Many people are not satisfied with their looks. Having a flat stomach is appealing, yeah. But what’s more important is health.

You can have a little belly, a big belly, and a normal sized stomach that gives you the right signal for appetite. That’s ok.

But if your stomach is stretched, it will not be able to send the exactly correct signals for whether you have eaten enough or not.

You may not be able to directly shrink your stomach, but you can shrink your appetite and aid yourself in eating less to get healthier and fitter.

With time, this can shrink your stomach if it has been stretched by overeating.

A stomach is like a balloon, it will stretch to fill when you eat and drink and will go back to its original size when it is empty.

The appetite is the urge you get to eat. Having an appetite is usually a sign of health, a nicely working immune system.

In a healthy and fit organism appetite appears as a signal for you to feed your body with nutrients and calories.

But many obese people have appetite urges even though their bodies have been fed with more than what they needed.

The false alarms create urges that will drive people to eat when they don’t need to.

The body has extra calories, extra energy, and it cannot use it right now. So it tries to store it as fat.

How to Shrink Your Appetite:

Can stomach size affects appetite?

The brain and the stomach regulate the appetite in several ways.

One way is to transmit messages via the nerves when the stomach stretches to a certain amount.

The Vagus nerve is an example. It is the main nerve that provides sensations to the stomach and transmits messages to the brain.

This nerve has different monitoring nerve cells, these nerve cells send messages to the brain about how full the stomach is.

When the stomach is fully stretched with food, the vagus nerve will send signals to the brain to stop or slow down.
 
While shrinking your stomach is impossible, it is possible to change how your stomach adjusts to feelings of hunger and fullness.

Your stomach can feel fuller with smaller amounts of food, research shows, however there are many other factors for increased appetite.

Hormonal imbalance can mess with appetite as well. Another factor that can stretch stomach size is eating too quickly.

Eating too fast can skip the necessary communication between hormones and nerves to signal your brain that you are full.

This in result can make you eat more than you should, and with time, stretch your stomach.

On the other hand, when the stomach is empty, the nerves in the stomach send messages to the brain.

This influences the hormones in the body, like ghrelin, also called the hunger hormone, as it stimulates hunger.

Controlling the appetite is effective in maintaining a healthy weight, only if you keep it in the frame of what’s normal and healthy.

5 tips to help you shrink your appetite:

1. Eat several small meals throughout the day instead of eating large meals.

This will help to train your stomach to increase the feeling of satisfaction and fullness with small meals. This will also help keep your blood sugar levels steady, which reduces the cravings for sweets or carbohydrates.

2. Try different aids that can help you.

You can experiment with intermittent fasting. You can eat 0 calorie foods. Or you can try using an appetite suppressant, but only if everything else fails to help you.

3. Drink water before a meal.

This will help to stretch the stomach and will increase the feeling of fullness before you start eating.

4. Eat a nutrient filled diet.

Eat meals with many healthy options that include proteins, healthy fats such as nuts​ and avocados. The cells in the lining of your stomach recognize them as being beneficial to the body and will less likely increase the hunger hormones.

5. When you get a craving, wait for at least 10 to 15 minutes before eating.

Sometimes it just takes a little time and patience to help yourself avoid an unhealthy decision. Test your cravings by giving. them time, if it’s just a craving after 15 minutes it will fade. If you are really hungry you will know, and you can manage to not eat for 15 minutes.

How long does it take to shrink your appetite?

Psychologists say that the actions that we carry out daily are results of automatic, unconscious processes or habits, including the act of eating.

The good news is that you can use this dynamic in your favor, to replace unhealthy eating habits with healthy ones.

It takes a bit of effort initially, but according to research, our brain requires anywhere between 21 to 90 days to cement a new habit.

After 3 weeks whatever you are doing routinely becomes an unconscious habit that you do mostly on automatic.

If you are persistent in the beginning, you can program yourself to start eating less in just a few weeks.