Years of Hunger. Was It Dopamine All Along?

How many of you have seen The Hunger Games? How many of you have ever wondered what it would feel like to experience a hunger that never ends?

Over the past week, I have gone through quite a few metabolic changes, mainly as a result of the physical activity I have been doing. Regular exercise seems to have an incredible ability to correct some of the bad habits our bodies have developed — even when that body happens to belong to a whale. One of the biggest changes I have noticed is that my sensation of hunger has completely changed. Just one week of 60 to 90 minutes of physical activity every day, divided into two or three sessions, has made the kind of hunger I used to experience disappear.

Now I am beginning to understand why I never managed to lose weight before, despite trying diets and exercise. First of all, I simply never exercised consistently for long enough. I have noticed that I need at least 30 minutes of continuous movement before I start feeling something change in my body. My glucose sensor helps me monitor my levels, and I have noticed that when I exercise for at least 30 minutes, my glucose tends to remain stable for several hours afterward. At the same time, the dizziness I used to experience whenever my glucose dropped toward lower values has disappeared. My sumo wrestler body has finally learned that a blood glucose level of 110 mg/dL is not dangerous. In fact, it is what most people would call normal. Can you imagine the surprise?

But back to hunger...

What I experienced for all those years wasn't really hunger. In German, there is a term for it: Heißhunger — an intense craving, an almost ravenous hunger. But what happens when you don't even realize that this is what you're experiencing? For a long time, I simply could not go to bed without eating. It was something I genuinely couldn't do. If I wasn't already in bed by 11 p.m. and hadn't eaten anything in the previous three hours, I would feel such an enormous emptiness that there was absolutely no way I could close my eyes and fall asleep. What I realize now is that the emptiness wasn't really in my stomach. It was in my head. It was a craving that appeared regardless of whether I was actually hungry or not. Now I can recognize a completely different kind of hunger. I can choose to ignore it without feeling as if I'm about to faint, and the cravings themselves have disappeared. How? I don't know exactly. The only thing that has changed is that I exercise.

How many of you could see an open bag of chips sitting on the table and resist putting your hand inside? If I'm being truthful, even if the bag had been closed, I probably would have opened it anyway. Many times, when I used to buy chips, they served one very specific purpose: giving me enough energy to start preparing the actual meal. Another version of the same phenomenon happens when you buy meat and sausages for a barbecue, but while you're grilling them, you prepare a few smaller ones to eat while you're cooking. How stupid is that? Eating food just so you have enough energy to prepare... food? Well, that was me not very long ago, and I am convinced that a large part of the population lives in some version of the same cycle. That is one of the reasons we are all becoming obese. The Americans are leading the way. Their beloved leader Trump kept saying “America First!” — and apparently they took that seriously in this department too. But lately, Europe has been closing the gap. More and more chubby Europeans are appearing everywhere. And me? At 180 kilograms, I am definitely American at heart. I could play in their first league without hesitation.

Earlier, I asked how many of you would be able to resist eating those chips. Well, the question itself is a trap, because the real answer should be: “I don't crave chips.” At the moment, I have lost those cravings simply by exercising three times a day. And I think this may be part of the answer to why so many of us struggle to lose weight. We are trapped inside this Heißhunger — this eternal hunger that follows us from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed. Some of us probably even dream about food while awake. It can become such a powerful sensation, so closely tied to reward and dopamine, that it starts to resemble an addiction. In the very real sense of the word. Just as a smoker struggles to resist lighting a cigarette, or a drug addict struggles to resist the next dose, an obese person may struggle to resist shoving down a bag of chips, two Cokes and three hamburgers — and still somehow claim that they haven't had lunch yet.

How are you supposed to lose weight? How are you supposed to live a healthy life if, in the end, you are essentially addicted to food? If part of what we interpret as hunger is actually a craving generated by the brain and reinforced by reward pathways, how many times can we say no before eventually giving in again?

Here comes my biggest revelation: within a single week, I seem to have dramatically weakened this reward-driven feedback loop. I no longer have cravings telling me that I need to eat at certain times or that I need specific kinds of food. The hunger I feel now seems to come from my stomach. It doesn't make me sweat or restless. I can choose to ignore it. And even more importantly, feeling full is completely different. Today, I can eat an omelette and actually feel full. Where the hell did I used to put an omelette, three sandwiches, bacon and two yogurts? I have no idea. Maybe there was a hole in my stomach and it has finally closed.

My advice is simple: try exercising three times a day, for at least 30 minutes continuously each time, and really pay attention to what happens inside your body. Over time, you may notice your cravings becoming weaker or perhaps even disappearing. For me, that was the first sign that something fundamental was changing. And I mean really disappearing. For example, I have practically armored my car with Coke, chocolate, cookies and different kinds of biscuits. After experiencing repeated episodes of what appeared to be relative or “pseudo-hypoglycemia,” I decided I wanted a Plan B — a backup supply in case I ever developed genuine hypoglycemia. The reality is that I haven't needed it. My body somehow seems to be getting better and better at maintaining its glucose levels. So now I drive around with about three kilograms of chocolate and four liters of Coke in my car. I see them when I get behind the wheel and I see them when I get out of the car, but they never make me want to consume them.

So move. Exercise. Pay attention to what your body tells you. I will keep you updated on how this develops and what I learn from the experience. See you all in the next post.