Why You're Always HUNGRY on a Diet (7 Mistakes Killing Your Fat Loss) | Ep 422
Try Calocurb natural appetite control (40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger). It's prescription free, affordable, and fast acting. Get 10% off:
https://witsandweights.com/calocurb
--
Are you constantly HUNGRY? Battling cravings, feeling like your body is pushing back hard?
You're in a calorie deficit, doing everything right (tracking your food, hitting the gym, staying consistent), yet you're ravenous and not sure what to do.
This episode kicks off our 8-part Appetite Series with the most common question I hear: "Why am I always hungry on my diet?"
The answer usually comes down to one of these 7 mistakes that trigger your hunger hormones, tank your energy, and stall your results. You'll learn exactly why (and how) your body fights back during a diet through hormones like leptin, ghrelin, and GLP-1, and which mistakes you're likely making without realizing it.
Whether you're trying to lose fat, improve body recomp, or just stop white-knuckling through every diet, learn the evidence-based fixes to work with your biology instead of against it.
Plus, stay until the end for a counterintuitive 2-week protocol you can start tomorrow to make hunger management dramatically easier, before you even cut a single calorie.
Timestamps
0:00 - Why your body triggers hunger during fat loss
3:11 - The hormones that control your hunger
6:50 - Mistake 1: Not eating enough protein to feel full (or build muscle)
9:48 - Mistake 2: Low fiber and food volume sabotaging satiety
14:00 - Mistake 3: How poor sleep and stress spike your appetite
18:27 - Mistake 4: Why too much cardio increases hunger
22:05 - Mistake 5: Chronic extreme deficits and metabolism adaptation
27:42 - Mistake 6: Meal timing mistakes that trigger overeating
32:04 - Mistake 7: The all-or-nothing mindset killing your fat loss
36:11 - Bonus: 2-week prep protocol to reduce hunger before dieting
Hunger during fat loss feels like sabotage because, biologically, it is. When you cut calories, leptin drops, ghrelin rises, and satiety peptides like GLP-1 and PYY decline. Your brain reads “famine,” slows metabolic rate, and nudges you to move less and eat more. That internal pushback is predictable, but it’s also workable. The goal isn’t to overpower these signals; it’s to design your plan so biology is an ally. Start by understanding the levers you control daily: protein, fiber, sleep, stress, training, meal timing, and mindset. Each lever influences appetite in a different way, and adjusting a few can transform adherence without harsher calorie cuts.
Protein is the highest-impact lever. It reliably reduces hunger, boosts satiety hormones, and helps you keep muscle in a deficit. A simple target of 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of body weight, front-loaded earlier in the day, smooths cravings and makes evenings calmer. Pair that with fiber and food volume: leafy greens, crucifers, watery fruits, hearty soups, and even humble popcorn. Volume slows digestion, fills the stomach, and engages gut receptors that amplify fullness. Contrast a calorie-dense snack with a big, colorful salad topped with lean protein and you’ll see why “eat more to feel less hungry” isn’t a paradox; it’s strategy. Most people underuse this lever and end up chasing snacks instead of building meals that do the work for them.
Recovery is another quiet driver of appetite. Short sleep and chronic stress push ghrelin up, leptin down, and your cravings toward high-reward foods. You’ll eat more without noticing, then blame willpower. Flip the script: prioritize sleep routines, protect rest days, and swap some “more cardio” for walking, lifting, and actual downtime. Cardio has its place, but long, frequent sessions often suppress appetite early and boomerang it back at night. A better pyramid is steps and lifting as the base, with optional, recoverable cardio and brief sprints as the tip. This keeps hunger steadier, preserves muscle, and maintains the energy to train hard.
Diet pace matters. Living in a deep deficit for months invites stronger adaptations, lingering hunger, and a mindset spiral. Moderate, time-bound phases with maintenance breaks guard against that downward drift. You’ll lose steadily, feel human, and maintain performance. Meal timing adds another layer: many people do better distributing food across the day, front-loading protein and volume, and avoiding the “skip breakfast, raid dinner” pattern that wrecks adherence. It’s not dogma—experiment for two weeks at a time and map hunger to your schedule and training.
Mindset ties it all together. Rigid rules fuel rebound eating; flexible structure sustains results. Plan treats, pre-log events, and remove guilt so decisions aren’t made at peak hunger. To kickstart momentum, try a two-week “add, don’t subtract” protocol before cutting calories: protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after those meals. Appetite settles, decisions get easier, and you’ll need less restraint when you finally lower calories. Fat loss gets simpler when meals do the heavy lifting and your plan respects how your body actually works.
Have you followed the podcast?
Get notified of new episodes. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or all other platforms.
Then hit “Follow” and you’re good to go!
