Why Dieting Feels Harder Over Time

Philip Pape 0:01

If you've ever hit a wall during a fat loss phase, felt constantly hungry despite eating enough protein and fiber, or wondered why your body seems to fight you harder the longer you diet, the answer might be in your hormones. Today I'm breaking down the hormones that actually control your appetite. Not just Ghrelin and Leptin, but also GLP1, PYY, CCK, NPY, and others you've probably never heard of that are quietly running the show. You'll learn why dieting makes some of these spike and others crash, what that means for your hunger and metabolism, and some strategies that work with these instead of against them.

Series Context And Today’s Plan

Philip Pape 0:46

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering, and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and here is what is actually happening inside your body when you try to lose fat. Your stomach pumps out more ghrelin, and that screams at your brain, I need to eat. Your fat cells release less leptin, so your brain thinks you're starving even when you're not. Your gut produces less GLP1 and PYY, which means meals don't fill you up the way they used to, and stress hormones trigger NPY in your brain, making you crave high calorie comfort foods. This isn't a willpower problem, as we've said many times on this podcast. It's really your biology. And we have to work with that. We have to understand it. Think like an engineer. Understanding these hormones is that difference for many of you, many of us, between fighting against things and trying to, you know, just cut calories or just do more and actually making this a little bit, if not a lot, easier. So this is episode three of our eight-part appetite series for January. We're going beyond the basics of just protein and fiber. We covered a little bit of that already. And now we're going to get into the deeper mechanisms that control whether you feel satisfied or ravenous. Because let me tell you, uh, the more I've been in this business, the more I realize a lot of this is comes down to brain-related genes, it comes down to hormones, it comes down to signals that are, I'll say, outside our control, but the upstream chain is somewhat in our control. And we're gonna wanna understand how we do that. I'm gonna cover a lot of science today, but I'm going to keep it practical. And then I want you to stick around until the end because I'm going to share a simple protocol for handling hunger to separate your physical hunger from your psychological hunger. And it takes about 10 minutes to use. It's a super powerful tool that I think is gonna help a lot of

Activate Your GLP-1 Naturally

Philip Pape 2:37

you. Hey, this is Philip, and today's episode is sponsored by Calocurb. If you've ever been in a fat loss phase and felt like hunger was working against you, Callocurb's GLP1 activator is a game changer. Calllocurb is a natural appetite support made from amerisate, a patented bitter hops extract that activates GLP1 and other gut signals to help you feel fuller, faster. Clinical studies showed a 40% reduction in cravings and a 30% reduction in hunger within one hour. If you want to try it, go to witsandweights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your first order. The link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calllocurb.

