**Overcoming the Crisis: How to Properly Cope with Appetite and Hunger**

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During the weight loss process, there are times when you crave foods that are detrimental to weight loss, but blindly rejecting these foods can be bleak and even depressing. For obese people, negative and passive thoughts can easily affect their physical and mental health. It's crucial to overcome this hurdle. Appetite is not something to be suppressed, but rather something to be cultivated.

Hunger is different from the desire to eat. Hunger is a phenomenon that occurs after all food has been digested. If blood sugar and fat levels are below normal, the body will send out hunger signals.

Most importantly, there is a desire to eat even when one is not hungry. This shows that the body experiences hunger, while the mind experiences the desire to eat.

When you feel full, frequent cravings can be quite distressing. Eating foods that are the enemy of weight loss-sweets or oily foods-can make it even more painful. Not being able to eat the foods you crave can also lead to significant mental stress.

Suppressing hunger is a foolish act that ignores health; you must eat when you are hungry. However, you should not blindly give in to your cravings, but learn to control your appetite.

In this situation, it's best to change your mindset. What if you replaced "I can't eat" with something like "It's okay not to eat"? I think everyone has the ability to control their desires.

Suppressing one's appetite is foolish; one should moderate one's appetite, which means eating appropriately. Of course, moderation is not easy; some people believe that it's better to not eat at all than to eat less.

Because of this mindset, I haven't succeeded in losing weight yet. If you suppress your appetite for a long time, the suppressed appetite will lead to binge eating when you return to normal life.

Therefore, you should eat in moderation when you feel like it. Generally, the more you suppress your appetite, the stronger your cravings will become. Of course, cravings may not be good for weight loss or health, but if suppressing your appetite causes mental stress, it can actually harm your health.

Hormones secreted when you're in a good mood are generally better than those secreted when you're under stress. Of course, if you're eating ice cream, bread, cookies, and pizza every day, that's a different story. As long as you eat three meals a day on time, it's generally not a big problem to occasionally eat what you crave.

I eat pizza occasionally. I used to love it, but after learning about the harmful effects of pizza ingredients, I completely gave it up. Strangely enough, even knowing pizza is bad for my health, I sometimes crave it. Because my diet is quite healthy, eating a little pizza doesn't affect my health, and occasionally eating it even gives me a sense of satisfaction.

When you really crave a certain food, you should carefully analyze whether you "just want to try it" or "want to eat a lot." At this point, you'll find that you don't actually want to eat a lot; you just want to taste it. This shows that what we want is not quantity, but flavor.

When eating, you should carefully consider "what I want." If you only want to fill your stomach and don't chew your food properly, wolfing it down will hinder your weight loss.

To savor the flavor, food must be slowly chewed in the mouth, constantly moving it around with the tongue. Never wolf it down. Chewing slowly and thoroughly can prevent overeating and also improve mood.

When eating, avoid consuming large chunks of food. For example, when eating ice cream, don't gulp down a whole tub with a large spoon. Instead, use a beautiful glass or plate to serve the ice cream, and then savor it elegantly, like a princess. This will help you shift your mood and achieve true satisfaction.

Feeling regretful or blaming yourself after eating, such as "I ate again," "What am I going to do about gaining weight?" or "I'm hopeless," will hinder your ability to control your appetite.

The desire to eat arises because some desires are not satisfied. This desire might be for food recently eaten, or it might be a transference of other desires to appetite. Regardless, if we regret eating afterward, our desire remains unfulfilled, thus creating another urge to eat.

From now on, don't regret what you eat. If you frequently think, "Ah, this food is so delicious," you'll easily feel satisfied and less likely to crave more food. The more you try to control your cravings, the stronger your appetite will become. Similarly, if you regret what you eat, it's even easier to trigger cravings.

Some people force themselves not to regret their food after eating it, but even these people inevitably feel uneasy about gaining weight. In this case, it's essential to carefully analyze the reasons for this anxiety. Wouldn't it be unfair if the anxiety stemmed from incorrect knowledge?

Many people believe that ice cream and chocolate will turn into fat in the body, so they feel regret, anxiety, or even stress after eating ice cream. In fact, this understanding is completely wrong.

Even when we lie motionless in bed, we still expend a lot of energy. Our heart keeps beating, consuming a significant amount of energy to supply blood to all parts of the body. In addition, the body produces feces and urine, while simultaneously generating hair, beard, and nails, and continuously producing blood. This process is called metabolism.

Not all the food we eat can be converted into fat. Normally, the body digests and absorbs food through metabolism. Weight gain only occurs when the calories consumed exceed the energy required for metabolism.

Some people mistakenly believe that eating three meals a day makes it easy to gain weight, but the key issue is not the number of meals, but whether the food consumed exceeds the calories required by the human body.

In other words, we must consider the total calories we consume. For example, if you only eat two spoonfuls of rice all day and then have an ice cream in the afternoon, the ice cream won't all be converted into fat. Conversely, eating ice cream late at night after three full meals will lead to weight gain. In this case, it's not the ice cream that causes weight gain, but rather the total calories consumed throughout the day exceeding the energy required for metabolism. In daily life, it's not simply "eating food" that causes weight gain; only "eating too much" leads to obesity.