Why Am I Hungry Right After Eating? Examining the After-Dinner Munchies
Do you ever finish a meal and find yourself looking for a snack shortly after?
One of the top questions I get asked: “Why am I snacking after dinner?” or “Why am I hungry again right after eating?”
While many of us, myself included, can feel like we’re always hungry. However, if you often experience the need to eat shortly after a meal, it’s worth looking into why.
Why Does it Even Matter?
Snacking is not a bad thing at all. Eating between meals is okay, and even encouraged for some people, especially those who are highly active. The right snacks can even help us hit our nutrition goals!
Honestly, maybe we should stop treating “snacking” like a verb, and call it “having a snack”. A snack is a contained event, while “snacking”, or eating little bits of food over a period of time, sounds more like grazing.
Grazing can be problematic for some because eating little bites throughout the day can lead to overeating and also not getting the right nutrients. It can also increase some people’s risk of insulin resistance.
It can put us in that “blah” state of never feeling truly satisfied, but not really feeling actual hunger either, making us less attuned to our bodies’ cues.
It’s also important to note that digestion takes time, so if we’re constantly eating throughout the day, we’re not giving our body the time it needs to do its job!
The number 1 reason why you might be hungry - your meals are just too small!
If your meal is teeny tiny, you’re going to get hungry soon after. It’s simply common sense! Sometimes a client will tell me she’s hungry shortly after eating, and I will find out she’s just having a yogurt or protein bar and calling it a meal.
If your meal is less than 400 calories, you may simply need to eat more at mealtime to prevent becoming hungry soon after. We have satiety hormones that are triggered in proportion to calories consumed, so a very low calorie meal may not cut it when it comes to satisfying hunger.
Though the calorie content of the meal is important, the volume of the meal is important as well. Food that takes up space in your stomach will trigger stretch receptors in the stomach and intestine, signaling to the brain that a meal has been eaten and you are feeling full.
There is also something to be said for the act of chewing, which will begin the digestion process and tell your brain and body that food is being eaten.
High volume foods with lots of water and fiber can add a lot of bulk to your meal without adding lots of unnecessary calories.
So while a big bowl of lettuce may give you the volume you need to feel full, and a few spoonfuls of nut butter would theoretically provide enough calories, the best meal option is likely something between the two. Take a look at your meals and see if they need more volume or more calories!
Your meal lacks fiber, protein, or fat.
All food groups represented! I love including multiple types of veggies on my plate to get an extra boost of fiber and vitamins while adding volume to the meal.
A meal lacking in protein, fiber, or fat, may digest too quickly and leave you hungry.
A meal or snack of pure refined carbs will not only digest very fast, but it will also elevate your blood sugar, only to have it come crashing back down, causing hunger and irritability. So if you had a piece of toast as your whole meal, not only will the small size of the meal make you hungry again, but so will the lack of nutrient balance.
Different nutrients empty out of the stomach at different rates.
Think about how you would feel if you had a fatty cut of brisket right before taking a HIIT class, versus how you would feel taking that class after eating a banana. The fatty piece of meat would take hours to digest, while the banana will be digested very quickly.
While consuming these fast-digesting foods before training might help us avoid feeling weighed down by our pre-workout meal, it’s less helpful when we want to stay full for a while.
Fat is a very satiating macronutrient that empties slowly from the stomach. If your diet is too low in fat, you may find yourself feeling unsatisfied. Adding a little healthy fat, such as avocado, olive oil, or fatty fish, can help you feel full after eating and stay satisfied until it’s time for the next meal.
Fiber is another important nutrient for satiety. Fiber is mostly associated with using the bathroom strain-free, but it has a host of other benefits, including feeling full longer after eating!
Fiber not only takes the body longer to digest, but also releases an anti-appetite molecule called acetate that signals fullness to the brain. Adding a fruit or veggie, or swapping a refined carb for whole grain carb sources can help you stay full longer.
A good jumping off point for fiber consumption is 14 - 15 grams per 1000 calories eaten, which equals between 28 and 45 grams for most people.
Protein intake is also very important for feeling satisfied.
Protein is one of the slower-digesting macronutrients, so it spends more time in your body. It also can help flatten out blood sugar spikes when eaten with a carb, preventing the aforementioned spike and crash that might leave you feeling hangry.
In addition to being slower to digest than some other nutrients, protein also triggers a hormonal cascade that helps send satiety signals to the brain.
Meals high in protein cause the hormone peptide YY to increase, which, among other things, sends appetite suppressant signals to the brain.
There is also research to support the idea that the body can innately sense protein needs, and a person may keep eating until their protein needs are met. So if they’re eating a protein-rich food, they may end up eating less overall than if they’re eating a food with just a little protein.
For these reasons and more, it’s a good idea to include protein, fiber, and fat in meals and snacks!
Big Calorie Deficits
No surprise here: if you’re consistently eating fewer calories than you’re burning, you’re going to be hungry! There are a few reasons why:
As mentioned earlier, some satiety hormones are released in proportion to calorie intake. If you’re eating fewer calories, you will feel less satisfied! If you feel peckish shortly after eating, take a look at your daily intake and determine whether you may be in too big of a deficit.
