Hunger is a biological need that instigates you to eat food. Feeling hungry is not bad at all as it is the way your body signals for the need of fuel to sustain various functions and metabolic activities. But if you never feel fully satisfied even after finishing a meal there may be underlying reasons, few related to health issue while some due to your mistakes that may really surprise you.
How often you feel hungry depends on what you have eaten at the last meal. Normally a person feels hungry three to four hours after eating a meal.
Why Do I Never Feel Full No Matter How Much I Eat?
Before knowing the reasons, let us understand how you feel hungry. There are several hormones in the body having different work to perform. Ghrelin is one such hormone associated with hunger. Your body starts secreting ghrelin when the stomach is empty.
The brain detects it and stimulates the hunger center which in turn prepares the stomach for the food intake. When your stomach is full, it reduces secretion of ghrelin.
- Eating excess of carbohydrate in your meal: Inclusion of excess of carbohydrate in the meal will make you feel not full soon after eating. When you eat more sugary food in one go, it gets absorbed quickly in the blood. This causes spike in level of sugar in blood. As a result body releases insulin in excess from the pancreas to utilize the circulating amount of glucose. Soon the circulating glucose gets exhausted from the blood. This triggers the brain to stimulate the hunger center for more food. Thus you never feel full even after eating.
- Skipping breakfast: Breakfast is normally the first meal of the day. When you skip your breakfast, it may trigger more craving and you may overeat during rest of the day. This occurs due to rise of ghrelin level in the body. When you miss your breakfast another hormone called serotonin drops. This may produce increased hunger. Serotonin hormone is released from brain and digestive tract. Its main function is to regulate mood and appetite.
- Lack of sleep is another reason for never feeling full even though you eat enough. Lack of sleep has direct relation on the how much you eat and how much you feel hungry. Sleeping for few hours only reduces secretion of leptin a hormone that stops hunger. However, this causes increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger.
- Dehydration: Sometimes dehydration can be the cause you may be eating too much even after your stomach is full. Your brain may be confused with thirst and hunger pangs because both the stimulating centers are located in one area of the brain. Dehydration also increases tiredness which in turn may make you eat more in order to energize the body.
- Eating fast: You may not feel your stomach is full even after eating if you are fast eater. This is because your brain may not get enough time to register that your stomach is full now. Eating slowly on the other hand allows the hormone to indicate the brain that your stomach is full and it is now time to stop eating.
- Chronic stress can make a person eat more than required. Prolonged stress causes excess release of adrenaline and cortisol hormone. Both this hormones trigger release of ghrelin.
- Person suffering from medical condition such as diabetes may have ravenous hunger if his blood sugar level remains high for a long period of time.