Hungry All the Time?

Make sure you're reading your body's signs properly.

If you feel like you're constantly hungry, you might be confusing hunger with appetite. Hunger is a physiological response to the lack of food, and appetite is the desire to eat. Many things can trigger the desire to eat — even when you've just eaten. You can become easily conditioned to think of the desire to eat as hunger. If you find yourself feeling hungry but fairly picky about what you want to eat, ask yourself if it is truly hunger that you are feeling.

If you go on a very-low-calorie diet of less than 1,000 calories each day, you will feel very hungry much of the time. It is better for you to eat more calories each day — say 1,200 to 1,500 — for a slower but longer-term weight loss. In the long run, severely restricting calories can backfire, leaving you feeling constantly hungry and constantly wanting to eat. And no matter how much you cut back while you're on the diet, you can't eat so little forever. You'll eventually need to learn to eat at a higher calorie level to maintain your weight.

Work with the nutritionist on your care team to find the right caloric intake that will allow you to lose one to two pounds per week — unless your doctor wants you to do it faster. The slow and steady approach has been shown to lead to better results over the years.

Source : http://www.everydayhealth.com