Eating Less Often to Feel Less Hungry: A Hormonal Reality

For your health and well-being, you've often been told that you should never skip a meal. Yet, following this advice to the letter can lead you to feel hungry permanently. In reality, eating less often is one of the best ways to durably reduce the sensation of hunger.

The proof? It's the experience of fasting. From the third day, hunger disappears almost totally. This phenomenon demonstrates that hunger is above all hormonal. It's not the volume of food in the stomach that triggers it, but indeed the balance of your satiety hormones.

The problem is that many people suffering from constant hunger believe the opposite. They think that skipping a meal or fasting for 24 hours will be unbearable. Yet, it's eating several small portions per day—often low in nutrition—that reinforces this sensation of lack. Why? Because of a key hormone: ghrelin.

The Role of Ghrelin

• With each meal, the body produces a peak of ghrelin, hormonal signal that stimulates appetite.
• If you don't eat, this peak fades in two hours, as if you had eaten.
• After 24 hours without eating, ghrelin levels are lower than at the start.

In other words, hunger decreases with time, even without food. Of course, if you skip a meal, you risk eating more at the next one. But you will never totally compensate for the calories of the two combined meals.

Toward a New Eating Habit

If you are often hungry and wish to lose weight, eating less often can be an effective track. Start by eliminating snacks, then adopt two meals per day. This will allow your digestive system to rest for 14 to 16 hours, favoring processes like autophagy, the natural capacity of the body to repair and clean itself.

Warm regards,
Dr. Said-Alaoui Moulay Abdellah and the Family Clinic Team