According to the researchers, when we lose weight, the stomach releases greater amounts of a hormone called ghrelin, which makes us feel hungry. Every person has this hormone and if you are overweight and then lose weight, the hormone level increases.
Although you may feel hungry when you are trying to lose weight, and restrict your energy intake, being hungry doesn't mean that you're burning fat, because you can shed pounds without always feeling hungry.
"If you're trying to lose body fat, you need to be in a calorie deficit," she explains to INSIDER. "This means eating fewer calories then you burn in a day. It's very likely that you will therefore go through stages of feeling hungry, this is expected and normal."
You have a fast metabolism
If your metabolism works overtime, you're probably the envy of all your friends — but as research shows, you're probably almost always hungry, too. That's because the faster your metabolism is, the more you need to eat to feel full.
You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
Where do you notice weight loss first? Body-weight loss is usually noticed around the belly, waistline, and thighs first. This is because your body stores fat in different locations. For instance, men hold more fat around their belly, while women store it on their thighs and hips.
As mentioned above, our bodies' natural rhythms become off-balance when we ignore hunger for too long. When people skip meals, their metabolism slows down, which can actually cause weight gain.
One of the main reasons that undereating can lead to weight gain is because consuming too few calories can cause your resting metabolic rate to slow down. This means you may burn fewer calories throughout the day.
A slow metabolism has many symptoms, and you're likely to have one if you find it difficult to lose weight and easy to gain weight. Other symptoms include fatigue, poor digestion, constipation, low mood, and a colder than average body temperature. All of these are caused by the lower production of energy and heat.
Fat burning typically begins after approximately 12 hours of fasting and escalates between 16 and 24 hours of fasting.
“You are going to lose weight and without being hungry.” Dr. Matovu, a gastroenterologist at Kibuli Hospital in Kampala, Uganda says it is a medical fact that people can decrease their stomach size by changing their diet, and that it takes less than one month to do so by eating small, evenly spaced meals.
Specifically, the body burns fat after first exhausting the contents of the digestive tract along with glycogen reserves stored in liver cells and after significant protein loss. After prolonged periods of starvation, the body uses the proteins within muscle tissue as a fuel source, which results in muscle mass loss.
"In general, muscle is not lost before fat—it is very dependent on nutrition and activity volume," Miranda-Comas says. "A person who is attempting to lose weight by not eating may lose weight in muscle first before fat."
So, if you're eating 1,200 calories and not losing weight, it could be that your body is really struggling to function on so little fuel and your metabolism is not functioning well enough to respond to a deficit in the way you'd like.
However, calorie intake should not fall below 1,200 a day in women or 1,500 a day in men, except under the supervision of a health professional. Eating too few calories can endanger your health by depriving you of needed nutrients.
The study also suggests that skipping breakfast or dinner might help people lose weight, since they burned more calories on those days.
In the case of Intermittent fasting, skipping your dinner is better and easier. You can have your dinner either early or have a heavy snack and can begin your fasting. Research suggests that fasting in the evening and overnight, then eating early in the morning is the better way to follow this diet to lose weight.
Coming to the point, you will first lose “hard fat” (visceral fat) that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and later, you will burn soft fat (belly fat, thigh fat, back fat, etc.). Women accumulate fat cells around their belly area, hips, thighs and these areas are usually the last from.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.