Hunger signals, satiety, fasting and more - a mini rant

satiety
(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #1

So let me start by saying I’m okay. Your advise and council is sought.

  • 65yo male. Current weight ~220lbs. Goal <180lbs.
  • at my biggest years ago I was probably about 300lbs. Never weighed myself.
  • at 48yo had 4xbypass. Have been afraid of fat especially sat fat. Not anymore.
  • Strict keto since 6/17/18. 3 years prior lazy keto.
  • A1c went from 5.9 to 5.4 3 years ago with lazy keto.
  • ~28 net lbs lost since June '18 and maybe 10 to 20 lbs of lean muscle mass gained.
  • NSV numerous
  • cut back on red wine from once or twice a week to less than once every two weeks. Really happy about that.
  • I don’t cheat other than a few tablespoons of refried beans or a tablespoon of peanut butter once and awhile. Occasional diet coke but that is no longer on my acceptable menu list.

Started doing IF and then OMAD in the fall. Did one EF (42 hrs) before the winter celebration. Seems like when I have been doing IF and OMAD my satiety signals work better. Satiety this week has been absent. Macadamia nuts and pork rinds can usually top off a meal if the meal is not large enough and bam, 20 mins later, I’m full as in satiety. Not this week.

I do salt, electrolytes, etc. No issue there.

I do Time Restricted Eating most days without snacks except during dinner prep. However, I eat dinner around 6 pm or 7 pm. I go to bed at 8:30 so that I can be at the gym with my lovely wife at 5am.

Since pre-Xmas I have not been interested in fasting or IF. Had some days planned but because of kitchen smells sabotaged my interest. Today I’m doing 20/4 and so far so good. Fasting at work is easier than home. So getting back to fast today. Post-January Disney vacation I will work on EF.

What is this no hunger thing people talk about? What is this thing that people say about forgetting to eat? I really love food, love food prep (cooking) and love the social aspect of food. If I eat breakfast my brain tells me to eat lunch. That simple. If I skip breakfast it gets easier to skip lunch.

Funny thing is that I feel better on IF and OMAD days. Even with the stomach talking to me. You know what I mean. I think I need to meditate on that. That may be my new cornerstone.

I want to get back to 1lb a week weight loss or 1 & 1/2 lb. That would be good. Reading obesity code and will finish it this week. I’m getting some motivation from it and reinforcing the science I have learned here and elsewhere.

Thanks all

Eric aka DaddyOh

Oh, I have a daughter that is 26 @Hopeoftheflame that has lost 48 lbs since July 3rd. No, I’m not jealous, I’m happy for her. What Jason Fung talks about as the number of years of derangement goes up, the length of time to fix it goes up. Bingo!

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #2

@juice sorry about the length of this post.

(Ken) #3

Around 80lbs of fat loss over a three year period? Now a Stall? On this board it appears to be a common occurrence among those following so called Strict Keto. To me, its not surprising. What is surprising is that so many double down on the strictness aspect while disregarding others success in breaking Stalls by consuming limited carbs for metabolic purposes.

I’m sure many will recommend more strictness, but to me it just fits Einstein’s definition of Insanity. Especially when those same people have never tried it themselves and merely content themselves by reiterating Dogma.

Here’s the Heretical Solution. Eat carbs for a week or two. Not in excess so you never overcompensate Glycogen. Then, go back to keeping carbs at <5% of daily calories. Finally, eat some carbs during the week, the weekends are fine.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #4

I wasn’t clear. 300 lbs many years ago. Maybe 40 lbs in 3.5 years. Thanks. I’m not impatient. I’m baffled by the diference between my hunger signals and other people’s.

(Doug) #5

Eric, nice post. You bring up several areas where there is a lot of individual variation. :neutral_face:

Yes - there are some contradictions for many of us as we find our way. Love food, love cooking, and the social aspect - I hear you. Sometimes, for me, it’s all washed away by the profound satiation of protein and fat. If, circumstantially, I can avoid being confronted by food/normal mealtimes/other people, and really just be busy with other stuff, then a lot of unfettered time can go by.

I think you have an admirably steady hand on your own tiller.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #6

Thanks, Doug. Last week I was going to start a 36+ hr fast and my wife decided to [spoiler]bake a turkey.[/spoiler] Well, that did not work for me. Not blaming her. Circumstances got the best of me. We did not have [spoiler]Turkey[/spoiler] for Thanksgiving and Chrismas and I guess, in hindsight, I missed that flavor and smell.

