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.
What my diet/fitness coach guy said was that in simple terms your body finished digesting food and is saying give me more to work. Then after you dont give it it says “fuck you, I’ll just burn your fat and muscle”
For intermittent fasting, the reason hunger comes in waves has to do with how your body changes it’s energy source for metabolism. First, the body breaks down sugars (glucose) for energy in the first wave of metabolism. The brain has the highest demand for, and is optimized for sugar (because of how quickly sugar can be converted to energy) as its main energy source. So, once your sugar levels run low, your body begins to switch to fat burning. The second stage of metabolism is called “ketosis” because of the fat molecules being converted into ketone bodies as an energy source. The third stage is protein breakdown.
So, during the transition between stage 1 and 2 metabolism, the brain sends “hunger” signals throughout the body, which causes the stomach to growl. The brain runs more efficiently on sugar than is does on fat, so that is why the brain sends this signal. Once, the transition from stage 1 to 2 is complete and the brain is able to convert the ketone bodies into energy, the “hunger” signals start to die down for a while. Which, is likely long enough to not bother you until your next meal. But just remember, eventually your brain will take over and win that hunger battle because it really wants to run on sugar.
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I’m only recalling what I’ve been told / heard before but,
Sending hunger waves takes energy, the more it sends, the more energy it wastes, and when you are already without food for a while, it’s better for the body not to waste more energy than needed.
So it does it in bursts, hoping that you’ll listen/find food, then it stops for a bit, and if it doesn’t receive food still it will send another wave at some point.
Someone else might be able to explain this better though but this is what I’ve been told in simple terms
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