As we know, there are several reasons why we can feel a sense of hunger: reasons that have little or nothing to do with real hunger, for example we can feel hungry out of boredom, because we have established bad habits (we eat in front of the TV, we eat after dinner or after lunch something delicious, even if our body does not have the slightest need and indeed we are full), by gluttony, as a response to stress, fatigue, frustrations.

Today we see together how the perception of hunger, therefore the sense of hunger, may not depend on how much we ate , but on how much we “believe” we have eaten. This is a very important thing to consider, and I’ll explain why. Let’s say one day you decide to have a very light lunch because in the evening you have a night out, maybe you are invited to a party. You’ve kept yourself all day with a salad. You arrive hungry in the evening, but after a first course, you realize that you are full.
Does this typically stop you from eating again?
In all likelihood NO. The reason is that we tell ourselves that we can overdo it, because that little eating during the day makes us feel entitled to continue eating even with a full stomach

This is another reason why meal replacements don’t work for everyone. We eat a bar for lunch, we had a shake for breakfast, in theory we have a free meal at dinner, but in practice we know we shouldn’t overdo it. A steak with vegetables would fill us up, but what happens inside of us? We feel good, after all we ate little during the day. So yes to encore or some gluttony, with the result that the meal replacement program doesn’t work as it should. This supercompensation occurs when psychology affects the sense of hunger more than the belly.
And at Christmas? If we have been on a diet before, at Christmas we run the risk of eating twice as much because we feel confident, we have been good,therefore at the appropriate time we eat triple.

A new study highlights the phenomenon of the perception of hunger at the expense of a sense of real hunger. Two groups of people are served omelets: in the first case, people are informed that they are eating an omelet of two small eggs; in the second, four eggs. In fact, both groups are given three-egg omelets, but the group that thought they ate less reported a perception of greater hunger after just an hour after the meal ( source ).

In order not to fall victim to this deception of the mind , experts recommend two things: the first is to put all the food we will eat on one plate, avoiding picking from other serving dishes. The second is not to eat absent-mindedly, while watching TV or worse, working: this is because looking at the food on your plate and paying attention to what you eat makes us satiate more, as it gives the brain the right message: hey, nice, i’m eating!
Furthermore, there are techniques to defuse the perceived rather than real sense of hunger:  one of the most accredited is the hunger scale, which I am talking about here .