.
Even if you’re eating something at every meal, if your day looks something like this—a cup of sugary, flaked cereal for breakfast, a slice of pizza or a sandwich on white bread for lunch, chips for a snack, either white rice or pasta for dinner, and then a chocolate chip cookie for dessert—your problem is that you’re constantly fueling yourself with nutritionally-deficient refined carbs. Lacking the satiating fiber of their original form, simple and refined carbs burn up quickly in your body, which spikes your blood sugar and then causes it to crash. Low glucose levels are what triggers your hunger hormones, leaving you with a craving for more carbs!

Eat This! Tip:
For slow-burning, clean sources of energy, choose complex carbs such as grains like brown rice, quinoa and triticale, cruciferous vegetables, fruits, and whole-grain sprouted bread. Sprouting grains is one of the ways to get more nutrients out of your food.

2. You’re actually thirsty.
Did seeing that picture of water just make you forget about what you thought was a hungry tummy? A study in the journal Physiology & Behavior suggests people inappropriately respond to thirst over 60 percent of the time by eating instead of drinking. That’s because your hypothalamus regulates hunger and thirst, and sometimes it mixes up its signals. Just sipping on H2O is the solution to quelling your hunger pangs and, ultimately, helping you slim down. In fact, preloading meals with water can shave hundreds of calories from your daily intake. A study published in Obesity found that drinking two cups of water before eating led people to consume 75 to 90 fewer calories over the course of a meal.

Eat This! Tip:
Next time you’re hankering for a snack, knock back a cup of water first and wait 20 minutes. If you’re still hungry, eat something. And if you’re sick of plain ol’ H20, whip up some of these 50 Best Detox Waters to rev your metabolism and boost your fat burning potential!

3. You eat while watching T.V.
Everyone knows that you eat with your eyes, but it turns out, your ears also play a role. A new study, published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, tested how our perception of the sound of eating food affects our eating habits. They had two groups of participants eat crunchy foods, one with white-noise-producing headphones and the other without. These headphones were intended to mimic everyday behaviors of distracted eating, such as watching TV or listening to music while you eat. It turned out, participants who were less aware of the sound of the food, because of the levels of white noise, ate more than those that could hear the food they were eating.

Eat This! Tip:
Step away from the TV (or computer, for all you cord-cutters out there) and lower the music during dinner. And if you’re out to dinner at a busy restaurant, maybe think about ordering something crunchy! As long as you can hear the food you are eating, it’ll make you aware of the fact that you’re actually eating food. When you’re unaware, you basically forget that you’re eating, which can lead to an increase in food consumption.

4. You’re always stressed out.
While stress may shut down appetite in the short term—it pumps out the hormone epinephrine (also known as adrenaline) that triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response and puts eating on hold—if stress persists, it’s a different story. Your adrenal glands then release a different hormone called cortisol, which will not only trigger your hunger hormones, but it will also pull lipids from the bloodstream to store them in our fat cells.

Eat This! Tip:
You might not be able to control exactly what’s happening in your life that’s making you stressed, but you can control what you’re putting in your body. Make it these Teas for Weight Loss That Combat Stress!

5. You’re not getting enough sleep.
If you feel like you’re always delving into your office snack stash, you might be able to blame your lack of sleep. Nutrition expert and star of “My Diet is Better than Yours” Jay Cardiello explains that when you don’t get enough sleep, levels of leptin (the “I’m full” hormone) drop, which in turn increases appetite and makes comfort food more appealing. Besides stimulating your appetite, certified holistic health counselor, Seth Santoro, explains a lack of sufficient sleep “can cause you to burn fewer calories, lack appetite control and experience an increase in cortisol levels, which stores fat.”

Eat This! Tip:
Having trouble falling asleep? Get the recommended 7-8 hours of shut-eye by following this One-Day Plan for Better Sleep.

The rest of the reasons and their tips are here: Mott.time.com