When it comes to dealing with hunger, a common-sense way of dealing with it is “eat something”. However, many people find that they then eat the wrong things, in the wrong quantities, and end up in a cycle of overeating and being hungry.

If this gets to the extreme, it can turn into a full-blown eating disorder:

Eating Disorders: More Varied (And Prevalent) Than People Think

…and even in more moderate presentations, the cycle of hunger and overeating is not great for the health. So, how to avoid that?

Listen to your body (but: actually listen)

Your body says: we’re running a little low on glycogen reserves so our energy’s going to start suffering in a few hours if we don’t eat some fruit, kill something and eat its fatty organs, or perhaps find some oily nuts.

You hear: eat something bright and sugary, shout at the dog, eat some fried food, got it!

Your body says: our water balance is a little off, we could do with some sodium, potassium, and perhaps some phosphorus to correct it.

You hear: eat something salty, got it, potato chips coming right up!

…and so on. Now, we know 10almonds readers are quite a health-conscious readership, so perhaps your responses are not quite like that. But the take-away point is still important: we need to listen to the whole message, and give the body what it actually needs, not what will just shut the message off the most quickly.

Here’s how: Intuitive Eating Might Not Be What You Think

Bonus: Interoception: Improving Our Awareness Of Body Cues

About those cravings…

As illustrated a little above, a lot of cravings might not be what they first appear, and in evolutionary terms, our body is centuries behind industrialization, in terms of adaptations, which means that even if we try to take the above into account, our responses can sometimes be inappropriate in the age of supermarkets.

See also: The Science of Hunger, And How To Sate Cravings

Natural appetite suppressants

Eating more is not always the answer, not even if it’s more healthy food. And hunger pangs can be especially inconvenient if, for example, we are fasting at present, which is by the way a very healthful thing for most people:

Learn more: Intermittent Fasting: What’s the truth?

One way to suppress hunger is simply to trigger the stomach into sending “full” signals, which involves filling it. Since you do not want to overeat, the trick here is imply to use high-volume food.

Consider for example: 30 grapes and 30 raisins have approximately the same calorie count (what with raisins being dried grapes, and the calories didn’t evaporate), but the bowl of fresh fruit is going to physically fill your stomach a lot more quickly than the tiny amount of dried fruit.

More on this: Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety

Protein is of course also an appetite suppressant, but it takes about 20 minutes for the signal to kick in. So a “hack” here is to snack on something proteinous at least 15 minutes before your main meal (for example, a portion of nuts while cooking, unless you’re allergic, or some dried fish unless you’re vegetarian/vegan; you get it, pick something high in protein and good for snacking, and have a small portion before your main meal).

Nor is protein the only option!

See also: 3 Natural Appetite Suppressants Better Than Ozempic

Scale it down

Related to the above, there is a feedback loop that occurs here. The more you eat, the more your stomach slowly grows to accommodate it; the less you eat, the more your stomach slowly shrinks because the body tries hard to be an efficient organism, and will not maintain something that isn’t being used.

So, there’s a bit of a catch-22; sate your hunger by filling your stomach with high volume foods, but filling it will cause it to grow?

The trick is: do the “eat until 80% full” thing. That’s full enough that you have had a nice meal and are not suffering, without stretching the stomach.

Enjoy your food

Seriously! Actually enjoy it. Which means paying full attention to it. Eating can and should be a wonderful experience, so it’s best savored rather than inhaling a bowl of something in 30 seconds.

Have you seen those dog bowls that have obstructions to slow down how quickly a dog eats? We can leverage that kind of trick too! While you might not want to eat from a dog bowl, how about having a little bowl of pistachio nuts rather than ready-to-eat peanuts? Or any shelled nuts that we must shell as we go. If you’re allergic to nuts, there are plenty of other foods with a high work-to-food ratio. Take some time and enjoy that pomegranate, for instance!

Not that we necessarily have to make things difficult for ourselves either; we can just take appropriate care to ensure a good dining experience. Life is for living, so why not enjoy it?

See also: Mindful Eating: How To Get More Out Of What’s On Your Plate

Enjoy!

The famous answer: no

The truthful answer: yes, and we are doing it all the time whether we want to or not, so we might as well know what things affect our fat distribution in various body parts.

There’s a kernel of truth in the “no”, though, and where that comes from is that we cannot exclusively put fat on in a certain area only, and nor can we do “spot reduction”, i.e., intentionally lose fat from only one place.