Ghrelin: The Hunger Alarm

Philip Pape 3:21

All right, let's start with ghrelin. This is your body's hunger alarm. It's the hormone that makes you feel hungry. And it is produced primarily in your stomach lining. It does what you'd expect. It tells your brain, hey, it's time to eat. And it rises before meals and it drops after you eat. So that's pretty straightforward. But where it gets more relevant for fat loss is that when you're in a calorie deficit, the ghrelin goes up. And it's not just a little bump, it goes up a lot. A 2025 meta-analysis that pulled data from 127 studies found that weight loss consistently increases your fasting ghrelin levels. And the more weight you lose, the higher your ghrelin climbs. Now think about what that means. It's not just about the deficit itself, it's if you're actually getting leaner, if you're doing what you're trying to do, which is lose weight, the louder your body is going to scream at you to eat. And this is why the last 10 pounds, quote unquote, often feels harder than the first, let's say, 20. And so it's not a mental thing, okay? It's not just psychological. There is literally a hormonal change that is ramping up. And it's not just that it makes you hungry. Ghrelin also activates the reward centers in your brain, which makes high-calorie foods seem more appealing. So not only do you want to eat more, you actually crave the stuff that is going to more easily get you out of your deficit. So it's this vicious cycle. Now, what can you do about it? All right, we've talked about protein before, always worth mentioning in case you're not doing it. High protein meals will suppress ghrelin more effectively than a high carb or high-fat meal. And that's one of the reasons we emphasize protein at every feeding, right? It's not just for the muscle piece, but also for appetite control. You should still have balanced meals, right? It's not about just eating protein, but making sure you have the protein is important. The second thing is your meal timing consistency. Okay, not just the meal timing in general, but the fact that it's consistent because ghrelin operates on a rhythm. And we've seen this before. Your circadian rhythm is more important than a lot of us realize. Where if your body feels safe, let's use just a colloquial expression, it will it will tend to be more comfortable burning calories and not trying to make you eat more. And ghrelin will spike at times when you normally eat. So your normal schedule, your normal habits, the ghrelin's gonna go up. So if you're constantly changing your eating schedule, you're creating unpredictable spikes in your ghreline throughout the day. And you kind of know this intuitively, don't you? If you eat in a normal pattern and then one day things are off, and all of a sudden you get hungry at the same time you would normally eat, even if you're not really hungry, it's your body saying, Hey, you normally eat now. What is going on? Let's go find that food. So sticking to a pattern kind of gets ahead of that. And I'm a big fan of consistency, which leads me to the third one, sleep. Okay. Not only sleep consistency, but just having sufficient, good quality sleep because having low amounts of sleep, so sleep deprivation, will cause your ghrelin to spike as well. One study showed that restricting sleep to four hours just for a few nights increased ghrelin by 28%. So if you're sleeping like five or six hours and then wondering why you can't stop snacking and where what the root causes of your emotional eating, that could just be it, which is a lot simpler answer than having to go through the hard work of processing your triggers and your emotional baggage, let's say, even though there could be issues there to work on. And we're gonna cover this more in the next episode. And then fourth, don't crash diet. Don't use an overly aggressive, prolonged deficit because that is gonna cause ghrelin to stay elevated even after your diet ends. And this is part of why rapid weight loss often

