Last Updated on August 22, 2021 by FS Studios Personal Training

Figuring out when we should eat and when we’re really hungry can be tricky.

Here are some common situations related to hunger:

Are you having a craving or are you hungry? A: If you want food, you’re hungry, if you want a treat, it’s a craving.

If you eat, will it cause weight gain or will you burn it off? A: It Depends.

You’re feeling super flat in the afternoons but should you power through until dinner?   A: No.

As you can see, the answers vary. They’re not always easy.

Getting back to our main question, when are you really hungry?

You’re probably actually hungry just before you feel it. This means you want to have the food coming in just before you crash.

Our intermittent fasting people may disagree with this statement but if you’re crashing, it’s going to be really hard to keep this approach going.

So maybe some fasting is ok for certain people (they’re often the types that do well with small amounts of food naturally) but for those that crash, you may need to feed that hunger.

Regardless of whether you eat or not, the food you choose is by far the most important factor.

If you’re hungry and you eat something healthy, you’ll be fine.

This won’t cause weight gain.

If however, you reach for something bad, you may risk some weight gain.

Should you just eat a tiny bit? No.

You should satiate yourself or you’ll be right back to being hungry. This is essentially a low calorie diet plan and they don’t work well.

They also suck while you’re on them.

Whether you like it or not, your body needs calories every day and if you’re droning along each afternoon on low cals, you’re not going to be having fun and you probably won’t lose a drop of weight.

Your body will also quite likely make it up somewhere else. Dessert that night, a cookie here or there, an extra glass of wine or beer, don’t worry, it’s smart, it’ll get something in.

That’s why you can’t try to trick it. It’s saying it’s hungry and you’re not feeding it. Do you think your brain will release energy when you do this? Absolutely not.

So if you’re hungry, just eat something. Eat something and make it healthy most of the time.

The trick is to have the potato so you don’t need an extra cookie in the evening. Does that make sense?

P.S. no one has ever gotten in touch with me and said, I’m eating all these potatoes and I just can’t keep the weight off.

FS Studios