Why am I always hungry?

Hunger is one of the most common feelings people have, since you likely experience it every 3-4 hours after you last ate. You know the signs: a growling stomach, or even feeling light headed, dizzy, and irritable (“hangry”). But how often you’re hungry isn’t set in stone; experts are discovering that when you eat, what you eat, and even how much you drink can have a major impact on how frequently hunger pangs strike.

We asked leading Registered Dietitians to share with us the five most common reasons you feel hungry that are beyond the normal, healthy hunger everyone experiences, as well as their top tips for maximizing satisfaction and keeping hunger at bay.

You aren’t intentional about breakfast

Researchers still aren’t sure whether “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” but we do know that a morning meal is an opportunity to get more nutrients into your day and can be part of your consistent healthy-eating routine. That said, not everything you could eat for breakfast is created equal. Take those donuts your boss brought in for the team meeting — the mega-dose of simple sugars and lack of protein or fiber will likely make you hungry again well before lunch.

Try this: Build a better mix of morning nutrients

The key to a breakfast that will hold your appetite off until lunch? A combination of protein and fiber. “It’s important to combine some protein along with some complex carbohydrates to provide sustained energy throughout the morning,” says Bonnie Taub-Dix, MA, RD, a Long Island-based dietitian. That doesn’t mean you have to put on your chef’s toque and cook an elaborate meal every morning. You can opt for no-fuss choices like cottage cheese on whole-wheat bread, whole-grain cereal with low-fat milk, peanut butter and a banana, or even half of a leftover turkey sandwich. Eggs may be the breakfast MVP; one small study showed women consumed less food for up to 36 hours when they ate eggs for breakfast compared to when they ate just bagels.

Your meals are healthy but boring

Once you have a few meals you know how to cook and that taste okay, it’s easy to fall into a rut. But people who eat the exact same bowl of brown rice, grilled chicken, and steamed veggies for dinner every night could be headed for trouble because it gets old, and you may experience what feels like hunger but is actually meal burnout. “If you don't switch up your menu, you’re going to get bored and eventually have difficulty sticking with your weight-loss plan,” says Lona Sandon, MEd, RD, assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Try this: Spice it up

A few small tweaks to your standby recipes can give them new life, excite your palate, and keep you more satisfied in the long run. “Experiment with fresh, flavorful herbs, like basil, oregano, and mint,” suggests Cindy Moore, an M.S./R.D. at the Cleveland Clinic. Adding acidity (a dash of lemon juice or balsamic vinegar) and sweetness (a teaspoon of honey or brown sugar) can make your same ol’ roasted carrots or grilled chicken taste more complex. If you like hot sauce, try a different variety or a chili crunch. Texture — ideally mixing creamy, chewy, and crunchy — is also an excitement-booster. Add crunch by tossing chopped nuts on your greens or granola on your yogurt.

You don’t eat enough during the day

Do you often eat so sparingly during the day that by the time dinner rolls around, you’re famished? That strategy can backfire, leading to eating beyond your hunger in the evening. Studies also find that people who consume a greater percentage of their daily calories in the evening tend to be at higher risk for Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and inflammation. Other research found that eating large meals at night can increase fat storage while you’re sleeping, and people who ate most of their calories at breakfast or lunch lost more weight and showed improvements in LDL (“bad”) cholesterol than those people who ate the most calories at dinner. So it’s not just what you eat over the course of the day, but also when you eat it that matters.

Try this: Frontload your meals

Once the day begins, work and life obligations can sometimes keep you so busy that you feel like you don’t have a moment to stop and eat. Get ahead of that earlier in the day by choosing a healthy breakfast (like one of the protein and fiber ideas above). If you’re someone who isn’t hungry in the morning, still eat something — even a small bite. “Treat yourself the way you’d treat a kid…you wouldn’t let them entirely skip meals,” says Taub-Dix. Or if you’re not a breakfast person, pretend you’re in Europe and have a more filling lunch; then you won’t feel ravenous at dinner and can feel satisfied with a smaller evening meal.

You’re not sleeping enough

With all of the demands on our time, bedtime can become a target that’s always moving later — we don’t have to tell you that you’re likely not getting enough sleep, same as 35% of adults in America. That can have a major impact on hunger. Studies have shown that a single night of sleep deprivation increases ghrelin levels (the hormone that causes the feeling of hunger), so no surprise participants felt hungrier. Not getting enough sleep can also cause insulin resistance and not being able to feel as satiated from eating, as well as causing weight gain.

Try this: Get to bed 30 minutes earlier

Since it can be hard to step away from your favorite show in the evening, try setting a “bedtime alarm” to remind you to turn it off and start your wind-down routine. Start with the goal of wrapping up 30 minutes earlier than usual. It may not seem like much, but getting into bed much earlier than usual can leave you staring at the ceiling in frustration. Once your body starts getting tired at your new earlier bedtime, you can always move it up another 30 minutes until you’re getting enough sleep. Once you’re better rested, you may find yourself less hungry during the day.

You’re confusing hunger with food noise

Since hunger and food noise can both be internal cues (as opposed to passing cake in the break room, which is an external cue), it’s easy for people to sometimes confuse the two. Real physical hunger comes from those physical sensations of needing to eat, like feeling weak, headachey, or a grumbly stomach, usually after not eating for several hours. On the other hand, food noise is having ever-present intrusive thoughts or urges to eat, even when the body isn’t truly hungry, that can make it difficult to make healthy choices. For example, you may have just eaten breakfast and yet you’re already thinking about your next meal; maybe you ate a large lunch but still crave something sweet — and can’t stop thinking about it. If you’ve just eaten and continue to have repeated thoughts about food, it’s likely food noise, not hunger. In short, food noise is the constant soundtrack of food-related chatter in your brain.

Try this: Quiet your food noise

If you’ve taken the quiz and found you do struggle with food noise, there are some things you can do to quiet it down a notch (because no, food noise will likely never go completely silent). Anecdotally, people using GLP-1 medications often say the dial is turned way down on their food noise. For those not on a GLP-1, when food thoughts arise, make sure you’re not actually hungry by checking in with your physical sensations and how recently you ate. If you find you’re not hungry, but the food noise is shouting, “Cookie. Cookie! Cooookie!,” try soothing and distracting yourself by heading outside for a five-minute walk around the block or turning on a fun, lighthearted podcast.