Binge or listening to my body?

(JJ) #1

I am in the maintenance phase after losing 44 pounds (20.5 kg) since starting Keto the day after Christmas.
Initially, I kept losing, but it seems I am hovering around the same weight now- give or take 1-1.5kg.

I mostly eat a similar amount of actual calories most days, still combined with 17:7 IF, some days less and sometimes more. It seems about once a week I get insatiably hungry. Super dooper hungry. Gnawing hunger.
It may or may not be associated with exercise ie. more likely to happen if I have hiked all day or run for longer than I normally do, but still seems to happen at times with no obvious extra physical activity. I eat to hunger and make sure I stick to keto friendly foods, although given the extra caloric intake, I do blow out and sometimes get to perhaps 30 g carbs for the day when I ā€˜eat upā€™.

I am trying to reconcile this pattern with myself- are these days of hunger/increased intake just my body getting what it needs, or is the hunger something I need to work on mastering and tell it who is boss?

Any insights or thoughts into this would be very much appreciated, just trying to find my way with it all.

(Pete A) #2

I have these situations from time to time and just go with and accept itā€¦not often enough that Iā€™m concerned. Seems sugar is what I crave and have binged on, though Iā€™ve never had too much of a sweet tooth.

It sounds like youā€™re doing great, keep it up!

(Allie) #3

I get this sometimes too and always go with it.

(Carl Keller) #4

Add me to the increased hunger club too. I believe that when we lose a lot of our body fat, it motivates our hunger hormones to try and replace some of the losses. Ghrelin is more active so fasting is more difficult and leptin signaling becomes weaker so we can really load up when we eat.

Whenever I go to one of those steakhouses that have the steak, salad and potato challenge where if you eat the flintstoneā€™s sized steak and all the sides, the meal is free, Iā€™ve noticed that the photos of the winners that they put up on their wall of glutony are almost all wiry thin. My belief is that these thinner people can do this because of their weaker/delayed leptin signaling and itā€™s simply their body telling them they can afford to eat massive amounts because of their low body fat percentage.

The few times I tried this challenge in the past when I was a carb burner, I couldnā€™t even eat half of the four to five pounds of steak offered and I felt utterly miserable. Now Iā€™ve noticed a few occasions at home where I easily ate 1.5-2 pounds of roast beef and could have eaten more but I stopped because I thought it was getting ridiculous.

Anyway, I really think that the frequency and amount we are hormonally urged to eat is greatly influenced by how much body fat we have and/or have lost in a short period of time. Itā€™s not a terrible thing at all as long as we respond with fat and protein.

Keto and Texas Lone Star
(JJ) #5

Oh my goodness, thank you, thank you for your reply. I have found that sometimes fasting is hard these days too, whereas in initially, I had no problem with it- well after the first few days of starting my new way of life.
My hormonal profile has been affected by my weight/fat loss in other ways (specifically female related) so it stands to reason that what you say about ghrelin and leptin would also be true and having an impact on bodyā€™s hunger signals. Makes sense, I just couldnā€™t get to a place where I was understanding why- thank you for taking the time to explain it.

In my former pre keto life, I always felt hungry even though physically stuffed to capacity with carbs and sugar. For this reason, it is just so hard to simply trust in the process that if I am feeling hungry, it is a legitimate need for my body.

(Carl Keller) #6

Join the club. It took me 49 years to figure how my hunger signals are supposed to work. Trusting them was a huge leap of faith but Iā€™m glad I took it. :slight_smile:

(JJ) #7

Thanks for the encouragement, glad I am not alone in this

(Erin Macfarland ) #8

Yep, Iā€™ve experienced this to some degree over the past 5 years Iā€™ve eaten LCHF- Iā€™m very lean and active and when I started keto Iā€™d feet this way and try and make the gnawing hunger go away by trying to ā€œfill up on fatā€ because I was scared to eat ā€œtoo muchā€ protein. So Iā€™d eat nuts or fat bombs or nut butter but Iā€™d never feel satiatedā€¦and Iā€™d often feel nauseous. Once I experimented with carnivore a couple years ago, I stopped worrying about overdoing protein and just ate as much fatty meat or eggs as I needed to feel satisfied. I donā€™t eat a strictly carnivore diet now but I base my meals around fatty meat and donā€™t limit it- and the frequency and severity (for lack of a better word :woman_shrugging:) or what Iā€™d call a refeed have reduced. I never try and ignore those increased hunger signals on days when it seems like I could eat the contents of the fridge- because if youā€™ve lost weight on keto your Leptin levels have lowered. Having days where you really up your intake can help keep your hormones humming along. But maybe try increasing your intake of fatty meat in general, it definitely worked for me :grin:

(Wendy) #9

Erin, that is how I eat as well. I eat meat with fat and sometimes some veggies until Iā€™m full. Yesterday my meat was bacon. I had it with eggs and later in the day I had some wrapped around stuffed poppers. Usually I just eat things like steak or roast or chicken ect along with a well buttered side veg like cauliflower. Yesterday I felt hungry in the morning but didnā€™t get a chance to eat until after noon. Some days I need to eat three times. Oh I did have a little dinner after we got home from the amusement park. I grabbed a little ham and some cheese. This morning I feel satisfied still.

