How to Lose Weight Without Feeling Hungry

Is it possible to lose weight without feeling hungry? In this article, I walk you through my dietitian-approved trips to reach your goals.

How to Lose Weight Without Feeling Hungry

Nutrition

How to lose weight withotu feeling hungry

It is completely possible to lose weight without feeling hungry all the time. In fact, there are some simple nutrition changes that will allow you to eat MORE food, while still reaching your goals.

In this article, I’ll explain simple strategies to make this happen, including 5 specific foods that definitely need to be in your diet for fat loss.

But before we get into all that, if you’re new here, welcome! I’m Andres Ayesta, and I’m a registered dietitian who teaches busy professionals and parents how to lose weight by creating a personalized blueprint for their goals. This blueprint covers nutrition, movement, mindset, and lifestyle, and it’s helped over 600 clients transform their lifestyle and build a body they feel great in.

How is it Possible to Lose Weight without Feeling Hungry?

Before we get into some tips you can put into action right away, I want to show you a picture that will probably surprise you:

Which of these pictures do you think contains more calories? On the left we have a single McDonald’s meal, and on the right multiple meals that might be someone’s full day of eating.

Well, the surprising truth is they both contain about the same amount, which is around 2000 calories.

The difference in appearance is due to what we call CALORIE DENSITY.

What is Calorie Density?

The McDonalds Meal above has a lot of CALORIE DENSITY , meaning there are a lot of calories in a small amount of food. In the meal on the right, there is more VOLUME, but the foods are less calorie dense.

So, to give you a definition, calorie density refers to how many calories are in a specific volume or weight of food.

This is the concept that is essential to understand if you want to eat more food but lose weight efficiently.

Here’s another example to help you understand even better:

1 oz of raisins contains 100 calories and 23 g of carbs.
5-6 oz of grapes or about 25-30 grapes.

If you had the bowl of grapes, you will most likely feel full, while eating the raisins you could have a couple more servings and still not be satisfied.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with raisins, but when you make small shifts in your diet to include more low calorie density foods, it becomes a lot easier to lose weight.

How to Manage Hunger by Adding Volume

The most important tip for making your meals more filling is to have a fruit or vegetable with all meals and snacks. Most fruits and veggies have low calorie density.
Quick hack: sub out half of a carb source for some kind of vegetable. For example, instead of 1 cup of rice, have half a cup of rice mixed with ½ a cup of cauliflower rice, or mix regular spaghetti with spaghetti squash.
Snacking tip: substitute high calorie salty snacks for popcorn, because popcorn, especially if it’s airpopped, has very low calorie density but it can still satisfy your craving for a crunchy snack.

With a lot of these low calorie density foods, you’re also getting a lot of fiber. Increasing fiber intake is a critical AND often underrated tip for making fat loss easier.

The Role of Fiber in Making Fat Loss Easier

Fiber is a type of carbohydrate that our bodies can’t fully break down. It’s found in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.

One type of fiber, which is called soluble fiber, slows the movement of food through your digestive system, so it helps you feel fuller for longer. Fiber is also pretty amazing because it increases levels of hormones that make you feel full and reduces levels of ghrelin, which is a hormone that causes you to feel hungry.

Now that we’ve covered the foods to choose more of, the other part of calorie density that’s important to keep in mind is serving sizes for high calorie-density foods.

Managing Your Portions for Calorie-Dense Foods

Most high calorie density foods are high in fat, as fat has 9 calories per gram, while protein and carbs only provide 4 calories per gram.

Here are two tips to avoid overeating foods that are high in calories but aren’t very filling:

Be aware of portion sizes when you’re eating restaurant foods, which typically have a lot of oils added, as well as butter, fatty meats, and baked goods.
Even nutrient-dense foods that most people would label as “healthy” may be high in calories because of the fat content. For example, nuts, nut butters and avocado all have high calorie density. That does NOT mean these foods are bad for you, it just means that they’re easy to overeat.

The Importance of Eating Enough Calories

Okay, so now that you have an understanding of calorie density, it’s also important for us to cover why you need to have enough total calories throughout the day. It is NOT our goal to cut as many calories as possible.

When you’re too restrictive with your diet, it can lead to cycles of undereating and overeating. For example, you might have a very low calorie intake during the week, but then, when you get to the weekend, you go completely overboard and never end up getting to your goals.

When you’re trying to lose weight – and this is for those of you who are tracking your calories – I typically recommend a calorie deficit of 250-350 calories to start. This will mean you’re eating enough food to make progress with fat loss, without feeling too hungry and triggering overeating.

So, now we’ve covered the importance of:

Adding more low calorie density foods
Increasing fiber intake
Watching portion sizes for high calorie density foods
Not cutting your calories too low.

Protein Intake for Fat Loss

The last hunger-hacking strategy I want you to start putting into action is increasing your protein intake, which means aiming for AT LEAST 20g of protein at every meal. But, I’m not going to dive any further into this one because I have another article about protein, which you can check in here.

5 Foods to Help You Lose Weight without Feeling Hungry

As promised, here are 5 foods that I recommend if you’re on a weight loss journey, to make the process easier. Remember, low calorie density, high fiber, and high protein are our goals, and these foods have one or more of these characteristics.

1. Berries

Berries are high in fiber, high in volume, and have plenty of micronutrients. The reason I love them for weight loss is because they’re a great healthy dessert that will keep you full without excess sugar and calories.

2. Legumes

Legumes, like beans and chickpeas, contain soluble fiber and protein, both of which make you feel fuller for longer and can help you eat less calories throughout the day.

3. Spinach

Any leafy greens are great options, but I’m personally a fan of adding spinach to my salads and smoothies. It has tons of minerals and it’s low in calories. If you’re trying to lose weight, big salads are a great option to eat more volume.

4. Apples

Apples are a great food to add for a couple reasons: they’re high in fiber and they’re also a very convenient snack, so they’re easy to take with you during a busy day, rather than grabbing a packaged snack that might not be good fit for your health goals.

5. Greek yogurt

Greek yogurt is a great high protein snack, especially with fruit added to it, and you can also use it as a base for lower-calorie dips and dressings.

That brings us to the conclusion of this article! I hope you found something useful to take away from this that will help you progress in your journey to improve your nutrition, lose weight, and level up into the better version of yourself that you desire.