-
Philip Pape: 0:00
If you've ever been in a fat loss phase, in a calorie deficit, trying to lose weight, but you're constantly hungry, battling cravings, and feeling like your body is working against you, it probably is. Today I'm breaking down the seven most common mistakes that trigger your hunger hormones, tank your energy, and sabotage your fat loss results, even when you're doing everything else right. You'll learn why your body fights back during a diet, which mistakes you're probably making without realizing it, and exactly how to fix them so you can lose fat without feeling like you are constantly white-knuckling it. Miss even one of these, and you could be stuck in a cycle of hunger and frustration for months. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Hate, and founder of the Fitness Lab app. And today we're kicking off a special eight-episode series. I'm calling the Appetite Series. Eight episodes throughout January focused entirely on understanding and managing hunger so you can finally take control of your fat loss without the constant struggle. This is one of the most common issues that I hear from listeners and clients more than anything else, because we talk about going into fat loss and then you start to execute. And then the pushback is I think like I'm doing all the things right, but I'm always hungry. What am I doing wrong? Because the hunger itself is affecting your adherence and often preventing you from successfully completing the diet. The answer is usually one or more of these seven mistakes I'm gonna cover today. And once you understand the physiology behind why your body creates very powerful hunger signals during a calorie deficit, we're talking hormones like leptin, ghrelin, GOP1. And by the way, we're gonna dive into those hormones in a future episode in more detail. You'll see exactly why certain approaches backfire and others tend to work. Now, before we get into these, I want to give you a reason to stick around until the very end. I've started to include really cool tips at the end that are very practical and actionable and sometimes surprising. So after I cover the seven mistakes, I'm gonna share a tactic that can help you starting right away to make hunger easier to manage before you even cut a single calorie. These are the kind of tricks I really love because they help with hunger without having to increase or reduce calories. It's something I've seen transform how a lot of people approach this from a psychological perspective, and it's a real simple tip that you can use. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Callocurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. Callocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel satisfied. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash callocurb. Now, before I get into the seven mistakes, you have to understand why hunger happens in the first place during a calorie deficit. Because once you understand the mechanism, the solutions become more obvious. So when you restrict calories for fat loss, your body doesn't just sit there and let you burn through your fat. That would be awesome, right? If you just said, I'm gonna cut calories, my body's body's gonna pull that from fat, I'm gonna lose. It's very it's purely mathematical. Calories in, calories out, we're done. No, your body is going to push back, it's going to respond with very powerful hormonal changes designed to get you to eat more. And they're also designed to get you to move less, believe it or not. And this is this is that survival programming we've hit on in the past. Your body doesn't know that you're trying to fit into your old genes, you know, and reduce your waste size. It thinks that there's something wrong with your food supply, that there's some sort of famine going on. So here's what happens physiologically. Okay, the first thing is your leptin drops. Leptin is the hormone produced by fat cells and it signals fullness to your brain. So when you diet, leptin levels decline in proportion to the aggressiveness of your fat loss and how much fat you've actually lost. Less leptin means less satiety signaling. Satiety is a word we're gonna use all the time. It means fullness. And so with less of that fullness signaling, you actually feel hungrier. Then to top it all off, we have ghrelin. Ghrelin goes up. Ghrelin is your hunger hormone. So you have leptin, which is your fullness hormone, goes down. Ghrelin's your hunger hormone, which is produced by your stomach. And that tells your brain, hey, it's time to eat. So during calorie restriction, ghrelin goes up and then stays elevated even after you eat, right? Because your body's trying to get you to eat more. You haven't eaten enough. You need to eat more. One study found that overweight participants who lost about 30 pounds had significantly higher ghrelin levels a full year after their weight loss. And then, so, so even a year later, there was some adaptation going on. Now, I'm not saying this is gonna happen. There's a separate issue we need to discuss with the aggressiveness of your diet and how you do it. But in general, this occurs when you die. Other satiety hormones also decline. So we don't talk about these a lot, but there are there's there's peptide YY, there's GLP1. Everybody knows GLP1 now because of the drugs that are the antagonist drugs or the agonist drugs for those, the weight loss medications. Colocystokinine or yeah, kinine, I think is how you pronounce it. These are all hormones that normally help you feel full after eating, and they decrease again when you're in a deficit to try to get you to eat more. So you're getting hit from both sides, more hunger signals, fewer fullness signals. And then to top it all off, your metabolism adapts, and this is correlated with the leptin. So as your leptin falls, your brain down regulates your metabolic rate to conserve energy. It's saying, okay, well, you're less full, so we need to use less energy and compensate. This is adaptive thermogenesis at its core. It's your body trying to defend its energy stores. It's trying to keep, it's not trying to keep you fat, it's trying to keep you from losing energy you've got and try to make the most of it. So now you're hungrier