5 Tips for Men to Stop Hunger Pangs
You're in the middle of a sales call, close to sealing the deal. As you reach for your briefcase, a low-flying plane roars overhead and the building shakes. Except it wasn't a plane -- it was your stomach growling, loudly. It's a potentially embarrassing scenario that's probably happened to most of us at one point or another. The most logical solution, of course, is to eat something, but what if you don't have time to eat (you're in the middle of some work), or you just don't want to (you're on a diet)?
Feelings of hunger are regulated by leptin. It's a protein manufactured in fat cells that circulates through the blood and winds up in the brain. Leptin tells the brain whether or not there is enough energy stored in the fat cells for the body to continue with normal activities. If there is, the brain understands that the body is full. When there isn't enough energy in those cells, leptin tells the brain to tell you to eat. But if you're losing weight, your fat cells are continually shrinking, which decreases the amount of leptin produced. The brain, then, doesn't get the message that enough energy has been stored, even if there's plenty. The result is that you feel hungry, even though you've had enough.
There are many ways to curb those annoying, diet-killing hunger pangs. Some take planning, while others are temporary or stop-gap solutions. These five tips can help men curb their hunger (although they generally apply for women, too).
5: Distract Yourself
A lack of food isn't the only reason you get hungry. There are lots of emotional or non-physiological hunger triggers, such as stress, anxiety or even boredom. Sometimes, men eat because they're bored; the brain interprets that desire for stimulation as hunger.
The best way to beat this kind of pang is to wait it out and to find something else to do. One option is exercise, which occupies the systems of the body (including the brain) and gives them something to focus on besides food. Not only that, some studies suggest that aerobic exercise suppresses hunger by regulating appetite-related hormones like ghrelin and peptide YY [source: Stensel]. In other words, when you exercise, your body feels less hungry. Some other ideas for suppressing boredom-induced hunger include taking a walk, reading a good book or playing a board game with your family and friends; whatever your activity, the idea is to distract your brain from that sandwich (or whatever food it tempting you) long enough for the desire to eat to diminish.
4: Freshen Up!
Brush your teeth. Become a regular dental-flosser. Use some mouthwash, chew some sugarless gum or pop a mint. Keeping your mouth busy doing something other than eating is a powerful psychological trick. It may sound weird, but tests back up this decades-old diet tip.
If your mouth feels fresh and clean, logic states, you're less likely to eat because you won't want to ruin the minty freshness with food. Like many of these other tips, it at the very least delays eating, and that's what fighting off a hunger pang is all about. One other physiological benefit: Chewing gum or otherwise keeping the mouth busy tricks the body into thinking it's eating, stops your brain from fixating on hunger and even helps you consume fewer calories later [source: Melanson].
3: Consume Low-calorie Drinks
If you're trying to overcome hunger, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't or shouldn't put anything in your body. But if you're trying to lose weight, you don't want to eat any extra food (and you know that it's just low leptin levels messing with your sense of hunger, anyway).
Instead, fill up your empty stomach with innocuous, low-calorie or no-calorie, space-filling liquids. Some ideas for low-calorie beverages that'll help fill you up include water, tea, seltzer and diet soda. Granted, it's a temporary solution, and one you may have to keep repeating until you're within eyeshot of mealtime, but it staves off the powerful desire to eat snacks you don't really need -- and full enough that you don't think about how hungry you are.
2: Make Sure You're Not Just Tired
Hunger and fatigue can feel a lot alike, and it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference when you're trying to slog through a boring, late-afternoon meeting. In hunger and in tiredness, your body is simply crying out for some kind of quick energy boost (it's like the food equivalent of a yawn, which brings a fast wallop of reviving oxygen to the brain when you're sleepy).
It's common for people, in this weakened state, to misinterpret fatigue as hunger, so they eat something, even if they didn't really need it nutritionally. So, before you have that emergency snack, consider the idea that you might be worn out instead of hungry. You might consider taking a power nap of 10 to 20 minutes, or, at the very least, take a time-out: Sit down, close your eyes and relax for a minute. Barring that, the great sleep substitute -- caffeine -- can help to keep false hunger pangs at bay. Sure, a cup of coffee or a sugar-free energy drink can wake you up, but caffeine can also quench hunger, at least for an hour or two.
1: Eat a Big, Balanced Breakfast
One way to cut down on hunger pangs late in the day is to reduce the chances that they'll happen. (Besides, it's pretty hard to beat hunger when you're weak and confused by hunger.) The best way to do this is to eat a big breakfast. Studies show that eating a large breakfast decreases the amount of calories eaten later in the day, primarily because the extra calories consumed early on keep you fuller throughout the day and you don't end up getting as hungry.
What you eat for that big breakfast does count, though. Consume fiber-rich whole grains, such as oatmeal, which are slowly absorbed into the bloodstream. This keeps your blood sugar stable and the body feeling fuller for a longer period of time.
It's also effective to pair those kinds of foods with lean protein (egg whites, for example). Men not only have higher protein needs in general than women, but protein also stabilizes blood sugar and maintains fullness. In a 2007 study at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, for example, test subjects who ate only eggs for breakfast reported less feelings of hunger and consumed fewer calories throughout the day than did test subjects who ate just a low-fiber bagel for breakfast [source: Vander Wal]. If you're not a big fan of traditional breakfast foods, try eating any other foods that are packed with fiber (vegetables, berries, beans) and protein (energy bars, peanut butter).