For example if you’re intermittent fasting or water fasting, and the hunger comes and goes in waves as opposed to just getting hungrier and hungrier by each passing hour. How come? I do intermittent fasting and my periods of hunger are brief. You’d think the longer I go without eating, the worse my hunger would get but instead, I just get these brief periods of hunger and they eventually disappear, as if I had already eaten.
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As ready mentioned, hunger is signaled via the hormone ghrelin. Counter-intuitively, ghrelin secretion is not necessarily tightly linked to the actual energetic state in the body. It’s highly influenced by our circadian clock (aka biological clock, a huge subject itself) and our eating habits.
You gave the example of intermittent fasting, so I’ll chime in on that. During your fasting periods, the body tries to signal hunger but doesn’t receive food. After a couple of weeks of strict IF, it ‘learns’ that hunger signaling is useless during these times of day, just like it’s useless during your night sleep. So, it stops sending hunger signals during those times.
EDIT: Thank you for my first gold, kind stranger!
The comments on the typo were correct, I’ve fixed it in my original post above. Otherwise, I’m leaving the post as is and will answer some of the questions in replies.
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