10 ways to manage your hunger for year-round visible abs

Have you ever seen a professional body builder in contest shape?  There is almost no visible fat. 

Does it make you wonder if they’re hungry ALL THE TIME? 

The short answer is, Yes. They are hungry all the time.  But they also have some tricks to manage that hunger.  And even though you may have no plans of walking around on a bodybuilding stage, those tricks can help you with your weight loss goals. 

In this article, we’ll explore my top 10 strategies to managing hunger.  Think of the strategies as skills.  They take time to develop. But with practice, it’s possible to maintain year-round abs without counting calories. 

Let’s dive in!

1) Eat mindfully

Have you ever sat in front of the TV and destroyed an entire pizza?  If you’re like most Westerners, you probably have some familiarity with mindless eating, which is characterized by overeating, unawareness of the foods being eaten and distracted eating. 

Contrast this with mindful eating, which increases your enjoyment of food, reduces your hunger and reduces your energy intake.

How much does it matter?

According to one study, eating in front of the TV increases food intake by 14%, while eating with friends increases energy intake by 18% . These are spontaneous, unintended changes in energy intake.

In other words, simply paying mindful attention to your food can put you on an effective diet.  And you don’t have to feel hungry!

How it works

Eating mindfully reconnects you to your natural hunger and satiety signals.  If gives your brain a chance to register the food you’re eating.  It provides self-regulated calorie restriction.  Moreover, taking the time to smell and taste your food enhances the enjoyment of eating. 

You can think of it as “wine tasting” your food.  Imagine diving into the tastes, smells and textures of the food you’re eating.

Signs you’re eating mindfully:

• You are enjoying your food

• You are aware of the foods you are eating

• You are aware of your hunger level

• You are aware of your fullness level

• Few or no distractions

2) Eat slower

Picture wolfing down a meal in under five minutes while running out the door.  How much pleasure did that convey?  How satisfied are you typically with a meal like that?  Did you later realize, as you drove down the street, that you ate too much?  Now contrast that with a leisurely sit down meal, where you take your time and enjoy every bite.  Which is going to be more satisfying? 

Eating slowly has two big advantages.  First, the tastes, textures and smells associated with eating send a cascade of signals throughout your body.  Many of these signals determine how satisfied you feel at the end of the meal.  Eating slowly helps these systems work better, which leaves you feeling more satisfied with less food.

Second, eating slowly gives the stretch receptors in your stomach time to send their signals.  As you eat, your stomach stretches, and as a result, you feel full.  It takes time for all of this to happen, and that’s why eating slowly and mindfully matters.  If you eat too fast, it will be hard to know when to stop.  It’s possible to eat fast enough to blow right past that point.   

Here are some tips to slowing down.

• Make it a habit to set your utensils down between bites.

• Sit down for your meals.

• Pace yourself to the slowest eater at the table.

• Use a clock to pace yourself.

Of course, you don’t want to ruin the meal by slowing down too much or chewing your food too many times.  Instead, think of this as an extension of eating mindfully. 

The goal is to slow down and ENJOY the food.  Give your body time to notice everything you’re eating.  The result will be less hunger and more satisfaction.  You’ll spontaneously eat fewer calories, and you’ll get leaner.

3) Practice Hara Hachi Bu

Hara Hachi Bu is a Confucian teaching practiced by the Okinawans to eat until you are 80% full.  Not only are they some of the longest-lived people on the planet, but eating until you are 80% full is an amazing strategy to lose weight and stay lean without counting calories.

Why it works

There is something called the clean plate effect.  It means that people tend to eat everything that’s put in front of them.  This happens somewhat independent of hunger and fullness.  This makes it important to watch your portioning and to AIM to eat less. 

If you start your meal with the intention of eating until you’re just satisfied, you are far more likely to do it.  So try to portion only enough food to feel satisfied (or 80% full).  If you clear your plate and are still hungry, you can always go back for more. 

Signs you’re doing it right

• You stop eating when you are no longer enjoying your food

• You stop eating when you feel satisfied.