If you’re highly active, that can also drive up your appetite as well, both physically and psychologically. Obviously, if you’ve really upped your activity level, your body will want more energy to replace burned calories. Also, though, you might feel like you’ve burned a lot of calories and have a desire to overeat due to vigorous workouts.
Even if you are operating in a modest deficit or eating at maintenance, if you are not eating enough in the first half of the day, this can also cause excess hunger later on. If you undereat in the beginning of the day, your body may be trying to “catch up” by driving you to eat more later on. By eating balanced meals throughout the day, you can curb excessive hunger and also make it easier to fulfill your nutritional requirements.
Another byproduct of a huge deficit: if you spend long enough on your diet, you will reach a low level of body fat at which you become ravenously hungry.
When a person reaches a certain level of leanness, the body suppresses satiation hormones, and increases hunger. Sometimes, even eating a meal will not turn off this drive to eat, and you’ll have that lingering sense of hunger.
You’re ignoring your cravings
Have you ever ignored a craving for a cookie and ended up eating a yogurt, a banana, a protein shake, some pretzels, and then ended up eating the whole sleeve of cookies anyway?
Yeah, me too.
Sometimes, ignoring a craving and not giving into the thing you really want will spur excessive eating as you try to bury the urge to eat a specific thing.
The solution? Eat the dang thing! Maybe if you had 2 Oreos and a glass of milk to start with, you wouldn’t have eaten the other things and then all the Oreos.
While you shouldn’t necessarily eat every single thing you ever think about, it might be helpful to honor your cravings sometimes instead of obsessing.
You’re not eating mindfully.
If you bolt down your lunch while answering emails or scrolling Instagram, you might feel like lunch didn’t even happen half an hour later when you’re at the vending machine!
Digestion actually begins in the brain, so eating slowly and mindfully is important for proper digestion and function of hunger and fullness signals. Even in our fast-paced world, it is important to minimize distractions while eating.
Sometimes when I start clients with a mindful eating exercise, they are hesitant. It seems so simplistic, and maybe even woo-woo. But surely enough, most clients begin to see fat loss, improvements in digestion, and increased satisfaction with meals when they begin to eat mindfully!
What does the meal in front of you look like? What does it smell like? In the first bite, what flavors are you picking up? These are all things we should be paying attention to as we eat! Sometimes when we fully experience a food, we need less of it to feel satisfied.
When you’re eating too quickly or paying attention to something else, it is also likely that you aren’t chewing your food enough. While you don’t necessarily need to go overboard on this and do that weird chewing each bite 100 times diet, we do experience our food more and feel more satisfied if we are chewing thoroughly and savoring each bite.
So if you eat dinner in front of the TV and find yourself rummaging in the pantry an hour later, try eating in a distraction-free zone where you can truly experience your meals and see if that makes any difference.
You’re bored or stressed.
To go along with distracted eating, we have boredom and stress eating, in which eating is the distraction.
Sometimes, people eat to avoid their feelings or to experience something other than an uncomfortable sensation.
While this often temporarily numbs the pain, it can lead to overeating in the long term while doing little to actually address the root of the discomfort.
If you think you might be prone to emotional eating or boredom eating, take a second before eating to connect to your body. Are you actually physically hungry? Or is this urge to eat coming from exhaustion, anger, sadness, or loneliness?
Another reason you might be hungry: it might just be time to eat again!
Some of my clients will express concern that they’re hungry again 3 to 4 hours after lunch. This is when I recommend adding a snack! Sometimes, you’re hungry again because it’s really been a long time since the last meal, and it’s time to eat again.
Snacks aren’t evil, and for someone who is highly active or trying to grow muscle, snacks can be essential.
Snacks are often demonized because of what we consider to be “snack foods”. Cookies, chips, crackers, and candy have been normalized as snacks, but most people are trying to avoid regularly consuming these foods. It’s true that many people associate snack time with highly processed foods with low nutritional value, but snacks don’t have to be unhealthy. Choosing high-protein snacks that include a fruit or vegetable can help you get in some additional nutrition while curbing your hunger.
Plan out some snacks in advance for when you’re hungry, and balance them like you would a meal: include protein, fiber, and healthy fats. I like to have a couple hard boiled eggs and an orange, or some sliced turkey and cheese with a handful of baby carrots.
If it’s been a while since eating or if you’re highly active, consider this your permission slip to build in some snacks!
Strategies to beat grazing:
No matter the reason why you keep snacking after your meals, there are some best practices to curb excess hunger post-meal:
First and foremost, eat until you are comfortably satisfied at meal times. Don’t stuff yourself to the point of discomfort, but also avoid having just a nibble for lunch. Eat slowly and focus on your meal instead of the distractions.
Be sure to include a sizable portion of protein (about 1 - 2 times the size of the palm of your hand) in a meal or snack, along with a slower-digesting carbohydrate source, and consider adding a healthy fat if the protein is lean.
Remember, change is hard, so give yourself some grace as you tackle your after-meal snacking! If you need additional support around building satisfying meals and beating endless snacking, it may be worth it to hire a nutrition coach. You don’t have to figure this our alone!