Leptin: The Fat Thermostat

Philip Pape 7:06

leads to rapid regain, right? Moderate deficits are your friend, a moderate deficit, which is anywhere from 0.25 to up to 1% of your body weight a week, which is still pretty aggressive, but it's controlled. That combined with strategic refeeds, usually ends up giving you a longer-term sustainable fat loss phase that blunts some of that ghrelin response to the extent that you can. So that's ghrelin, that's your hunger alarm. When you diet, it gets louder. When you lose weight, it gets louder. And that's it. So now we're gonna talk about the other side of the equation. The second hormone today is gonna be leptin. And by the way, we did cover this tangentially or at a surface level in one of our in our first appetite episode, but we're going in deeper here. So leptin is like the thermostat for your body fat, where ghrelin was like, hey, let's hit the gas for your hunger. Leptin is like putting on the brakes because it's produced by your fat cells, and the more fat you carry, the more leptin you produce. And in theory, this should signal to your brain you have all this energy on your body stored and you don't have to eat as much, right? It's it's supposed to help you feel full. The problem is that when you diet, when you lose fat, your leptin also goes down. And again, quite a bit. So it's like the opposite direction of ghrelin, but it also has the opposite effect. So it's the same, it just exacerbates it, right? And it drops faster than you would predict, that then fat loss would predict. Again, just like ghrelin seems to be on an exponential accelerating curve, not a linear curve. So even a little bit of a weight loss of, say, 10% of your body weight can cause your leptin to drop by, say, 50%, right? So it's even more extreme than the ghrelin change. And then when your brain senses this, it interprets it as a signal of starvation, of, hey, I don't have food coming in. And then it responds in two ways that are gonna make fat loss harder. It's gonna make you hungrier and it's gonna decrease your metabolic rate. Okay. This is one of the important causes or levers of metabolic adaptation or thermal adaptogenesis, just a fancy way of saying your body burns fewer calories, right? Because your body is trying to conserve. So it makes things more efficient. And that's not a good thing when we're trying to lose fat or lose weight. It's why many people hit a plateau and it doesn't take that long, you know, three, four, five weeks into a fat loss phase and they're already hitting the plateau. Once we get it past the initial water weight loss, which for many also looks like a plateau, that's a different issue. But even like six, seven, eight weeks in, many of us hit a second real plateau, and that real plateau is because of this adaptation, and they're not, they don't realize their calories are dropping like a rock. I mean, for me, and I'm I feel like I'm doing everything right all the time, I might have a drop of six, seven, eight hundred calories over the course of a fat loss phase. But because I'm tracking and I know that I can adjust for it or I can plan for it, both physically and psychologically. And then there's another layer to this. If you've been overweight for a while, you may have developed a little bit of resistance to leptin. That means your brain doesn't respond to the signal even when the levels are high, meaning you have all this stored energy on your body, but your brain acts like you still need more energy. Kind of sounds like the it kind of sounds like insulin resistance, doesn't it? Right? It's effectively a form of lowered tolerance, lowered sensitivity because of the way you've treated your body to that point. You know, it's it's not your fault, but it's just how your body responds because of what it's conditioned to. Now, what can you do about this? Okay, diet breaks and refeeds, you probably may have heard they can temporarily increase your leptin. All right, it used to be believed that this was more of a not permanent thing, but like you could you could really restore your leptin and then continue the fat loss phase from a much higher position. It's not quite like that, it's only temporary. But like a higher carb day, which I like refeeds where the carbs come all the way back up to your maintenance, it can bump leptin up for that period, for that day or the next day or so. And it gives you, if nothing else, a psychological break. But there is a little bit of a physiological break that we see that may ramp up your performance for like a day. And it takes the edge off, right? It's not a magic fix, but it definitely helps. And that's why, like a two-day refeed could be a really nice way to fit it in to a seven-day week, where every five days you're doing your diet and then two-day refeed. I'm a big fan of that, but of course, you could do any different interval. You could do, you know, two weeks and then two days, or three weeks and one week, you know what I mean? That's the nonlinear fat loss approach. So resistance training, okay, first time I mentioned it all episode, which is crazy, I know, helps preserve, which helps preserve lean mass, you know, when you're in fat loss, helps preserve your muscle so you're not losing it. It can reduce the severity of leptin decline. So another reason to be training, besides the obvious, of holding on to your muscle mass. And then, of course, having more muscle keeps your metabolic rate a little bit higher as well, which partially offsets some of this adaptation. The other thing is energy flux. Energy flux matters. This is the concept of eating more while moving more instead of eating less while trying to exercise more or even move less. So higher, higher energy flux, eating more to move more, it tends to improve leptin sensitivity as well because your brain kind of hears the leptin signal better when you have more of these resources flooding in. I almost think of it like you're trying to release energy, but you need to bring the energy in, and your body likes that turnover rather than this restriction mindset. If that makes sense. So I think one of the insights for leptin is this your body has kind of a set point that it wants to defend. Yes, there is validity to that concept. Set point theory might have heard it called, you know, not quite to the extreme that some might claim. But when you lose fat, leptin does drop. Your body pushes back to try to regain that fat. And that is why going recovering to maintenance after a diet is super critical. It's also why we shouldn't be dieting for too long. And, you know, we're gonna talk about rebound hunger in a later episode of this series because I think that's an important concept. But leptin is important to understand. All right, so let me remind you where we are. We covered ghrelin, which rises during fat loss, it drives hunger. We covered leptin, which falls during fat loss, makes your brain think you're starving. Now I want to talk about the hormone