(Cindy) #7

Eric, are you sure your hunger signals are true hunger and not habit? You mention that when you eat breakfast, you’re more likely to eat lunch. “Old school” mantra taught me that breakfast was to “turn on” your metabolism, so that’s why I was always hungrier for lunch (and all day) when I ate breakfast. Since that breakfast was certainly NOT keto, I believe now that it wasn’t “turning on the metabolism” so much as spiking glucose and insulin…which then drove the hunger signals despite not really needing more calories.

So I’m wondering if your breakfast might be doing the same thing. Maybe too much protein which will also spike insulin?

But honestly, I think there might not be as much difference in hunger signals as you might think. Many people have trouble going OMAD.

I’m also firm believer in that, if you truly are hungry and not eating for the other aspects of it (enjoying cooking and the social aspects), then you should eat. I know there’s still a lot of “fuzzy science” in reference to resetting BMRs, autophagy, etc, but perhaps this is a signal that you really are needing more calories. At 220 lbs, I realize you might still have fat to burn, but sometimes I think a “maintaining” period is needed before additional weight loss.

Just some random thoughts! Good luck to you!

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #8

Cindy

Oh, lunch is a habit for sure. At least some lunches. I’m going to experiment skipping lunch. I have the benefit at work that I can eat when I want to.

2 large eggs, 2 pieces of bacon and 1 oz of cheese is the normal breakfast. But I did realized that two pieces of ham (lowest carb ham that is much meat we could find) and I was unable to get to satiety even with some added fat.

Well with vacation coming up I’m not going to work about it. May do a few OMAD or IF 18/6 this week leading into it.

Thanks for your help and advice.

(John) #9

New 36-hour windows start every hour, you know. :wink: All you need to do is just not eat tomorrow.

Oh, and tell your wife “I’m not eating tomorrow. Don’t cook anything you expect me to eat.”

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #10

She is good with me fasting. It is my challenge not hers. At this point in my fasting experience I need to stay busy mentally. That is easier at work. Writing code keeps my mind off of hunger or whatever.

(John) #11

Yeah, when I fast, it is usually Friday, at work. Either I have breakfast Friday morning and skip lunch and dinner, or just skip eating entirely on Friday. I drink coffee and water and get lots of work done.

That works well because I can sleep in Saturday (extending the fasting hours a bit) and have time to cook wonderful things to eat, or to take my wife out to a nice restaurant (which we can’t fit in during the week due to our different work schedules).

I hesitate to comment because I am apparently one of those people you hate / envy, in that I usually have full conscious control over how I choose to respond to hunger signals. I think part of it may be that I am fairly well fat-adapted, so my body is used to getting the energy it needs from stored fat. Plus, I still have a lot of weight to lose (about 90 pounds above my goal weight) so there is ample supply.

I can’t remember where I read it, but there is apparently a maximum amount of energy your body can extract per pound of body fat per day. I.e, the bigger the fuel tank, the more fuel flow it can generate. If you have already lost a lot of your fuel tank, maybe the fuel flow is too low to provide constant input for your metabolism.

I find fasting or skipping meals to be easy. One motivation is that while I am apparently a good cook (at least, based on how the food tastes), I don’t really like doing it. So I need to be pretty damned hungry before I strap that apron on. :slight_smile:

(Running from stupidity) #12

Only a matter of time until this thread gets closed, then :slight_smile:

Funny thing is that I feel better on IF and OMAD days. Even with the stomach talking to me. You know what I mean.

Yup. I did two meals yesterday and it was AWESOME.

I think you’re just mixing it up currently, perhaps. Changing things, and in a while you’ll change again. Maybe.

Paragraphs and structured, it’s all I want in posts :slight_smile:

I’m frequently baffled by how mine changes on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, let along worrying about anyone else’s.

I think you have an admirably steady hand on your own tiller.

These things, from another of my favourite thinkers in here.

No, they CHANGED. And you ADAPTED. This is SMART.

From ANOTHER of my favourite thinkers! You’re collecting them, Eric. I don’t think that’s coincidence.

