One of the main reasons people cheat on their diets or just give up altogether is because, quite frankly, they’re H-U-N-G-R-Y. And being hungry all the time is difficult to live with for a day, much less for weeks on end.

Here are 9 tips to make sure that hunger pains don’t derail all of your hard work.

1. Don’t skip breakfast, or you’ll be starving and cranky by mid-morning. A breakfast with complex carbs and low fat protein will help stave off snack attacks.
2. Plan ahead. Make sure that you have low calorie snacks and drinks with you. Drink plenty of water and eat snacks like celery with low fat cream cheese or apple slices with a slice of low fat cheese.
3. Make sure that you have some fat included in your diet - you need some. Choose healthy fats, like olive oil. Mediterranean people include a lot of olive oil in their cooking and they have famously low rates of obesity and heart disease.
4. Take note of what times of day you become hungry and plan your meals and snacks accordingly. If you always cave in around 4 p.m., schedule a snack for 3:30 and drink a big glass of water, too.
5. Don’t cut your calories too drastically. It will make your metabolism slow down and cause you to be plagued with hunger all of the time.
6. Eat several servings of bulky low calorie foods a day. Broccoli, cauliflower, salads, most vegetables…these will fill you up and help stave off hunger.
7. Stay away from sugary snacks and simple carbohydrates like sticky buns, cake and donuts. If you eat them your blood sugar will soar, and then it will crash and you’ll find yourself irritable, jittery and famished.
8. Eat sufficient protein. Scientific studies show that protein leaves people feeling full longer than carbohydrates does.
9. Eat complex carbohydrates half an hour to an hour before exercising to fuel your workout session and also so you don’t end up feeling absolutely ravenous afterwards.

Bottom line, dieting doesn’t mean being hungry. It’s all about eating healthy and eating a bit less than you need each day, so that your body uses your excess body fat for fuel.

Use this calorie deficit calculator to find out how many calories you should be eating to lose weight.

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Eat better, move more, and believe in yourself!

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