Curb Your Hunger and Cravings 1 Hour Before You Eat

Philip Pape 13:42

that is all the rage right now, and that is GLP1. But before we do that, I want to tell you about today's sponsor because it's very relevant to this GLP1 conversation before we get into it. GLP1, as we're gonna talk about, is a key hormone that signals fullness to your brain, or when it's higher, you feel satisfied when it's low, like it often is during fat loss, meals just don't fill you up the same way. And I'm a big fan of tools, especially natural tools that can help in addition to the other things we're doing. Callow Curb, who is sponsoring this episode, C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B, like curb your calories, is a natural appetite support. It's a tool that works by activating GLP1 and other gut brain signals. It's a made for it's made from a marisate, and that's a patented bitter hops extract developed in New Zealand over 15 years with 30 million in research behind it. Has very solid clinical data, it is science-based, it reduced cravings by 40%, hunger by 30%, and calorie intake by 18% within one hour. So it can help you feel fuller, faster. It's just one of those nice tools that take the edge off. Doesn't replace the fundamentals, it supports the other things you're doing. But if hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when things like protein and fiber are dialed in, it's definitely worth checking out. Go to wits and weights.com slash calllocurb for 10% off your order. The link is also in the show notes. In case you have trouble you know spelling it, it's C-A-L-O-C-U-R-B. That's wits and weights.com slash calllocurb.

GLP1: The Satiety Powerhouse

Philip Pape 15:17

All right, now let's talk about GLP1, which I would call the satiety powerhouse, something that wasn't talked about nearly as much before the new weight loss medications came out, like Ozempic and the others. GLP1 stands for glucagon glucagon like peptide one. It is produced by cells in your intestines after you eat, and it does three important things. One, it increases satiety, it helps you feel full. Two, it slows gastric emptying. That is, food stays in your stomach longer, so you feel satisfied longer. And three, it enhances your insulin secretion, and that of course helps with blood sugar control. And of course, you've you've heard of GLP1 because of Ozempic, Wagovi, Manjaro, all of these drugs, which are GLP1 receptor agonists, right? The the semaglitides or zepatide, those are the more chemical names. They mimic the hormone and then they amplify the effects of the hormone and they work really, really well, right? They're super powerful. We've got a lot of clients and members of Physique University who are taking these as a tool to help them. We had guests on the show and we've had experts on the show talking about how powerful these are. And I know there's a lot of controversy around them, but it is a legitimate mechanism that's being targeted by these. Now, for those of us, whether you're on the medication or not, understanding GLP1 is helpful, I think, because GLP1 rises naturally after you eat a meal, especially a meal that's rich in protein and fiber and certain compounds, including the bitter compounds. We mentioned calllocurb, which is a bitter compound. That is why it tends to spike and trigger your GLP1, not to the level of these pharmaceuticals, of course, but that's why there's a spectrum from, you know, totally food-based to medication to everything in between and every combination of those. So during your fat loss phase, your body's GLP1 response tends to decrease. Sound familiar? Sounds like, again, leptin and ghrelin, kind of how they operate. They go in the opposite direction where you'd where you'd want them to be. So meals that used to fill you up don't trigger as much of that satiety signal anymore. And that's another piece of the puzzle for why fat loss just gets harder over time the more you push it. Ghrelin goes up, leptin goes down, GLP goes down as well, or GLP1, you know, your body fighting you on all these hormone fronts, which is why I'm doing this episode. So, can you support GLP1 naturally? All right. If you do the fundamentals the way we talk about here, protein, fiber, meal timing, the things we've already talked about that we keep coming back to, you're still you're it's going to stimulate more GLP1 release than not having enough protein, then having too little fiber, than you know, not spreading out your meals. In fact, like front loading calories, we think might actually enhance GLP1 response. I mentioned on the last episode a study of a big breakfast versus a smaller breakfast where the calories were the same and how the big breakfast seemed to better regulate some of these hormones, right? To what extreme will it do that for you? I couldn't say. I think it's worth experimenting, though, and seeing how your hunger signals change. Of course, consistency is super important, as we mentioned before as well, right? A lot of people's bodies, though, seem to respond better to a substantial breakfast versus a massive dinner. And again, there's some circadian rhythm and cortisol and like day-night cycle stuff going on there because of our human biology in the context of you know Earth rotating relative to the sun. Okay. That's how we evolved on this planet. But then there's other compounds, and I mentioned Callocurb, who sponsored this episode. It's very fascinating the how something like a bitter food, or we talked about capsaicin, right? Spicy foods, how they, these different compounds activate receptors in your gut that then stimulate the release of GLP1, even if you're not eating the corresponding food. So this is kind of one of those ways we can trick our body a little bit. And it's the mechanism behind some of these supplements, like callow curb that I mentioned earlier. And then when we think of whole foods versus processed foods, you know, solid whole foods that take time to digest also tend to stimulate more GLP1 than liquid calories or rapidly absorb processed foods. I just had a call with a client who is in a fat loss phase now and he loved to have his protein shakes and but is experiencing a little bit of hunger. And he eats mostly whole foods. And I said, look, you know, that protein shake is probably an opportunity to swap it out with some really solid whole food, like a lean meat, for example. But even something like eggs with egg whites, you know, something that will take a little Longer to digest because it's just going to make you feel a little folder. Yeah, you're getting your protein, but you might be missing out on these other opportunities. So the GLP1 can be your friend during fat loss as long as you support it through your food choices, your meal timing, you know, targeted supplementation if that's what you need. And again, this is for people not on medication. Even if you're on those medications, you still want to do these things, if nothing else, than to amplify the process. And also, if you're planning to come off the drugs eventually and supplant those with