and you're burning fewer calories. And so that's when we talk about the biology that you're hitting up against, and it's very confusing for many, that's what we're talking about. The good news is you can work with these systems once you understand them. You can, yes, hack around them a little bit, but even legitimately work with them to minimize their effects somewhat, not completely, of course. But this whole episode appetite series we're doing, including today's episode, is we're gonna start with the mistakes, and then we're gonna dive into all the science and other strategies as we go for you to get better and better at understanding the complete picture. So let's get into mistake number one: not eating enough protein. This is the most common mistake I see. It's the one with the biggest impact on hunger, and for a lot of you, it is a game changer. If you're already eating enough protein, you can probably skip to the next one. This is so important. Protein is the most satiating macro. Okay, way more satiating than fat and carbs. There, there's definitely some mythology around fat being more satiating, but it's actually not true. Protein stimulates the release of satiety hormones like GLP1 and colocystokinin, and simultaneously suppresses ghrelin. So it has an opposite effect, the opposite effect that we want on these hormones that I just talked about, where higher protein intake leads to lower hunger and better diet adherence. But many of you are eating 50, 60 grams of protein, right? And there's a lot of discussion about low protein diets today and how you only need a minimum and people are eating too much protein. Look, if your focus is body composition and health, longevity, building muscle, holding on to muscle, and heck, just being more full in a diet, protein is going to be extremely important. And it can be harder for some people than others, depending on your diet. If you are have a higher fat diet and prefer that, or if you're vegetarian or vegan, or you're you just don't prioritize protein earlier in the day at breakfast and lunch and try to cram it all in later, there's a lot of reasons people don't get enough besides simply not being aware they need more or how much they're taking. So it's all important. And I'll say the fix is simple, but none of this is ever simple. I'm gonna tell you, hey, get 0.701 gram of protein per pound of body weight. That's your daily target. And practically it helps to just distribute it across your meals and usually front load it in the day. For other reasons we'll we'll hit on when we talk about hormones in this and other episodes. Because you want to keep those satiety hormones nice and happy so that your body at least thinks it's fairly full, which then of course prevents cravings and eating later on, which is what we're trying to do here, isn't it? It's not so much the hunger, it's what we do when we get hungry, right? So, you know, if you weigh, let's say 160 pounds, you're aiming for like 115 to 160 grams of protein a day. So you have a nice wide range. It doesn't have to be the full 160, but you shouldn't also be getting just 60, right? And it helps if you're an omnivore where you can get it from meat, fish, eggs, dairy, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese. But there's, you know, plants have uh plenty of protein too if you have the right types of plants, and soy-based products have a lot of protein, and you can get it from whey powder and other plant-based powders. So there's so many ways to do it. That's not an excuse. There's a way to plant it in and get that. Um, I have a client who's doing my rapid fat loss protocol, and she's she's at a very, very low calorie level, like sub 1000. She's very small, and again, this is a this is more of an extreme protocol that only takes two weeks, and she's still getting like 120 grams of protein. You're like, well, how's that possible? It's totally possible. If you do the math, it's possible. So that's mistake number one. All right, so if you're not doing that, put that at the top of your list. Mistake number two is then neglecting fiber, and the corollary to fiber is food volume. And I think these go hand in hand with protein to the extent that I sometimes put them side by side. Like, make sure you get enough protein and fiber. If you get both, you're solving a lot of issues. And again, that same client I was just talking about, she was wondering, well, how do I keep my fiber higher when the calories are really low? And we again we did the math, we looked at the foods, and there's ways to keep fiber, even in a very low calorie diet, right? And we're not talking about rapid fat loss today. We're talking about a reasonable fat loss diet where you're still eating something over a thousand calories. For many of you, it's closer to 2,000. But either way, it we're trying to get, you know, a certain amount of fiber in there to add bulk to your meals without adding significant calories. Higher fiber foods take longer to chew, they take longer to digest, they physically fill your stomach, and all of those send fullness signals to your brain. When we talk to Sarah Kennedy in a few episodes, one of my interview guests, you're gonna learn some really cool stuff about receptors we have along the lining of our gut, not just our stomach, but our entire digestive lining, that interact with our hormones and send these signals to our brain. It's it's pretty cool. And we know that high fiber diets increase satiety and reduce calorie intake as a result. And that's aside from all the other longevity and health benefits, which if you listen to the carnivore crowd, it's almost like they they somehow think you don't need fiber, which is extremely dangerous. We we know for a fact that higher fiber diets are correlated with better health outcomes than lower fiber diets. So that alone should be a good enough research. But we also know it has these other helpful effects, including the GI things that it resolves in terms of bowel movements and putting bulk in your stomach, et cetera. The mistake, however, with fiber, it's actually similar to protein. People are trying to save calories by eating small calorie-dense meals, for example, or eating small meals, but they tend to