(Running from stupidity) #13

Also, sorry about the length of that reply, I’d been asleep and then did housework before I came over to the PC :slight_smile:

(Heather Meyer) #14

My experience with hunger and fasting seems to be varied.

If i start with Breakfast right upon waking…i am hungry for the rest of the Day till bed. I will eat bd eat and eat like i had been starving previously.

If i eat a 16:8 fasting schedule i find i will lose my hunger for the morning and by the early afternoon when i eat, i will have better sataity BUT i still find myself wanting to eat a lot.

If i fast for 20+ hours…i lose my hunger once my fast is broken. I might appear hungry at times during the fasting but then when i go to eat to break it, i will eat a meal and not feel hungry after or even hours after which ended up putting me into OMAD. So even though OMAD days i only average 1000 calories… i dont feel hungry on so little until the next fast is done which is 20 hours or 22 hours later.

So i can get by on way less if i push my window 20 hours or more. BUT because im consuming only 500-1000 depending on the day, i am forced into needing to do a day of not fasting to make sure i dont lower my BMR any. So basically i could go

M-20
T-20
W-Eat all day
Th- 20
F-20
Sat-20
Sun- 16:8 or eat all day

(Carl Keller) #15

The evolution of my hunger is a curious one in my own eyes. Of course before keto I was hungry all the time because of the SAD diet. Then when I started doing keto, it went to almost nothing. I was doing 1k calories a day for a solid month and I just wasn’t that hungry. But, the keto honeymoon ended and as I creep closer and closer to my goal weight, hunger has returned. But it’s not like pre-keto hunger. It’s more like an idea of wanting to eat. I truly look forward to eating my meals but my stomach never growls at me and when I eat, my appetite seems amazing. A 12 oz steak and 2 cups of veg leaves me wishing there was more, when a month ago, this would have left me just shy of stuffed.

Some research led me to read that losing large amounts of weight quickly, increases ghrelin. Makes sense right? We lose and we lose and the body sees no end in sight so it starts telling our stomachs we should eat more. How this applies to your weight loss journey I do not know, but I do know that feasting a few days of the week, did make OMAD much easier for me (when I did it after a feast day). The scale doesn’t move for me much the past week or two but I am really close to my weight goal. I do feel like my belly fat has shrunken some lately, but the scale doesn’t agree… and I am ok with that.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #16

Carl,

I look forward to maintenance mode. But I also think, be careful what you wish for.

RIght now I’m feasting more than fasting. Today was great, however. IF 20/4 two meals ending in some Rib Eye steak. Both meals led to satiety.

There are places on the edges of my belly that are very soft and not dense. I’m thinking that my adipose belly fat is starting to go. Time will tell.

#17

Eric

We have a lot in common, old white guys with a suspect ticker trying to get metabolically fit … again.

I’ve lost 61 pounds since April but 41 of it since I started stricter keto along with IF/EF in mid August.

Controlling hunger has been the biggest obstacle. I don’t often get physically hungry but do I ever get psychologically hungry at traditional eating times. This emotional/mental hurdle has been the toughest.

I often EF 72 hours between two to three IF days of 22/2. And when I embark on a new EF, boy those hours of 22-26 and then again from 45-49 are monstrous. In line with what others experience, once I EF into the third day things get much easier. Indeed I often want to go till 4 or 5 days but I hold back because of my heart health and I resume eating.

And, then, re-feeding can be tricky because I alternate between being ravenous and ready to resume another EF too soon.

This is a crazy metabolic world we have created for ourselves over the decades. And now we must muddle our way out of it. While I am confident we will be successful in the end, I fear it’s not going to get much easier down the road.

This is always going to be a conscious struggle. But I’m surely not suffering.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #18

Thanks for this. I think years of history won’t unravel easily.

(Sharon) #19

I did keto and IF for 18 months lost 35 # I started Carnivore 6 months ago. I have not lost any more # however, my hunger has settled down. I do IF only because after 18 months that seems to be how my body works best. I just am accustom to my first meal of the day being 3pm or so. Now, I feel more freedom not thinking about food all the time or recipes to try. Really has simplified life for me. And I do recognize hunger better. I do think the 20 carbs a day may have been keeping me hungry more often. On Carnivore I don’t count carbs but get almost none from only animal products. I eat very little dairy and very few eggs. I try to just stick to Meat