fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2622 ]

[ SECRET POST #2622 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2622 ⌋

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So, I've decided to finally get serious about losing weight. I know there's no magic fix so I'm trying to watch what I eat and work out more but it's frustrating. How do you deal with feeling constantly hungry? I know people say you shouldn't feel hungry when you're trying to lose weight or you won't stick with it, but the way I see it, it's pretty much inevitable. I don't think my diet is *that* bad...I do almost all of my own cooking and hardly ever eat anything processed, try to buy as much organic stuff as I can, stay away from sweets for the most part, etc. But the fact is, I eat way too much. When I look up what's supposed to be the correct serving/portion size of something, I always eat like twice that much. Even with exercising a lot more, I know I'm not going to lose weight unless I eat less, and I guess always feeling hungry is just something I'm going to have to deal with.

I guess eventually I'll probably get used to eating less, or my stomach will shrink, or whatever, but in the meantime, it's really annoying always feeling hungry.

Anyone have any tips/advice?

Drink more water. Eat more fruits and veggies. When you're hungry, drink water and munch on apples or carrots or something. For meals, look at what you're eating and try and figure out why you're not staying full between meals. Add more filling foods and more veggies to all your meals.

I think it took me a couple weeks before I adjusted to my new way of eating, and yeah I was hungry for a lot of those couple of weeks but it really does go away pretty fast.

Logging my food at a place like myfitnesspal.com has really helped me be more mindful of portion sizes and calories and stuff, maybe that could help you as well?

Low glycemic index foods. Stuff that will stick with you through the day. Oatmeal, whole grains, etc.

Here's the list from Wikipedia, I donno how accurate it is:

Low GI 55 or less:
beans (white, black, pink, kidney, lentil, soy, almond, peanut, walnut, chickpea); small seeds (sunflower, flax, pumpkin, poppy, sesame); most whole intact grains (durum/spelt/kamut wheat, millet, oat, rye, rice, barley); most vegetables, most sweet fruits (peaches, strawberries, mangos); tagatose; fructose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index

SA

Also, your first meal of the day (whatever time that is), should be a substantial one, and split the rest of your meals up into staggered snacks (healthy ones) over the day/evening. It seems counter-intuitive, but days I eat a big breakfast, I can literally skip supper and not notice it. Days I cut back/skip breakfast? I don't notice it at lunch, for some reason, but by suppertime I'm ready to EAT ALL THE FOOD.

DA

I've heard this advice a lot and for a lot of people it works, but for some reason when I have a big breakfast I seem to get hungry even sooner. Now I have a moderate breakfast with coffee or tea, then lunch and dinner with a snack at night.

To OP - it might take some experimenting but try switching your meals/snack schedules around to see what works best for you. Anon above me works well with a big breakfast, but that makes me super hungry - it's all about finding what works with your body.

AYRT

Could depend on your age, too? When I was younger, eating a big breakfast dragged me down to the ground, but I always ate a good lunch and huge supper. Now that I'm older, it seems to have switched around on me, and I'm not sure why. *shrug* Whatever works, right? (I'm standard weight/BMI for my height BTW.)

Yes, do experiment, OP, I should have added "this is what works for me now" sorry!

ayrt

So funny, we seem to be opposites! I used to eat bigger breakfasts and it would energize me, but alas no longer. So funny how bodies are different. I'm about 20lbs overweight for my height, so idk if that might have something to do with it, but I think generally it's just how I work now.

Nayrt

I find that eating a large breakfast keeps me going a long time and I wind up eating a late lunch. The late lunch leads to not being very hungry by supper, so I eat a small supper.

It might depend on what you eat for breakfast as well, so playing around with foods and different carb/protien ratios may help, too.

This. It's also good for balancing your blood sugar, so you might end up feeling better as well.

I've heard that getting enough sleep is important for weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight, but I've also heard that the timing of when you eat can affect your ability to get quality sleep (I don't have links, it was something I heard on the radio a while back). Specifically, your sleep cycle and the act of fasting overnight are linked and eating too close to bedtime - even if it's just a cracker - can disrupt your sleep. Try to get to bed at a reasonable hour so you get enough sleep and try to stop eating a couple of hours before you plan to go to bed. You will not only get more sleep and better sleep, which in turn should help with maintaining your weight, but you will probably eat less if you eliminate any late-night snacking.