be calorie dense and more processed, and they don't have fiber. So it might be a 500-calorie smoothie, it might be a protein bar, maybe it's some nuts, and they don't really fill you up. And there's a time and place for those, and I'm not saying exclude all of that stuff, right? Nuts are fantastic for micronutrients. But you compare that to like a massive, what they call big-ass salad, right? With grilled chicken, a bunch of vegetables, you know, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, all that kind of stuff, cruciferous vegetables in there, maybe some raw broccoli, and some reasonable dressing that's a low calorie dressing you like. It's the the if when you look at these side by side, and I'm sure you've seen this on social media, you'll have this tiny handful of something versus a massive bowl. And it's like the bowl of salad has the same or fewer calories. And it seems crazy, but it's true. And that is what's going into your stomach. And now your stomach is physically full. That's all that, that's all it's doing. It's so full that it is, you know, you you've got fiber slowing digestion, you've got water adding volume, you've got protein triggering your satiety hormones, and you've got other compounds and the fact that there's this much food in there also triggering hormones that say, hey, I'm full and I don't need more food, right? And so the fix for this one is, of course, to emphasize those things, to add in those high volume, low-calorie foods to your diet. And this is the kind of thing you can almost just add it without consequence, without even worrying about the calories. You know, again, unless you're trying to count 20 calorie differences. But for most of you, adding in leafy greens and broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, berries, melons, soups, like vegetable soups, even popcorn, guys, like don't like just salted popcorn, believe it or not, can be a nice hack for some people. Yeah, there's some calories in there, but it's very bulky and it's got fiber. So all of these things are options to give you a satisfying quantity of food, you know, while still having the other more nutrient-dense things in there that you enjoy, while still having some indulgences in there. And it won't make your diet feel this small, skimpy bit of food that like you're starving like a little rabbit. Okay. That is a recipe for hunger. But if we add in fiber and food volume, which is essentially eating quote unquote more and still losing the weight or losing the fat, because you're not adding calories, you're adding bulk. Okay. Mistake number three is surprise under recovery. All right. Now you're like, well, we're talking about hunger, right? Well, yes, poor sleep and high stress are massive variables when it comes to hunger that people underestimate. We're gonna do an entire episode just about those, all right? They because they affect belly fat, which I know a lot of you are concerned about as you get into peri and postmenopause, ladies and men, you know, especially those of you who drink and maybe don't get enough sleep. And they affect hunger, they affect lots of things, as well as cravings, not just hunger, but like cravings for things like sugar and high density foods. Sleep deprivation is a itself a metabolic stressor and it drives overeating. This is clear. Research from 2023 showed that sleep restriction reliably increases the drive to eat, and people consume 250 or more extra calories per day on average. I've seen some studies that say 400 or 500. It's just a lot more calories inadvertently, simply because you had a poor night's sleep, because guess what? Your ghrelin rises, your leptin falls, and now your willpower, you either need more willpower, which we we talk about is not a thing you should ever rely on, your willpower to resist high calorie comfort foods is even further down because of this these hormonal pressures. Chronic stress does the same thing, just through a different pathway. We we know cortisol, right? The stress hormone, it's it stays elevated. It should be cycling and it should essentially fall throughout the day. But for many of us, it stays elevated because of our life stress, physiological stress, and perceived stress, work, finances, family, road rage, whatever it is. It increases your appetite. Okay, that ongoing highly elevated cortisol is gonna make you want high fat, high sugar comfort foods, just like a lack of sleep. Because your body is essentially preparing to refuel because it's in this uh sympathetic mode of your your nervous system is amped up, it perceives a crisis, and your body tries to respond by getting energy. That's it. That's what's going on. It's actually quite simple when you step back, but it's more complicated when we try to do something about it. I understand. The mistake, I think, is trying to push through a fat loss phase and beyond five to six hours of sleep while you're stressed out of your mind. And then you come to me and you say, Why can I not lose weight? I'm in the right calorie deficit. Do I just need to cut calories? I'm like, no, you just need more sleep and less stress, or, you know, at least one of these, at least make an improvement somewhere, right? And trying to push harder in a fat loss phase is just going to exacerbate it. The whole thinking is backward. Your hormones are working against you, and now you're just pushing them to work against you harder. So, of course, the fix for this mistake is to prioritize super high quality sleep when you can get it, building in your rest days from your training, right? Not over-exercising. For some of you, it just might be going from five days a week to three days a week and getting more hours of sleep on those other two days. Or adding in activities that reduce stress instead of more quote unquote exercise. Even if it is strength training, you might be doing too much and not giving yourself enough time to walk or meditate or breathe or just relax and play a video game. I don't care, just relax. Sometimes the fastest way to lose fat is just to improve the recovery and stress side of the equation, not cut calories further because remember, there's two sides of the equation calories in, calories out, and the calories out gets