• You stop eating before you feel uncomfortable

• After eating you feel like being active

• After eating you can comfortably go for a brisk walk

4) Eat MORE low-calorie food

The more food you eat, the fuller you feel.  This is because of those stretch receptors in your stomach that signal fullness and satiety. 

But not all food has the same caloric density.  Some foods are VERY low calorie, while others can be VERY high calorie despite being the same volume.  One way to track this is by measuring calories per 100 grams of food.

As an extreme example, consider the difference between a standard slice of pizza and strawberries.  A slice of pizza will weigh about 100 grams and have 285 kcal.  285 kcal of strawberries, on the other hand, equals about 70 medium sized strawberries or about 855 grams! 

Which would cause a greater sense of fullness, 70 strawberries or one slice of pizza? 

Here’s another example.  5 Hershey’s kisses are about 110 kcal.  You can eat 110 raspberries for 110 kcal.  So again 5 Hershey’s kisses equal 110 raspberries. 

Long story short, your sense of fullness is greatly affected by food volume.  How full your stomach is after a meal sends a strong satiety signal to your brain.  In fact, it is one of the primary ways your body knows if you’ve eaten enough. 

Putting it into practice. 

Look through your current diet and look for opportunities to make smart switches.  The goal is to reduce the number of calories per 100 grams of food.

Here are some common examples.

• Switch cheddar cheese (402kcal/100g) for feta cheese (262kcal/100g)

• Switch ground beef (30% fat) (332kcal/100g) for top sirloin steak (255kcal/100g)

• Switch white rice (130kcal/100g) for cauliflower rice (25kcal/100g)

• Switch pasta (130kcal/100g) for shirataki noodles (15kcal/100g)

5) Eat more fiber

Fiber is the part of plants that the body can’t break down.  These magical carbohydrates are insanely healthy and take longer to leave your stomach.  This delay leaves you feeling fuller for longer with fewer calories. 

How much of a difference does it make? 

Well, according to a review of studies on fiber intake, increasing your fiber intake by 14 grams per day reduces your caloric intake by 10%.  This was again ad libitum, meaning the participants were not actively trying to reduce their calories.  They did it on accident.

Is 14 grams of fiber a lot?

Well, the American Heart Association recommends 25-30 grams of fiber per day, and the average American eats 15 grams per day.  So if you’re like most Westerners, it just means eating a healthier diet.

To increase your fiber intake, you can eat more plants, especially berries, beans, lentils, avocado, whole grains, nuts and seeds.

6) Eat lots of veggies

Plants are extremely low calorie and high fiber, making them ideal for hunger management.  They will leave you feeling fuller for longer with fewer calories.

The result is that you can dramatically improve your physique by simply eating more plants.   

If you want to 10x your hunger management, focus on eating a pile of non-starchy vegetables at most meals.

Here are some examples of extremely low calorie veggies.

Veggies under 25kcal per 100 grams: pickles, cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, asparagus, turnip, spinach, summer squash, celery, radishes, cauliflower, swish chard, raw pumpkin, arugula

Veggies under 50kcal per 100 grams: broccoli, collard greens, onions, mushrooms, okra, carrots, beet greens, kale, sweet bell peppers, fennel, leeks, eggplants, jalapenos, Brussel sprouts, artichokes

If you want help eating more veggies check out my complete guide HERE.

Bottom line: veggies are low calorie, high fiber, hunger destroying super stars. 

7) Eat enough protein

Protein is very satiating, and the effect can be substantial.  

In one study, overweight women ate 441 fewer calories per day without even trying. All they did was increase their protein from 15% to 30% of total calories per day.

Take a moment and let that sink in. By increasing their protein, they spontaneously ate 441 fewer calories per day. That’s about the equivalent of two slices of cheese pizza per day.

That’s an effective diet! And it happened on accident.

Here are some examples of lean healthy protein options that will help you manage your hunger.