PYY, CCK, NPY, And Amylin

Philip Pape 20:31

natural alternatives. All right. So we've covered the big three: ghrelin, leptin, and GLP1. But there are some other hormones and some peptides. I'm talking about natural in your body, right? No supplements here, no nothing external, that support appetite regulation that we never talk about and are hardly ever talked about. So these are pretty cool. All right. Nerd out with me for a second. The first one is called peptide YY or PYY for short. And this is a peptide released from your gut after you eat. Sound familiar? This happens, seems like there's a lot of things that happen based on how we eat, which makes sense because that's our energy source. Especially when you have a meal that is high in protein and fiber. Again, same thing as GLP1. It works alongside GLP1. When PYY is high, you feel satisfied. When you lose weight, it tends to increase. Again, familiar pattern, isn't it? So this is another reason that hunger after a diet is often so intense. Why we like to recover very quickly after a diet. The next one is called CCK, colosysteokinin. And I talked about this in the first episode, I think two episodes ago, two solo episodes ago. This is released when fat and protein get into your small intestine. And this is pretty cool, right? Your whole uh digestive tract gets triggered at different points. And and, you know, you don't have to understand all this necessarily, but it all works together to explain this. So when CCK or when fat and protein go to your small intestine, it releases CCK, it slows down the gastric emptying. In other words, it prevents stuff in your gut from emptying out of your gut, which then makes you feel a little bit fuller, right? Because there's more stuff there, just to simplify it. And these are all signals to your brain. It's one of the reasons that meals with a little bit of fats in there tend to be more satisfying than those without. And a lot of you on keto are like, yeah, I know that. Like high fat meals tend to fill me up. Just so you know, protein is the most satisfying, followed by fat and then followed by carbs. So having the protein and the fat is a fantastic combination for that very reason. The next one is NPY, neuropeptide Y. This is a hunger stimulating signal. Notice we have a little bit on the hunger side, and we have a few of these on the satiety side. They kind of go hand in hand. So when leptin drops, right? Leptin, which is triggered by your fat cells, or when you're stressed, NPY goes up and it drives you to seek high calorie foods. And this is the biological basis of stress eating. Cortisol increases NPY, and then suddenly that ice cream in the freezer, for me, the peanut butter cup ice cream, what the fudge, is calling your name. So that's NPY. And then we have amylen, A M Y-L-I-N, amylen. This is released with insulin and it promotes meal ending satiation, a very specific mechanism. It slows gastric emptying at the end of a meal and it helps you stop eating when you've had enough. So it may not be the end of your meal in your head, but it's the concept of if you eat mindfully and take your time, you give your body enough time to trigger this and feel full when you actually are full rather than overconsume because you're just scarfing down the food. So what's interesting is amylen doesn't cause adaptation, metabolic slowdown, like other appetite suppressing mechanisms too. Whether that's relevant or not, I don't know, but I'm just mentioning that something I learned. So, how does all this connect? Well, when you're in a fat loss phase, almost every one of these signals shifts in the direction that makes you hungrier. Ghrelin up, leptin down, GLP1 down, PYY down, NPY up. Your body is mounting this massive war, this coordinated defense to prevent you from losing more weight. That's what it's trying to do. Okay, that's it. It's not your age, it's not your, you know, perimenopause hormones, it's not any of these other things. Those things may have other factors involved, but this is a massive piece of weight loss resistance, of hunger, of all of these things going on. So if you understand this, it's not meant to discourage you, right? But to empower you because when you know what's happening, you can take actions to counteract it. What are those actions? We've pretty much alluded to them already, but I'm gonna list them real quick. High protein and fiber at every meal to stimulate GLP1, PYY, and CCK, and to suppress Ghrelin. So you gotta keep that protein and fiber high during fat loss. Adequate sleep keeps ghrelin in check. Stress management prevents your NPY from spiking. Resistance training, pretty much for everything, but specifically, it also really helps with leptin sensitivity. Using strategic refeeds can be helpful to temporarily boost your leptin. And then, of course, having consistent meal timing, likely with a decent sized breakfast, to help again with your rhythm of your ghrelin so you don't feel hungry just because you're habitually eating at a certain time and now one day you don't eat at that time. So, okay, it's a lot, but I think it's also super consistent with the fundamentals that we talk about. Quick reminder: I do want you to stay around for a few more minutes because I want to share a protocol you can use the next time you feel hungry between meals. Okay. Really helpful tool that I've developed over time with clients, and I think it's gonna be helpful for you. I do want to leave you with something to reframe all of this. I'm a big fan of the the psycho, the behavioral psychology of this stuff, okay? Because a lot of you, be honest with yourself, you think of these hormones as another thing in the way, another obstacle, another, maybe it's an excuse, another thing to blame. And I know a lot of marketers on social media love to blame