affected by both calories in and your life stressors. So when you're well rested, your hunger hormones stay more balanced and you can stick to your plan without feeling like you're constantly fighting it. Hey, this is Philip, and before we continue, let me tell you about today's sponsor, Callow Curb. I hear from listeners all the time who are doing everything right. They're hitting their protein, they're training consistently, they're prioritizing sleep, but hunger and cravings keep getting in the way. You know what to do, you just can't stop wanting more. Callowcurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented, evidence-based hops extract developed in New Zealand over 15 years. It works by activating gut brain signals like GLP1 to help you feel full faster and stay in control. Based on clinical data, Callocurb can reduce cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, and calorie intake by 18%, and it acts within one hour. And of course, you know I love science-backed tools that support everything else you're doing. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash callowcurb for 10% off your first order. Try it out for yourself before you commit to a subscription. Use a link in the show notes. Again, just go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, let's get back to the episode. All right, let's talk about mistake number four, overdoing cardio. So this is a little bit of a segue from mistake number three, sleep and stress, because cardio is another form of stress. Doing more cardio is a common tactic people use to try to burn more fat or accelerate fat loss. And, you know, in a vacuum, more movement, more cardio burns calories. That's true, but it can backfire badly when it comes to hunger, let alone the adaptation from doing too much cardio. But let's talk about hunger. Because here's what often happens you do a long cardio session, like an hour of running or cycling or swimming or whatever. Right after that, right after that, your appetite might be suppressed. Many of you know what I'm talking about, right? Because exercise can blunt hunger temporarily. Strength training often does this for a lot of people as well. But then later in the day, your hunger hormones are going to surge up to compensate for all of that energy you expended earlier through the cardio session. And then you find yourself ravenous. And often it happens at night, and then you eat back all the calories you burned. And I hope you're not doing it on purpose, thinking that you're this is some sort of equation that makes sense. You eat them back, and then some most likely. And that's a huge problem. And we don't see the same result with people doing, you know, low and slow heavy resistance training, but we do see it with the chronic cardio. Overdoing cardio, also, as we mentioned before, the same thing as stress. It elevates your cortisol if you're, especially if you're not recovering properly, right? I'm not gonna say all cardio is bad. Short bouts of intense cardio can be amazing. Sprinting can be amazing. You know, medium intensity cardio, when done with plenty of recovery, can be amazing. But for many of you, you're doing so much of it and you're not recovering properly. And that ties back to mistake number three about the stress. The other issue is that too much cardio without enough resistance training. Well, now you're not prioritizing the right thing for muscle loss, and that has its own negative impacts on your fat loss phase. So don't just think in a fat loss phase, okay, I just need to do a ton more cardio, I need to do a lot of high rep strength training. No. You you still want to lift heavy, you still want to get that muscle stimulus, and you still want to have a reasonable recovery in there with the cardio if you if you need that much cardio at all. So I think the fix here is include cardio in a tiered pyramid, okay, where the the biggest part of the pyramid is walking, and then the next part of the pyramid is a little bit of cardio for enjoyment, if that's what you like, or if you play sports or something like that. And then the tip of the pyramid is for optimization, is sprinting. And we've talked about sprinting in the past. You can look it up in our library. The sprinting protocol, it's not hit, it's a very anabolic way to train for very short bouts of sprinting. And all of that is recoverable, especially if it's balanced with strength training and you have plenty of sleep. If this is eating into your sleep, that's going to be a problem. Now, if you notice your appetite shoots up on certain days, look carefully at how you're moving on those days. Look carefully at your activity. Ironically, being completely sedentary can also make you hungry. That's almost like the other side of the equation. So being generally active, moving, getting off your butt, walking a lot, and strength training is what I prefer for most people, with a little of extra cardio sprinkled in as needed to burn some more calories, that's fine. But too much of it can be a problem, right? And so pay attention to your body's signals and correlate it with your movement. Of course, you're also looking at your protein and fiber, like we talked about before. All right, mistake number five is staying in a chronic extreme deficit. Okay, this is not doing an aggressive deficit for a short period and getting out. I'm talking about people who often are highly motivated and highly disciplined and they have a decent amount of weight they want to lose. And they're like, well, if a moderate deficit is it is good, then an extreme deficit must be better, or an aggressive deficit, even if it's not so aggressive that I'm gonna lose muscle mass. And then I can gut it out. And I know people like this who could just gut it out. The problem is that the more aggressive the diet, the longer the period of the diet, that's gonna provoke the strongest adaptive response. Now that is a trade-off for sure. If you're okay with the response and eating less and less and still doing it and white duckling it and finally coming out the other end with the fat loss you wanted, that's your call. But for many of us, that's that's a miserable experience that is not sustainable. Your metabolism is gonna