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Last updated on June 13th, 2023 at 01:34 am
Are you feeling perplexed by why you feel hungry after eating?
There can be many reasons for feeling hungry after a meal or snack (or even hungrier than when you started).
Some of these reasons can include:
- Physiological shifts in the body that cause extreme hunger
- Emotional responses to food
- Environment
- Stress
- Meal composition
It’s likely that if you’re feeling hungry after you eat there’s more than one reason for it.
Let’s explore how physical and emotional factors can lead you to continue to feel hungry (or hungrier) after you eat, and what you can do to facilitate a normal relationship with food.
What Leads To Feeling Hungry After Eating
There is usually more than one reason you are left feeling like you can’t seem to get full after a meal. You might be able to identify your hunger situation in one or more of the following from the list below.
Some of the top reasons people feel hungry after eating include:
You’re on a Diet
All dieting is a form of food restriction. You might be feeling hungry even after you eat your meal if you are:
- Counting calories because your body will start to prepare for food restriction
- Cutting out food groups
- Creating food rules. This is because your body knows it’s no longer allowed to have foods it once enjoyed which increases cravings for these specific foods and will desire that food more.
You’re Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent fasting is when eating is allowed only during certain hours of the day. It can also mean that food restriction happens for a full day or multiple days.
Fasting causes shifts in your gi tract to preserve the energy available to your body and increase food intake.
You may be feeling extremely hungry after intermittent fasting because:
- You’re experiencing a binge restrict cycle
- You’re eating rapidly because you’re extremely hungry which doesn’t allow fullness cues to get to the brain. This can make you feel hungrier after eating.
- Your body’s trying to compensate for low blood sugars (hypoglycemia)
You’re having More Liquids Than Solids At A Meal
Liquids are digested faster than solids. This may leave you feeling hungry soon after a meal. If your meal consists of soups, smoothies, or protein shakes you may feel hungry soon after the meal.
You’re Not Getting Enough Fiber
Fiber helps to slow down the digestive process. Eating meals with fiber-rich foods such as fruits, vegetables, or whole grains can help with feeling full after the meal.
You’re Not Getting Enough Protein
If you are low in protein at a meal it is likely you will have a difficult time feeling full, or will feel hungry shortly after a meal.
Make sure to get in in protein with each meal or snack which could include:
- Meat
- Tofu
- Cheese
- Nuts
- Beans
You’ve Recently Lost Weight
Losing weight will be a huge contributor to feeling hungry after a meal. The body is desperate to restore lost weight for survival.
If you’ve recently lost weight you might feel hungry after you eat because:
- Your thyroid hormones have shifted
- Your grehlin (hunger hormone) has increased
- Your leptin (fullness hormone) has decreased
All of these changes result in an effort to slow down all metabolic processes until weight is restored while increasing your desire to eat.
Many times, your body will naturally seek out enough food to overshoot weight gain during eating disorder recovery for the repair of tissue and organs caused by the eating disorder.
You’re In Recovery From An Eating Disorder
If you have had a restrictive eating disorder such as anorexia, atypical anorexia, orthorexia, binge eating disorder, or bulimia nervosa extreme hunger is often a fact of the eating disorder recovery process.
Some reasons behind still feeling hungry even after you’ve met your eating disorder meal plan include:
- Feeling guilt or shame around food
- You could be experiencing hypermetabolism in anorexia recovery
- You’re still mentally restricting food
- You’re not honoring your hunger even if you’re meeting your meal plan
You’re Not Eating Enough
Just because you have finished a meal, doesn’t mean that it was sufficient to meet your needs. You’re likely not eating enough if:
- Your portions aren’t big enough
- You’re trying to fill up on zero or low-calorie foods
- You’re not eating to satisfy your appetite
- You have an illness, injury, or increased physical demands that are requiring more food
You’re Not Properly Fueling For Exercise
Underfueling for a sport or other type of exercise is a common problem.
In addition to feeling hungry after meals, not eating enough for your sport can lead to conditions like the female athlete triad in women, injuries, and decreased performance.
Other signs you aren’t eating enough besides hunger after meals include:
- Poor sports performance
- Weight loss
- Headaches
- Low energy
You’re Stressed
Stress hormones will lead to increased cortisol levels which increase hunger. This might leave us feeling constantly unsatisfied when it comes to hunger.
You might be feeling hungry after a meal if you’re stressed because:
- Hormonal shifts cause you to crave high-fat high-calorie foods
- You’re using food to soothe difficult emotions
- You’re not using other coping tools to manage stress such as meditation, therapy, or knitting
What Does An Empty Stomach Feeling After Eating Mean
An empty stomach feeling after eating can mean that we have only consumed enough food to satisfy what our mind tells us we “should” eat rather than eating foods that actually allow us to feel full.
Other possibilities that might cause you to feel like you have an empty stomach after you eat include:
- You haven’t fully identified what hunger and fullness cues feel like
- The sensation you are having in your belly is not actually hunger but something else
- We have disconnected from the sensations in our body which make it challenging to tell which physical cues are what
For example, you may feel pressure in your body as you move through a meal.
You might find that eating more food helps to soothe or change the pressure in the belly. Much like hunger, this can cause you to feel like food is the relief factor for the physical sensations you are experiencing in your body.
If you aren’t used to fully identifying physical sensations in your body, varying levels of fullness can feel like hunger, even if they are not.
Using a hunger fullness scale based on YOUR body’s physical cues will help you determine which body sensations are associated with hunger versus fullness.
Why Am I More Hungry After Eating Than Before
If you are not eating enough to meet your metabolic needs or have lost weight, there’s a good chance that eating a meal could make you even hungrier.
There are physical and emotional reasons for this including:
- Increased activity in the reward system of the brain when food is available or images of food are shown
- Increased reward response in the brain when eating food which makes it difficult to stop
- Decreased activity in the regions of the brain controlling fullness
- Fear of future food restriction
- Using food as an emotional coping tool
When I was bingeing and restricting, I tried to avoid as many meals as possible because of the insatiable hunger which seemed to follow each meal. You can check out my anorexia story to see my recovery journey.
How Do I Stop Feeling Hungry After Eating
In order to stop feeling hungry after you eat, your body needs to learn that it can trust you to nourish both its physiological and emotional hunger needs.
If you’re physically or mentally restricting food in any way, it’s likely that you feel you are thinking about food all the time.
To stop feeling hungry after your meals and snacks we need to do the following:
- Honor all types of hunger (physical and emotional)
- Practice intuitive eating
- Practice food neutrality
- Eat at least 3 meals and 3 snacks per day no more than 3 hours apart
- Respect your body
- Stop body checking
- Ditch the BMI standards as a tool to measure health
Remember that it can take months or years to truly begin eating intuitively and stop feeling hungry after eating.
These eating disorder recovery books can be a great resource to see how others have worked their way through normalizing hunger and fullness cues.
- Help, I Feel Like I Don’t Deserve To Eat - September 7, 2024
- 8 Reasons Food is More Than Fuel - September 5, 2024
- Intuitive Eating For Eating Disorders: What You Should Know - September 3, 2024