• Seafood: Cod 85kcal per 100grams ; Tuna 130kcal per 100 grams; Mackerel 205kcal per 100 grams,  Salmon 208kcal per 100 grams, Raw Oysters 81 kcal per 100 grams

• Eggs & Poultry: Chicken 240 kcal per 100 grams, eggs 155kcal per 100 grams.

• Kefir, yogurts, and quark (if tolerated): Skyr 65 kcal per 100 grams; Quark 75 kcal per 100 grams, Greek yogurt 100 kcal per 100 grams 

• Unprocessed red meat: Steak 271 kcal per 100 grams.

If you’d like help dialing in your protein, check out my Protein Guide.

Bottom line: eating enough protein can help you reduce overeating. 

8) Schedule your meals

Hunger is strongly associated with your circadian rhythm.  You’re body knows when to expect food, and it gets hungry in anticipation of food.  This has two implications. 

First, if you eat all day, you’ll be hungry all day.  Snacking is tough on your diet.  It leads to continual hunger.  Second, this highlights the importance of routine.  To manage your hunger, it’s crucial that you eat at regularly scheduled times. 

I recommend following a 2-hour window.  Try to eat your meals within the same two hours every day.  If you find yourself getting too hungry between meals, try eating a bigger meal.  It’s better to eat a bigger meal and avoid snacking.  Alternatively, if you find yourself not hungry for meals, try eating smaller portions or fewer meals.  For example, if you aren’t hungry for breakfast, skip it. 

9) Manage your food environment

Food Cues & Availability

The foods you can see are more likely to be eaten then foods you cannot see, and having food visible increases your sense of hunger. 

For example, people who store junk food on their kitchen counters are often 30 pounds heavier than people who keep a clean counter top. 

Long story short, in your kitchen it should be more convenient to eat healthy than unhealthy.  Treats and moderation foods should be hard to find, and the kitchen counter should be free of food. 

Cutlery, plates and bowls

On average, people eat 92% of the food on our plate.  Consequently, when people have bigger portions they eat 30% more.

The effect is so deep seated that even nutrition experts will unwittingly eat 31% more when given a larger bowl and 14.5% more when given a larger spoon.   The psychological impact is powerful.

Long story short: smaller cutlery, bowls and plates can reduce hunger and make it easier to reduce your energy intake.

10) Get enough sleep

What if I told you, you could lose weight by sleeping better?

In one study, improved sleep caused the participants to lose fat and build muscle.  There was no other interventions.  No training.  No dieting.  Just better sleep.

And they lost fat while building muscle.

You should read that again.

When you aren’t getting enough sleep, your body is more likely to store fat and burn muscle.  You can imagine that as you eat, your body has to decide what it will do with the calories.  Will it build muscle?  Will it store fat?  This is called fuel partitioning.  There are a variety of factors that can affect it, and sleep is one of the big ones.  Strength training, stress and your diet are other major factors.  

How much sleep should you get?

Most research recommends between 7 and 8 hours of sleep.  For people who do a lot of training, more is almost certainly better with many athletes getting nine plus hours.

Ideally, you would wake up every morning without an alarm.  If that isn’t the case, then more sleep is probably better.

How to improve your sleep tonight!

30 minutes before your bedtime, take your smart phone and set it aside.  Place it somewhere that’s out of reach when you’re lying in bed. 

This one’s hard.  I realize for most people (myself included) it’s asking a lot.  But you’re probably familiar with staying up way too late scrolling Instagram or watching YouTube.

The programs behind the supercomputer that is your phone are brilliantly engineered to keep you up all night.  Willpower is not adequate for the fight.  So I highly recommend you try ditching the phone as an experiment.  If only for two weeks. 

Hunger is the arch nemesis

Diets fall apart for all kinds of reasons.  We overeat from stress, boredom, emotions and social pressures.  But the common denominator is typically hunger.  Hunger is the arch nemesis of all dieting. 

Fortunately, just because you’re dieting doesn’t mean you need to struggle with constant hunger. I hope you take one of these strategies and get after it. It’s worth it!

Thanks for reading!