slow down significantly. Your hunger hormones are gonna go ramped up way more than they would otherwise. And then the problem here is also that a lot of these changes persist after the diet ends. Yes, you can recover. We talk about recovery dieting, bringing those calories back up to maintenance as quickly as you can, and you'll recover. But I do see these effects linger, especially for those of you who've been dieting for years. I have clients who get frustrated because they're like, I expected my metabolism to recover more than this. Why am I only burning, let's say, 1400 calories or 1600 calories? And for many of you, it's because of how long you've dieted in the past, which just means you need to spend more time not dieting for a while. That's the solution there. Rather than worrying about the metabolism, just stop doing the things that suppress your metabolism for a while and give it that time to recover. So we when we look at studies that have followed people on aggressive diets, there's one study that that looked at participants who lost 30 pounds and a full year later, their leptin was still suppressed, their ghrelin was still higher, and their appetite was 20% higher than before they started. Now, the caveat when I see studies like that is if you lost 30 pounds, you're gonna be burning fewer calories. You're a lighter version of yourself. And a lot of times we don't know if these people are resistance training. Many times they're not, and they've actually lost some muscle as well. If you hold on to your muscle and it's purely from fat, you're still gonna have some impact from being lighter on the scale. Like you're gonna burn up fewer calories, but you're probably you're gonna be in a much better position for body recomposition, building muscle and all of that. That's still gonna help a lot with the hunger and the fat loss, right? But the rebound weight gain, I think occurs in this population because aggressive diets, lots of weight loss, you throw off your hormones, the hormones don't recover that fast, and then you start to overeat and you body overshoot. Okay. So this is that spiral, that suppression spiral. Constant under-eating causes your body to conserve energy, your fat loss slows down, you feel terrible the whole time you're doing it, you're developing an unhealthy relationship with food because now you start obsessing over food, right? And dreaming of food, and none of that is healthy mentally or physically. So the fix here is a simple one. It's stop living in deep deficits for very long and definitely not forever, right? Don't always be dieting for sure, but even don't do deep deficits if you've had a history of dieting like this, if they go beyond, you know, a few weeks or a few months, right? You can do a rapid fat loss phase here and there. I've I've helped people do it, even people who've had a chronic history of dieting, but it's done in a very controlled way. And again, the duration is proportional to the aggressiveness. The more aggressive, the shorter duration. For most people, it's more effective to diet moderately and then do it in phases. Use a moderate deficit of, you know, half a percent of your body weight a week. And that's not even that moderate. I mean, that's a decent clip still. You're still gonna lose, you're still gonna see the pounds fly off. It's just not gonna be as fast as you want in your head, which is not sustainable. But then you do that, you incorporate diet breaks, you go back to maintenance for a while, and then you spend another, let's say, six, eight, 10 weeks in, you know, fat loss phases. Um, and let me see. This episode comes out in early January, closer to January 20th. I'm gonna be talking about a workshop we're doing in physique university called Get Lean in 45 Days. If you want to get ready for that, you can join, go to wits and weights.com/slash physique. We're gonna talk about the six-week mini cut. It's one of my favorite ways to lose fat that is a trade between both of these when we know that hunger is a big issue for a lot of you. So if you do it this way, moderate fat loss phases for short durations, and most of the time you're not dieting, that's gonna keep your leptin closer to normal, your other hormones closer to normal, give you a psychological breather, make each of the phases more effective and more desirable to do and then get out, right? So a slightly less aggressive deficit. I'm not saying you have to take years, but a slightly less aggressive deficit that you can stick to is always gonna beat a more aggressive deficit that you're gonna abandon or cause these other issues. Now, quick reminder, we're about halfway through the seven mistakes, or I guess we're more than that, right? I just gave you mistake five, so we've got two more. I've been saving something from the end of this episode. So after I cover the last two, I'm gonna share a simple two-week protocol that you can start tomorrow to make hunger management dramatically easier. And that's before you even start cutting calories. So it's kind of like a little bit of a prep for your hunger signals. So don't skip out before we get there. All right, mistake number six is poor meal timing and skipping meals. And for some of you, this is like mistake number one. Okay. You might be trying to get enough protein, fiber, and do all the other things. But when you eat can influence your appetite significantly. And don't listen to anyone that tells you it's this way or that way. It's going to be very dependent on you. Okay. I hope this is why you listen to wits and weights. Because of that nuance, I want you to understand everyone is different. We're not unique, special snowflakes, but there is a difference. There are different categories of people and how they respond to meal timing. The most common mistake I see is skipping breakfast and sometimes lunch to save calories. And then you're absolutely ravenous by evening. Now, some of you are saying, oh, that's intermittent fasting. I do it on purpose and it works great. You know what? If it works great for you, then that's your answer. It works great for you. For many people, they do it thinking there's some other benefit. There's not. There's not, guys. Intermittent fasting is only beneficial