What does it mean to feel hungry?

What does it actually mean to feel hungry?

I had breakfast today at 9am - 500g of greek yogurt with blueberries and cocoa as well as a cup of coffee with 32% fat cream, which should amount to about 750 kcal I think. I'm 179cm/70kg for context, so it's actually plenty of breakfast for me;) I also had a nice dinner yesterday evening, so my body should be "adequately supplied".

Now it's 1:30 pm and my stomach slowly starts to get in touch with me via grumbling a little. Energy wise I feel okay and don't feel a crazy urge to get food, actually I don't really want to eat just yet. What does the feeling of hunger represent? Does it mean my body starts burning muscle mass and other "good stuff" for energy that we don't want to use for that matter? Or does my body still burn fat at this point, maybe just starting to really touch the body fat after burning through the about 60g of breakfast fat?

Should we avoid even those first signs of hunger by having a snack or earlier lunch, or should we rather happily embrace them as a feedback for fat burning and not care about a little hunger, as long as it's not getting "severe"?

Thanks for any feedback, I'd especially like to hear @Jeff Serven's opinion on this one!

Hey Ferdinand,

Try to avoid the snacking. The course will touch on this in more detail later but, ideally, you have a big enough breakfast to get to lunch without a snack. You're getting plenty of protein on a Thrive diet so you don't need to worry about muscle wasting.

When you start feeling your stomach because it s empty this doesn t mean that inmediately your body has no fuel. The food you ate earlier is still been digested and the energy will be still available for your body, even more if you ate a high fat/protein breakfast, because your body is already using your own fat, so I don t think you will experience an energy crash very soon. In my opinion, our concerns should be more about energy crash rather than feeling the stomach empty. Our energy levels should be in balance through the day. In the other hand I d say that one shouldn t wait very very long to eat after feeling an empty stomach. An hour for me is the maximum time. For example, I eat at 14.15 everyday and sometimes I get hungry at 14.00, other days at 13.45 or at 13.30. I eat a big breakfast but it s very hard for me to eat everyday exactly what I need to get hungry at the exact time 14.15.

Snacking is probably my biggest weakness. I snack way too much and need to control it. Although on a positive note i don't snack on junk food. 

I'm not snacking very much right now, but I'm interested in why snacking is bad:p Currently on task 14 of Thrive, the input is surely coming soon;)

Thanks for the information, guys! How much protein are you (roughly) getting in each day by following Thrive, in relation to your bodyweight? I'm not exactly counting but as my breakfast is pretty much always the same (30g of protein in 500g greek yogurt), adding some poultry or eggs with lunch and dinner I'll probably have about 90-100g of protein on an average day, which results in about 1,4 g of protein per kg of bodyweight for me. All rough ideas, I'd have to measure all my food otherwise which I don't intend to do:p Should we shoot for more than that in order to reach 2g/kg?

For me the most fascinating thing about Thrive is how quickly and seemingly sustainably it has changed my eating habits. I've eaten close to no vegetables before (at least I didn't use vegetables when preparing my own food), now I actually like them. I've also eaten very small portions before, now I'm eating three meals with 700-800 kcal most days. I've also eaten way too much sugar stuff before, now I'm grabbing a piece of chocolate like once a week or so - also not really breaking the water rule, unless it's for a beer with my friends or a glass of orange juice every once in a while. It doesn't feel like hard work at the moment, so that's a good thing=D Thumbs up!

Hey Ferdinand,

Keep with what you're doing and don't worry so much about calculating protein. You're getting plenty and more portion size information for protein is soon to come. Really cool to hear you are forming solid habits out of the course too. That's great! Stick with it.