How, then, do we do fat redistribution?

Your body is a living organism, not a statue

It’s easy to think “I’ve been carrying this fat in this place for 20 years”, but during that time the fat has been replaced several times and moved often; in fact, the cells containing the fat have even been replaced. Because: fat can seem like a substance that’s alien to your body because it doesn’t respond like muscles, isn’t controllable like muscles, doesn’t have the same sensibility as muscles, etc. But, every bit of fat stored in your body is stored inside a fat cell; it’s not one big unit of fat; it’s lots of tiny ones.

In reality, any given bit of fat on your body has probably been there for 18–24 months at most:

Fat turnover in obese slower than average

…and there are assorted factors that can modify the rate at which our body deals with fat storage:

Human white adipose tissue: A highly dynamic metabolic organ

So, how do I get rid of this tummy?

There are plenty of stories of people who try to lose weight from one part of their body, and lose it from somewhere else instead. Say, a person wants to lose weight from her hips, and with careful diet and exercise, she loses weight—by dropping a couple of bra cup sizes while keeping the hips.

So, we must figure out: why is fat stored in certain places? And the main driving factors are:

• hormones
• metabolic health
• stress

Hormones affect fat distribution insofar as estrogen and progesterone will favor the hips, thighs, butt, breasts, and testosterone will favor a more central (but still subcutaneous, not visceral) distribution. Additionally, estrogen and progesterone will favor a higher body fat percentage, while testosterone will favor a lower one.

This is particularly relevant later in life, when suddenly the hormone(s) you’ve been relying on to keep your shape, are now declining, meaning your shape does too. This goes for everyone regardless of sex.

See:

• What You Should Have Been Told About The Menopause Beforehand
• The BAT-pause! ← this is about the conversion of white adipose tissue to brown adipose tissue, and how estrogen helps this happen
• Topping Up Testosterone?

Metabolic health affects fat distribution insofar as poor metabolic health will result in more fat being stored in the viscera, rather than in the usual subcutaneous places. This is a serious health risk.

See: Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

Stress affects fat distribution insofar as chronically elevated cortisol levels see more fat sent to the stomach, face, and neck. This fat redistribution isn’t dangerous itself, but it can be indicative of the chronic stress, which does pose more of a general threat to health.

See: Lower Your Cortisol! (Here’s Why & How)

What this means in practical terms

Assuming that you would like the fat distribution that says “this is a healthy woman” or “this is a healthy man”, respectively, then you might want to:

• Check your sex hormone levels and get them adjusted if appropriate
• Improve your overall metabolic health—without necessarily trying to lose weight, just, take care of your blood sugars for example, and they will take care of you in terms of fat storage.
• Manage your stress (which includes any stress you are experiencing about your body not being how you’d like it to be).

If you are doing these things, and you don’t have any major untreated medical abnormalities that affect these things, then your fat will go to the places generally considered healthiest.

Can we speed it up?

Yes, we can! Firstly, we can speed up our overall metabolism:

Let’s Burn! Metabolic Tweaks And Hacks

Secondly, we can encourage our body to “move” fat by intentionally “yo-yoing”, something usually considered bad in dieting when people just want to lose weight and instead are going up and down, but: if you lose weight healthily, it comes off everywhere evenly, and if you gain weight healthily, it goes mostly to the places where it should be.

So, a sequence of lose-gain-lose-gain might look like “lose a bit from everywhere, put it back in the good place, lose a bit more from everywhere, put it back in the good place”, etc.

So, you might want to gently cycle these a few months apart, for example:

How To Lose Fat (Healthily!) | How To Gain Fat (Healthily!)

You can also cheat a little, if it suits your purpose! By this we mean: if you’d like a little extra where you already have a little fat, then you can put muscle on underneath it, it will pad it up, and (because of the layer of actual fat on top) nobody will know the difference unless you flex it with their hand on it.

Let’s put it this way: people doing squats for a bubble-butt aren’t doing it to put on fat; they’re putting muscle on under the fat they have.

So, check out: How To Gain Muscle (Healthily!)

And finally, for all your body-sculpting needs, we present these excellent books:

Women’s Strength Training Anatomy Workouts – by Frédéric Delavier

Strength Training Anatomy (For Men) – by Frédéric Delavier

Enjoy!