How to Consume 18% Fewer Calories

Philip Pape 26:10

hormones for everything, okay? And you can, you know, personify these things, like say, oh, ghrelin is this the I think uh Dr. Oz back in the day called it the gremlin or something, right? The enemy that's making you hungry. Leptin is the enemy that prevents you losing weight, you know, GLP1, whatever. So here's how I want you to think about it. Okay, these hormones are super valuable and super important in keeping you alive and helping you thrive as a human being. And and therefore, we can use them

The Hunger Wave Check Protocol

Philip Pape 26:42

as signals, as data, in when we think like an engineer and have curiosity about them. Ghrelin makes sure that you eat enough to survive. Leptin is kind of like your energy status to help your body allocate your resources the right way. GOP1 helps you stop eating before you overdo it, hence why the drugs work so well at preventing you from eating as much. So the problem is in the hormones. Hormones are not the problem. Okay. The problem, in my opinion, is that the modern food environment, your stress, your lack of sleep, the aggressive dieting strategies, and how this is all pushed and marketed, and all of this bad information online telling people to do these things are pushing the hormones into a state that is on the edge or into an extreme that they weren't, I'll say designed for. I mean, they would design is a bad word. We've evolved to have these hormones, they're doing what they do, but you're living in a state where they are stressed to the max and pushed to these extremes. So the solution, of course, isn't to, you know, try to fight against that, but create the conditions, create the environment where these things are at least working, if not optimally, not to that level of an extreme. Does that make sense? So we already mentioned those things. I'm not going to repeat them with the protein, fiber, sleep, stress, all of that stuff, resistance training, all of that is fantastic. But the reframe is that your hormones aren't the problem, that they're a source of feedback to you. That when we talk about listening to your body, that is a big piece of it. And it's not like you have to measure the hormones, right? It's the symptoms that come from the hormones that are telling you what's going on. And then you understand, okay, when I'm in this phase and I feel this way, this is why. And this is what I can do to either dial it back a little bit or, you know, psychologically deal with it in the way I need to. All right. Remember what I promised at the beginning: a simple protocol for handling hunger that helps you distinguish physical hunger from psychological hunger. I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that in just a moment. So stick around. Hey, this is Philip. And a quick reminder about today's sponsor, Calocurb. If hunger has been the hardest part of your fat loss phase, even when everything else is dialed in, check out CaloCurb. It's a natural GLP1 activating supplement with clinical data showing 40% fewer cravings and 30% less hunger within one hour, leading to 18% fewer calories, so you can stick to your fat loss plan. Go to witsandweights.com slash calocurb for 10% off your first order. Link is in the show notes. That's witsandweights.com slash calocurb. All right, here is that hunger protocol that I promised. I call it the hunger wave check. Okay, hunger wave check. The next time that hunger hits you between your meals, okay, which is very common during fat loss, instead of just reaching for food, I want you to do this. So this is this is