in that it helps with someone's schedule and adherence. That is it. That is it. There's no other benefits metabolically, longevity, you know, cell turnover, none of that stuff. Don't believe it. None of that is supported. The main thing is a tool for adherence. Okay. When we think about your day and the fact that we are 24-hour creatures with circadian rhythms, your willpower tends to be the lowest at night. Tell me that's not true for most of you, right? You have more energy in the morning and more willpower and more go get them in the morning, and it tends to decline at night. And there is a correlation with that and the fact that you've been doing things all day, you're tired, your cortisol has declined as it should by the end of the day. You should be winding down, but then you're hungry and you make food decisions while you're hungry, and that's when you overeat. Okay. And that's again when you are saving up calories, thinking you're going to eat less, and you end up eating more. That's the counterintuitive thing I'm talking about here. A 2022 randomized trial found something interesting that identical meals cause more hunger when eaten late in the day versus earlier, where eating the same calories four hours later than normal decreased leptin levels and slowed the metabolic rate. So it's interesting. For a lot of you, your body's gonna handle food better earlier in the day when you're more active than late at night. Now, again, I'm not saying that this is the be-all end-all. I already said that. You may be different. You may have a different work schedule that it throws it off. You may have different lighting, be it in a different hemisphere or latitude that affects some of this. I don't know. If you train in the afternoon or at night, it may also affect these things versus training in the morning. So the fix here isn't, oh, eat more during the day necessarily. It's to distribute your calories in a way that prevents extreme hunger swings. That's the principle. And so for most people, most people, that does mean probably three meals and like one or two snacks spaced throughout the day. Just spaced throughout the day, a little bit after you get up, all the way to a couple hours before you go to bed. And many people do find that front loading calories, eating more earlier in the day, which should be including protein and fiber anyway, and then less at dinner does lead to better satiety and fewer eating cravings. It's a very, very common pattern. So if you're not sure, guess what? Guess what I'm gonna say? I want you to try it out. I want you to experiment before and after. Do it one way for two weeks, or maybe the way you're already doing it, you you already know your body, right? And your hunger signals. Then keeping the same calories and food, shift it. Either get more frequent small meals, eat earlier in the day, whatever. Shift it and see how that affects your hunger patterns. Because if you're telling me that, oh, I like to intermittent fast, but I'm always hungry at three or whatever the situation is, maybe it's not intermittent fasting, but you know, I skip breakfast and then I can't get all my protein, but then I'm really hungry at you know, 5 p.m. That's a good indication that it could be a timing issue, assuming you're not under-eating, right? Undereating, of course, is gonna make you hungry too. All right, the last mistake I have here is on mindset. Okay, this is a psychological mistake. So maybe this is the most important one for some of you, and that is the all-or-nothing mindset, which usually means rules that are over-restrictive or or that are restrictive, right? Cutting out entire food groups, swearing off treats, thinking you have to be perfect on your diet every single day, viewing foods as good and bad, feeling guilty when you eat something off plant, all the things that are my boogeyman that I think are sabotaging a lot of you. And if you can't eat and not feel guilty, if you can't eat a little bit more or less calories than your goal and feel fine with it, if you can't eat carbs and know that you're actually gonna be fine, and they're probably better for you than not eating carbs for most of you trying to build muscle, then there's a problem there. And that could be your issue. So the reason this is, think about it, it's the forbidden fruit syndrome. Forbidden fruit, forbidden food becomes everything you think about, right? You're then you're then you have cravings for the thing you've told yourself you can't have. I can't have ice cream ever. So all I think about is ice cream. I can't ever have pizza, so I'm just dying to have that next slice of pizza. Maybe on my quote unquote cheat day, which you know, anybody who listens to this show know I can't stand that term. Uh, we don't do cheat days, okay? We plan, we plan ahead and we eat calories as we need them and we distribute them appropriately, okay? But life is gonna happen, guys. It happens every day. You're gonna eat something off plan, you're gonna be in a situation that you couldn't plan for potentially. And because your mindset is all or nothing, you feel like you failed with every single one of these little decisions. And that triggers the okay, might as well eff it effect. I already blew it, so I might as well keep eating and start over tomorrow. You know, I missed my training session, so I might as well just not train this week and start Monday. And we we have so much research that confirms this that I feel like I'm a broken record when I go on podcasts and I'm like, look, rigid versus flexible dieting, clear winner between those two. Rigid dieting is associated with more binge eating and less success in long-term weight management, period. Right? Because of the psychology, it leads to short-term weight loss for most people, right? Just like any calorie deficit will, but then the gains disappear. This is why 95% of people can't maintain the results. Whereas flexible dieting or flexible restraint is an is a term from the literature, which is where you have flexible flexibility and structure to maintain some level of restraint, but it's allowing in there plenty of indulgences or treats or things you like without being guilty about them and still hitting your goals and