Feeling hungry is one of the hardest parts of losing weight. But new Danish research suggests that if you can keep the kilos off for a year, that feeling may subside.

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Researchers tracked the hormone levels of 20 obese people who went on an ultra low-kilojoule diet for two months, losing an average of 13 percent of their body weight. The subjects then went on a less extreme maintenance diet for a year and their weight stayed stable.

The researchers found that the hormone ghrelin, which makes you feel hungry, spiked by 23 percent after the subjects’ initially shed their kilos.

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That’s right: As if losing those kilos wasn’t hard enough, your body fights your efforts by sending your appetite into overdrive. That may be your body’s survival instincts at work, the researchers say.

But over the next year, the subjects’ ghrelin levels dropped back down by 7 percent.

Your body seems to adapt to its new weight slowly over the course of a year, says study coauthor Dr Signe Sørensen Torekov. As your body gets used to its new weight, it tapers off production of your hunger hormone.

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The researchers also found that two types of hormones that help you feel full—GLP-1 and PYY3-36—increased steadily over the year following the subjects’ weight loss.

The researchers think that extra body fat may hinder your cells’ ability to produce those satiety hormones, so losing the fat and keeping it off may allow the hormone production to return to normal.

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The findings suggest that if you can maintain your goal weight for a year, you’ll start to feel less hungry on an everyday basis, so maintaining your weight will become easier, Torekov says.

Although the study was very small, Torekov thinks the results would hold true for most people who lost a similar amount of kilos.