Help with brain lying

#1

I am doing well in keto and doing IF usually 12-16 hours. The problem is there are times I’m not hungry at supper or lunch but my brain keep saying eat yiurnsupposed to be hungry . This is especially true if cooking for the kids . The same is true with snacking at night, not hungry but eat some cheese strings watching the hockey game. I know it’s willpower but it’s why I am in this situation. I know I can do a 24 hour to 48 hour fast physically but don’t think so mentally. Does this just pass ?

(Doug) #2

It will vary among individuals, but in general we get better at fasting and find it easier the more we do it.
For some it does ‘pass,’ for others it just gets familiar and less troublesome. I think getting through an entire day plus is a significant hurdle - sleeping, not eating at all, and then sleeping again. Do that, and it makes going 24 hours seem fairly easy. The principle certainly applies to longer fasts as well.

Hunger rises and falls periodically throughout the day, there being 7 or 8 up and down cycles of ghrelin, the ‘hunger hormone.’ We also experience increased hunger at the times our bodies are used to eating. It usually does not take too long to wait these things out. A huge part of fasting is mental/emotional/psychological - when I get the urge to eat, I tell myself "NOT EATING TODAY." This works for a while… :blush:

It’s not straight-line progress, necessarily, either. I’ve had fasts that were “the easiest ever,” and then cut the following two short because I got to the point where I just was really not feeling it… Tomorrow is another day and no point in beating ourselves up over stuff, here, in my opinion.

Cooking food is a relatively hard challenge, I think. Maybe we resist eating, but personally there is a cost involved, like I’m “using up my willpower.” Too much of this type of deal and I’ll be giving in earlier. Much easier for me to be busy and involved with things that have nothing to do with food. I don’t have kids and can often be quite hermit-like and insulated. Some people cruise right through being around food, etc. - it’s not a 'death sentence" for a fast, necessarily, but I do see it as a prominent “thing” as they say.

Tim, while I don’t know your total situation, you say doing well eating ketogenically and with intermittent fasting. You’re already doing really good things for yourself, so I hope you don’t despair about any of this stuff.

#3

I want to stop the snacking as it’s what got me in the position and don’t know about the will power . But thanks it gives me some confidence . I have kids one week on them off. The off week is better

(Murphy Kismet) #4

This is a HUGE part of fasting that not many people find they can handle.
I know, for myself, and before keto, at least half of what I put into my mouth/body was purely comfort related.

These days, I fast almost every day now, (the last two days have been so easy! knock on wood) and when the idea of eating would pop up (“it’s two in the afternoon, could probably eat now…”) I’d guzzle water (with electrolytes), and keep going/moving. Soon, the idea would be gone, and it’d be 6pm, time for making supper for hubby (non-keto :frowning: ) and then I’d eat.
Last night we ended up eating at 8:30pm and I wasn’t remotely interested in what I’d made (even though half of it was keto for me). However, once I put food in my mouth, I found I was hungry.
Fat-adapted? Maybe. Dunno. Weight is still sliding off. Maybe not as fast as I’d like, but this weight has been here for decades so there’s some attachment issues that need to be dealt with :wink:

All that to say, maybe don’t listen to your brain as it’s still spouting off conventional rhetoric about eating every so many hours. Now’s the time to create a new script in your head regarding eating, eating times, and eating choices. Ask yourself if you are actually really huingry, or just bored, or feeling guilt about not being hungry, or some other thing that’s going on that your mind is pulling from the dark recesses of your past and flinging them at you trying to bring you (back) down…

Seriously, food can have so many emotional attachments to them, from the refusal to eat a thing because that one time it was so horrible! (ex: bad basil made me hate basil for years), to the other side of the pendulum where foods are comforting, like Kraft Dinner, or bologna-pickle sandwich on the cheapest white bread ever, etc.

We need to re-create our relationship to food (and no! I’m not mentioned “cheating” shite) so that it returns to a servant’s role of feeding our health, and not taking over the management of our health.

(Doug) #5

Good stuff, Kismet. :slightly_smiling_face: To a large extent we learn by doing, and by getting used to things - and we really can change.

(Robert C) #6

That you are eating when not supposed to is the problem here.

Why do I say that? Because you should not be feeling like there is a time when you are “eating when not supposed to” so early in Keto.

By doing IF too soon you are turning Keto into a restrictive diet - moving away from the “eat when hungry, stop when satiated”.

IF is a tool you want to use several months out if / when you hit a plateau. At that point, the brain saying “eat you are supposed to be hungry” signals will likely be all gone because it is likely your eating times will be much more random than the 3 “regular” meal times.

#7

Snacking is totally emotional. The IF is not on purpose , not hungry in the morning and 1/2 the time not really hungry at work at lunch . I have more energy . Usually on weekend I would have a little snooze in the afternoon and the last month haven’t been able to snooze as not tired

#8

This.

Don’t know how long you’ve been keto so that hunger could well be cravings hoping to get some attention. Don’t give it to them! Tell them to stfu, have a drink if water or whatever, and carry on.

#9

Been on about 10 weeks

(Alec) #10

My tip is this. Boil yourself some hard boiled eggs, shell them, and put them in a container in the fridge. Make a deal with yourself that if you feel like a snack, then it’s the eggs or nothing.

When you feel like a snack you can have one, but it’s only a hard boiled egg. For me, this really sorts real hunger from emotional/boredom eating. If I go to the fridge and look at the egg and think “that’s not what I want” I know it is the emotions talking to me. At that point, of course you still have a choice but it is much more deliberate. You are making a conscious choice.

(Christy) #11

Tricky, tricky. I like it!

#12

I did have those in the fridge and cheese strings . Cheese has two more and no more eggs . I’m hoping if I have to cook I will say it’s not worth it instead of being so easy

(Liz ) #13

THIS!! I use the hard boiled egg trick all the time to suss out if it’s real hunger or head hunger.

(Marianne) #14

So true; I used to love to eat mass quantities of food, just for the sensation of eating and because it soothed me. I could be stuffed but feel better after a couple of hours, and then go back and have another helping or something different to eat. It is amazing to me now how much less food I actually require on keto and that I can many times eat once a day and not be hungry in between.