still sustaining your results. And it is one of the strongest predictors of sustained weight loss and fat loss. So the fix to this mistake is to work on that mindset. Easier said than done. I get it. It takes work. No food is truly off limits if you plan for it and account for it. And that's really what it comes down to is planning in the piece of chocolate, the weekly dinner out, the party with your friends, the birthday party coming up, the vacation, the business travel. Planning ahead. Okay. I have a client that I'm working with who her son, you know, loves treats. And when they go to a family event, he's going to have them. And she's like, what do I do? How do I get them not to eat them? Or, you know, whatever the question was. And I'm like, you plan them in and assume you're going to have this slice of cake and these chicken wings and this slice of pizza because that's probably what's going to happen. Right. Kind of plan for the worst case. And I don't even like to use the term worst. It's just, this is likely what's going to happen, assuming no control whatsoever. So if you plan them in, you know what you've done? You've just put a sense of control on there that makes it super flexible. And then you can plan the rest of the day and week around that. Right. And again, easier said than done. But when you think ahead, when you pre-log, when you use an app, when you use a piece of paper and think ahead and write it down and plan it in, then you're going to not have decision fatigue, emotionally driven decisions, and you're going to respond with curiosity when things don't go your way. And you're not going to be guilty about it. You're going to say, what did end up triggering this? And how can I adjust it next time? And then I'm going to move on. So that's the flexible approach that I really like that keeps your stress down. So this affects number mistake number three with your stress. It reduces your cravings over time. It dramatically improves your adherence. Whereas the opposite approach is just an ineffective, miserable way to live. Okay, so we've covered all seven mistakes, but I did promise you one more thing, and that is a counterintuitive two-week protocol that makes hunger management easier before you even start your calorie deficit. And honestly, if you're in a calorie deficit right now, you could even do it. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, CaloCurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CalloCurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb. All right, here is the tactic I say for last, and you can start this today or tomorrow. Most people begin in a fat loss phase by cutting things out. And if you are currently in a fat loss phase, you probably have done this. You say, okay, I need less food, I need fewer carbs that because your protein stays high and the fats don't come down that much, so the carbs come way down. I'm not gonna have desserts, I'm gonna have smaller portions, right? And that psychology is already triggering your body's scarcity response, the hormones that we talked about, where your cravings go up and you start fighting them, even before there's any adaptation going on. So instead, I want you to do the opposite. What do I mean? I want you to start by adding things in. Before you subtract a single calorie, I want you to add three things. Okay, and if you haven't started your fat loss phase, take two weeks to do this. If you have started it, you can you can try that even during the fat loss phase. But spend two weeks, make this a plan that you follow. Protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after your meals, after your main meals, probably lunch and dinner. All right, that's it. I don't want you to think about anything else. And I don't want you to cut anything out. So if you're not in a fat loss phase, this is really powerful because the extra protein is gonna trigger your satiety, the vegetables are gonna fill your stomach with volume and fiber, the walks are gonna improve your insulin sensitivity, your digestion. And then without even trying, you're gonna naturally eat less of the other stuff. The snacks, the second helpings, the mindless eating, because you're satisfied. So I think it's really helpful before you start your deficit. If you're in one, you can come out of it for a while and be at maintenance and try this, or try to do it while you're in it. It's only gonna help, regardless, right? But this is what we talk about when we say habits that are sustainable and training your appetite and hunger signals. So at least give yourself more of an advantage psychologically and hormonally before that adaptation kicks in, and then see what happens to hunger levels. I think you're gonna be surprised. And again, I I've I've pitched my app before, Fitness Lab. I know we're past the holiday promotion, but one of the great things that that app can do is help analyze what you're eating and give you meal plans and give you advice to make these changes. So, again, the three things protein at every meal, a massive vegetable portion at lunch and dinner, and a 10-minute walk after lunch and dinner. All right, that's it for today's episode. I know we covered a lot, the physiology of why diets make you hungry, the seven mistakes that make it worse, and then some solutions along with along for the ride to help you out. I want you to remember that body recomp and fat loss, they're not achieved by starving yourself. They're achieved by setting up a structured, sustainable approach that works with your body and your biofeedback. And so everything we talk about here is intended to do that. If you can do them, fat loss, it's not just a thing that will happen, but a thing that can be done. Over time, repeatedly as needed in a much more sustainable way. So, this is episode one of the appetite series. On the next episode, we're gonna go a little bit more into ways to control appetite, including some that you may not even be aware of and may want to try. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights, and remember that your body is capable of incredible things when you give it what it needs. My name is Philip Hape, and I will talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
