Always Tired, Hungry or Craving Sugar? Here's Why

Now, there's been increasing interest in medications as a tool for supporting appetite regulation.

We're seeing them in the media everywhere.

But they're not always appropriate or accessible for everyone.

When we zoom out, what are some of the key mechanisms that influence our appetite? And how can people support this naturally through diet and lifestyle strategies?

Look, I think... cortisol is one hormone that I've done a bit of research and study on, and that can actually also regulate sort of like stress eating and like appetite, but also just not eating properly, not eating enough protein and not enough fiber.

Look, I think medications are very valuable for, you know, if someone has blood pressure, cholesterol, and food noise is yet another thing that's really important.

Huge barrier.

It's a huge area.

And if it's causing people to not be able to make informed choices and timely choices in their foods, I can see the benefit there.

But it also means like a lot of these things also switch off appetites.

And so we've got to be careful not to under eat and to undernourish ourselves.

at the same time.

So it's important to eat well and get sound advice, evidence-based advice as to what to eat.

And also just recognise if you do have some cravings.

It's no different to, you know, cravings for other substances as well.

We've seen that in the research.

Yeah.

And I mean, with cravings, is it something that we need to I mean, I hate talking about, you know, eliminating cravings altogether because I think, which you sort of spoke to a little bit before, it's about like finding the root cause of these cravings.

What advice do you give for people that are trying to navigate cravings in general or they're finding that they're always reaching for that chocolate bar after dinner or they feel like something sugary at 3 p.m. to give them that afternoon pick me up? Where can we start?

I mean, the first place to start would be, when has this started? Like, is it just, is it something that started last week, two weeks ago? Or is it sort of, is it, have you been on and off yo-yo dieting? Has it been something that is well entrenched in from childhood? So, you know, we have to, I have to have these conversations with my patients all the time.

When did you start kind of reaching for things? Look, a typical thing is people reach for sort of sugary things at about three o'clock in the afternoon, because They're bored.

Guilty.

Like, you know, well, they've been doing something for eight hours and doing anything for eight hours is going to – you want a break.

So they reach for something.

And, like, the brain is designed to tell you when it's actually running out of fuel.