Toast for breakfast, a sandwich or a salad at lunch, then a big protein heavy dinner. I am fine until about two in the afternoon and then I am ravenous until I eat, and I usually snack through it. Total calories are roughly where I want them. Is the timing actually doing this or am I just hungry?
Fibre is the other half of the answer. Beans, lentils, oats and whole fruit hold me for hours in a way that the same calories of white bread simply do not. Ramp it up gradually over a couple of weeks rather than all at once or your digestion will make its feelings known.
Learned that lesson once with a bean heavy week. Slowly this time.
Check what you are drinking too. Coffee with a lot of milk and syrup, juice, or a smoothie can be 300 calories that do essentially nothing for hunger. Swapping a morning smoothie for eggs at the same calories was the single biggest change for me and I resented it at first.
One more thing nobody asked about but that matters: sleep. On five hours I am hungry all afternoon regardless of what I eat, and on eight I am not. If your hunger appeared alongside a change in sleep, look there before you rearrange your meals.
Also worth checking the boring possibilities before the clever ones. Is the afternoon hunger real hunger or is it boredom, stress or dehydration at a predictable time of day? Mine turned out to be 3pm at a desk with nothing interesting happening, and a glass of water and a ten minute walk handled a decent chunk of it.
Not always the answer people want but the timing being that consistent is a hint. Genuine hunger is less punctual.
@clinicfloor_amy · 7mo ago · 3 replies
Very normal, and yes, distribution is probably doing a lot of it. Toast and a light lunch is a morning with almost no protein and not much fibre, and both are what make a meal hold you.
What I would change first, before touching totals: get 30 to 40g of protein into breakfast and the same at lunch, taking it from your dinner rather than adding to your day. Eggs, yoghurt, cottage cheese, leftover meat on the sandwich, a tin of fish in the salad. When I moved about 40g of my dinner protein earlier in the day, the three o'clock hunger largely stopped within a week.
Second, add volume. A salad with 300g of vegetables and some beans is a different physical experience from a sandwich, even at similar calories.
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@napgapnora · 7mo ago
Moving it rather than adding it is the bit I needed to hear, I assumed the fix was eating more overall.
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@venv_val · 7mo ago
It usually is not. Most people who fix afternoon hunger do it by rearranging the same food.
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