Consider your dental health. Snacking and sipping on anything other than water between meals can be bad for your tooth enamel because there is basically no time during the day that your teeth are not being exposed to sugars, acids, and food particles. According to my dental hygienist, the beverages can particularly be a problem because eating food can actually help clear stuff off your teeth but sipping drinks along just exposes them to stuff that rots them without any mechanism for clearing it off. So, brush your teeth after meals or snacks and try to avoid sipping on anything other than water between brushings. Your teeth will be healthier and you will probably consume fewer calories by snacking less and avoiding things like soda, juice, milk, or sweetened coffee and tea between meals. It's easy to avoid eating right after brushing your teeth because you don't want to ruin the work you did to just get your teeth clean.

When I find myself thinking about eating because I'm bored, I try to pour that energy into cleaning. I feel better psychologically when my home and workplace is cleaner, and that helps distract me from any pull towards food. Also, tidying the kitchen and mopping the floor after dinner keeps me away from the fridge in the evening and makes for a pleasant place to make breakfast (which I'm always hungry for due to the lack of evening snacking).

Drink plenty of water. (Thirst is easy to mistake for hunger.)
Get enough sleep/rest. (When you're tired, your body will want (more) food because it's lacking energy.)
Exercise. (It will give you energy and stop some of the craving.)
Eat smaller portions by eating slower. (You'll enjoy the food more which will satisfy the mental hunger and it will give your body time to signal your brain that your stomach is full.)

Hunger is a normal signal from body saying it needs sustenance. It's not something you should ignore, it's also not something that should be fixed straightaway. It can wait until the right time.
It's like having to pee. There are stages ranging from 'Mmm. I can feel my bladder is filling up' and 'OMG! Where's the nearest toilet?!' The trick is to find a middle ground between feeling peckish and really, really hungry, because that is when you make all the wrong choices: eating the wrong food, at the wrong time in the wrong quantities.

SA

Regular mealtimes.

It goes away. Your stomach will shrink on its own over time and you'll start to feel fuller with less in it. Until then load up on celery, carrot sticks... eating a stick of celery is essentially zero calories, and it will fill you up a little.

Make sure you're getting a good amount of protein in. Staying away from sugar 95% of the time is the right thing (personally, I lost weight just from doing that even though weight loss wasn't my goal), and try to stick to low GI foods in general.

Speaking personally, exercise is HUGELY helpful for stabilising my blood sugar/hunger symptoms, as is sleep. I will eat some fat in order to feel fuller longer, birdfood doesn't always do it for me, and a little fat can go a long way. Apples and some other fruit make me feel hungrier, and as they're sugary anyway, I mostly stick to vegies. Peanuts and the like are really good for grazing on between meals. I find I HAVE to eat small meals regularly, or I get too hungry and then I can't sleep in the middle of the night or I'm really really hungry the next day, but YMMV, everyone's body copes with hunger differently. I eat like this to feel better since I have CFS but it is also what others term "healthy" or "weight loss".

I also drink protein shakes, I just get plain protein powder from the fitness section of the supermarket, and add frozen fruit, tahini or nut butter, and a bit of vanilla maybe, and then top it up with soy milk (you can do dairy too), and then chuck it in a blender, it's filling but not what people would call fattening, and it's 100000000000 times better than that fake chocolate shit in the weight loss industry section of shops that I would never ever ever buy. It's not a great substitute for a proper meal though.

I imagine that how much you eat at a time to feel full is something you can partially condition.

Drink a lot of water, spread your food throughout the day (so lots of snacks and small meals instead of a few large ones), and eat slowly - these should help stave off the hunger.

Aside from everything else... how quickly do you eat? I used to eat too much as well until I started paying attention to how quickly I was chowing down. Taking it slowly let me really pay attention to how I was feeling, and I found myself naturally stopping earlier. It takes time (about 10-15 min, iirc) for the "I've had enough now" signal to get to your brain, so the slower you eat, the less likely you are to over-eat.

Also, you might try reducing portion size slowly? You say you eat about twice as much as you should - don't cut your meals in half from the get-go. Instead, reduce 5-10%, then once you're used to that, cut it by the same amount again, until you're where you want to be. Give yourself time to adapt: sticking too rigidly to a timeline won't help if your body's not ready yet.

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[ SECRET POST #2622 ]

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