Hunger (unf)

When you are dieting, you are depriving your body of energy - forcing it to use stored energy instead (body fat). This is a dangerous move, because stored energy is your last resort if you happen to be in a situation without food. Once that runs out, there is nothing else - you starve to death. Because of this, your body fights fat loss, and one of the days it does this is by increasing your hunger!

Fighting hunger

Being hungry is uncomfortable, and one way to deal with this is by eating foods that are low-calorie and very high in volume. This will help you feel full despite the number of calories you are consuming. I won't provide a lot of details as it is covered extensively throughout this document.

Consistent meals

A good way to control hunger is to have a consistent eating schedule. Your body tends to adapt and only feel hunger shortly before expected meals. Not that this has to be very precise, but aim to have an overall consistent structure. For example, eating breakfast around 8 AM, lunch around 1 PM, and so forth.

Amounts are relevant as well. Again doesn't have to be super accurate, but it helps if at least your largest meal of the day is always the same (eg lunch), rather than having 60% of your calories are breakfast today and then 70% of your calories at dinner for the next.

Accepting hunger

However, this is another aspect of this. While high food and low-calorie foods help, it's not guaranteed to completely eliminate hunger. Especially the longer you diet and the more weight you have lost, the body will fight harder and harder to prevent further weight loss, increasing your hunger levels even higher.

While fighting hunger is important, some people completely obsess over this, eating a gigantic amount of vegetables to prevent any hunger whatsoever. Sometimes to a point where they feel physically sick because the volume they are eating is so large.

To some degree, it's also important to accept hunger as part of dieting. There is no point in suffering unnecessarily if you can get a little bit fuller by eating more vegetables, but also, if you are a little hungry, that's fine.

View it as part of the process and not something necessarily evil. Part of why we are also hunger-averse is because we live in a world where you can fix that hunger at anytime so easily. You always have food available. But this is extremely new in human history!

Most of the time, people simply had to wait until they had food available again (eg the next hunt), or at least waited for the next meal. They undoubtedly felt hungry, but assuming they weren't starving, it was considered part of normal life and something that was accepted. In the same way you feel a bit tired after finishing a hard day of work. There is nothing wrong or something to be fixed, it's just a natural process.

Boredom