Getting Used To It

Hunger Is the Hardest Part

There's no easy answer. But there is an honest one.

I'm going to be straight with you: I don't have a great trick for getting used to hunger.

It's pain. It's discomfort. It's one of the hardest things to push through consistently, day after day, when the goal is weeks or months away and your body is telling you to eat right now. I've dealt with it myself over the years, and I've made my peace with it — but I won't pretend the answer is some mindset hack or breathing exercise. It's just hard.

What I can tell you is that you do adapt. The body adjusts. The same way it adjusts to diet soda.

The Diet Soda Principle

A lot of people say they can't give up regular soda because diet tastes terrible. And honestly, the first few weeks? They're right. It does taste different. But drink it for two or three months, and something shifts. It starts tasting normal. Then one day you try a regular soda and it tastes overwhelmingly sweet.

Your palate recalibrated. The same thing happens with hunger.

The first weeks of eating less are uncomfortable. Your body is used to a certain volume of food and it's not shy about telling you something is missing. But it adjusts. The signals quiet down. What felt unbearable at week one becomes manageable by month two.

The problem is most people don't make it to month two.

Looking at Food Differently

I look at food as the enemy of my health goals. That's not a healthy relationship in the emotional sense — I know that. But it's the mental frame that works for me. Food is not neutral. It has consequences. Every time I eat something I don't need, there's a price, and I've decided I'm not willing to pay it.

Is hunger uncomfortable? Yes. But being hungry and losing weight feels better than being full and gaining it. When I frame it that way, the choice becomes easier — not easy, but easier.

The long-term outcome has to be more real to you than the short-term discomfort. If it's not, the discomfort wins every time.

When You Genuinely Can't Push Through It

Some people can manage hunger through discipline and mental framing. Others can't — and I mean that without judgment. Hunger can be genuinely overwhelming, hormonally driven, and not something willpower alone can override for months at a time.

That's where Phentermine comes in.

It's not a shortcut or a cheat. It's a medication that addresses a real physiological challenge — the pain of hunger — so that the other work of losing weight can actually happen. I understand exactly what it does because I've watched it work in patients for decades. I understand it well enough to know I'd probably benefit from it myself.

I won't take it. Partly because it's not appropriate for me to self-prescribe, and partly because I already have trouble sleeping and Phentermine would make that significantly worse. Some patients adjust to the insomnia side effect fairly quickly. I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't be one of them.

But for the right patient, it removes the biggest barrier — and that's not a small thing.

The Honest Bottom Line

This part of the process is uphill. The path is covered in ice. I'm not going to tell you otherwise.

What I can tell you is that it gets easier if you stay on it long enough — and that if you need help managing the hunger to get there, that help exists.

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