If you ever feel like eating at random times of the day, even if you just had a meal, there might be other factors that made you hungry, besides having not eaten enough. While it is actually not bad to eat every three to four hours, according to dietician Rebecca Ditkoff, there could be other legitimate reasons as to why you’re always craving another batch of food. GQ has the details:
1. You need to get better sleep: Sleep is important for basically everything you do during your waking hours—it affects how alert you are during a morning run; it affects your sex drive—so it’s no surprise that it impacts your hunger levels, too.
“When we don't sleep enough, it increases our hunger hormone, ghrelin, that can increase our appetite and make us think we’re more hungry than usual,” says Lori Zanini, RD, CDE, and creator of For The Love of Diabetes.
2. You’re not drinking enough water: It’s normal to confuse thirst with hunger, according to Ditkoff. “In order to make sure you are staying adequately hydrated, you should be drinking about half of your body weight in ounces of water every day,” she suggests. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds, try drinking 90 ounces—or 11 glasses.
3. You’re not fueling with the right foods: You might be trying to stay keto-friendly (hey, John Wall does it) by limiting yourself to steamed chicken breasts all day, but your body needs a range of foods to feel full.
4. You’re just not eating enough: There are loads of factors that prevent us from eating enough to fuel our bodies throughout the day. Maybe you’re trying out a new fad diet, or perhaps you just missed lunch because Matthew in accounting just had to have that report by 2 p.m.
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cuz we're animals?
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