intention, this is mindfulness. First, I want you to rate your hunger in the moment on a scale of one to ten. That's it. Just whatever that means to you. One is the least hungry, ten is just ravenous crazy hunger, right? Because most people don't even stop to think about it. Most people don't quantify it. They just feel hungry and they react. We're not going to do that. We're going to put a number on it. One to ten. Second, I want you to set a timer. Go on your iPhone or Android, open the timer app, and set a timer for 15 minutes. And after you set that timer, I want you to go drink some water or drink some tea or do something mildly engaging, a distraction. Answer some emails, play your ukulele, take a short walk, whatever. It's only 15 minutes. Okay. Third, when your timer goes off, I want you to reach your hunger again. Did it go up? Did it stay the same or did it drop? That's it. Now, here's why this works. That's all I'm telling you to do. This is a this is why it works. Ghrelin, your hunger hormone, operates in waves. We talked about meal time and consistency. So you can take advantage of that. Graylin peaks about for for like 20 to 30 minutes when it's trying to tell you to eat. And then it subsides even if you don't eat. So if your hunger dropped significantly because you did this exercise, okay, and you may need to do 20 minutes instead of 15, whatever. If your hunger dropped based on your rating before and after, that was a ghrelin wave. That's what I mean by wave. And therefore, it it was physical, but it was also temporary and just hormone-driven. But if your hunger stayed the same or went up, then your body's like, no, I actually really need to eat right now. And it could be because you normally eat at that time and you seriously do. You should be eating, which goes back to, hey, let's keep our meals consistent. This also interrupts the autopilot that drives many of you with emotional eating, with boredom-based eating. Okay. There's many causes of emotional eating, but these are big ones. Because the pause itself creates awareness. And I'm all for awareness across the board. Now I'm going to give you a bonus tip. A bonus tip is to log these moments on a piece of paper, in your phone, whatever, in a diary. Just a quick note. You say 3 p.m., I started at seven, hunger, and it dropped to three after 20 minutes. That's it, like before and after. Now you could add other things like how you felt, what emotions are going through your head, because maybe there are other triggers going on. But over time, you're going to see patterns. It's like logging your food. It's like logging your training. It's that's that's what we do, guys. That's what engineering is all about. So maybe 3 p.m. every day is always a Grayland spike, but maybe it correlates with stressful meetings. And that date is just a gold mine to understand your own hunger signals. So I want you to try it this week, see what you learn about yourself. And that's it for today's episode. On the next one, we're gonna take everything we covered today and look at the two biggest external factors that disrupt these hormones, which then cause things like extra belly fat and sugar cravings and lots of other things that none of us like. And if you've ever noticed that you eat more when, for example, you're tired or you're stressed, we're gonna talk about why and what to do about it. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And the next time hunger hits hard in the middle of a dieting phase, you'll know exactly what's happening and what to do. This is Philip Ape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.