Many of my clients and other people I meet tell me they don’t understand why they are “always hungry”. When I ask what they mean, they tell me they eat breakfast at 7:00 a.m. and then are hungry again before lunch, at 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. They are unhappy about this, and think there is something wrong with them.
Not so! Humans all around the world eat every 3-4 hours. We need fuel at those intervals. The only way to avoid this is to eat high fat foods most of the time. Fat stays in the stomach longer than the other nutrients that provide calories, carbohydrate and protein. I don’t recommend eating high fat foods regularly. So, what is a person to do??
The way to manage this “problem” is to plan to eat every 3-4 hours. This means eating 4 or 5 times per day. Some people don’t like the idea of “snacking”, since that has a bad connotation to them. So, call it something else. My colleague and sports nutritionist, Nancy Clark talks about having a “second lunch” a few hours after the first. You can divide the lunch meal in two, or just have an additional smaller meal at 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m.
Here’s another example. You eat lunch at 1:00 p.m., leave work at 5:00 p.m. and have a 90 minute commute home. You come home famished and eat everything you see when you walk in the door. Is there something wrong with you? No! You should not expect your body to wait for food till you get home. You need food, perhaps when you are leaving the office. But, won’t this be just extra calories? Yes and no. Most people find they will actually eat less in the long run by keeping their bodies well-fed and not starved.