(hottie turned hag) #10

This happened to me, I made a thread about it.
As I get p close to goal weight and went almost carnivore (to break a stall which it did -6lb down v quick but now stalled again, ergh :neutral_face:) fasting beyond my usual 24h became/is now very hard.

Iā€™ve had both decreased appetite and increased at varying times; I end up rolling with it as I fear metabolic slowdown as I havenā€™t much fat stores but when heavier, the decreased appetite and ability to fast was a constant. It was kinda awesome to feel that way and this new fluctuating hunger/canā€™t fast long thing is making me mad :japanese_goblin:

(JJ) #11

Yes, I too am frustrated by my reduced capacity to easily fast. It feels like a backwards step to start to struggle with fasting.
Congrats on getting close to your goal!

(JJ) #12

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It is a total switching of thinking to go from weight loss mentality of wanting to squash hunger to embracing and literally feeding that urge. It is hard to think of myself as a lean, fit person, but when I compare pics (one last night after weighing in at work) and one from late last year on a hike- I can see that indeed I am so much fitter and healthier and my body isnā€™t trying to hoodwink me into overeating.
I appreciate each and every reply as I navigate my way to learning to listen and most importantly trust my bodyā€™s signals.

(hottie turned hag) #13

Holy cow you are absolutely lovely! Even when heavy, tbh. When I was heavy I looked like a sad potato.
:blossom:

(JJ) #14

You are too kind, maybe I only look lovely in my before photo as I was about to cram some jerky in my face :wink: I mostly felt like a sad potato. I bet you look lovelier than you think x

I feel so much younger and energetic since keto, I have two grandkids, but think I look younger now than when I had my own babies.

(hottie turned hag) #15

WTH?
I thought I was looking at photos of a gal early 30s not joking. Others shall surely agree.

Girl! You slay!
Have some random cutes for being goals :bird::tropical_fish::butterfly:

(JJ) #16

You are my new favourite person. I am a young Granny to be fair. My son settled down early and is only in his early 20ā€™s.

Btw just had a chuckle on another thread where you stated veggie carbs were sneaky AF. Yes, they are. You captured their stealthy sabotage well with that sentence!

(hottie turned hag) #17

Veg carbs are that way for sure; I was eating heads oā€™cabbage and peppers galore daily, not realizing the carbs.

Nah girl youā€™re exceptionally young looking and this is coming from a harsh realist type not a kind Pollyanna so, yeah.
#truth

#18

What!!! omg
You look amazing no matter what, but grandmother just doesnā€™t seem possible.

(JJ) #19

I actually lost a decent amount of weight this week, 1.2kg, despite a fairly outrageous calorie intake on 1x day and way above what I think I would need on 1 x other day.

Hmm interesting realisation today, that just confounds my understanding around this feeling of hunger even more.
I did a hike, but it was only 7km and although a fair bit of ascent and descent in that walk, it was pretty soft-core by my standards. I thought that a Quest protein cookie would be a special ā€˜treatā€™ once I got back into town. Cue crazy hunger. Or rather, perceived hunger. I was just going to eat half, but several hours later was reaching for the other half. I could recognise I was on my way to eating anything that wasnā€™t nailed down, so have chosen to just go ahead and eat the dinner I was planning and make the conscious decision to be done eating for the day -it was 330pm at the time.

As I have neared and indeed gone below goal, I have let ā€˜sweet substitutesā€™ for carby sugary food find their way regularly into my life. For the first few months I abstained completely from these sorts of things as cakes, biscuits, chocolate, breads have always been something I ate a lot of and had no off switch for, I would still be hungry even when full of sweet carby food.
I live in a rural area, so I do need to actively pursue such things, it is not like they are in my face at my local shop, so I have mail ordered all sorts of keto ā€˜friendlyā€™ subs for my old sugary foods since getting to the tail end of my weight loss adventure.

So now I wonder if my body is hungry as I am much leaner and very active now OR am I triggering my insulin or even just a remembered response from my body relating to how I used to eat. Or both?!

What I am going to do, is to cut anything that has any sweeteners at all in it for a month and see how that works out for me. Does that sound like a pretty sensible thing to do to try and tune into what I really need more? Anyone else have any other suggestions?
I will need support! These foods have snuck back into my life and the addiction is strong :wink:

(KCKO, KCFO šŸ„„) #20

Always a good idea to cut out anything that you feel might be getting in your way of the way you want to be.

I listened to a talk on the KickSugar seminar yesterday by Prof. Tim Noakes. he spoke about how hard giving up sweets were for him. Took him 13 months to clean them out of his diet. He went low carb easily, but the carbs were sugary, both fruits and cooked treats. Very inspiring.

For me it was grains, I had to let go of all of them, in all forms.