Hey all,
14 weeks in here. The first 13 I basically had to force food into my gullet. I could do a daily IF 16/8 easily. All of a sudden, I’m waking up the past week with a cat fight in my belly. I genuinely feel like I’m starving. Is this common? I hate to say normal, who knows what that is. I almost feel like I’ve regressed. If becoming more fat adapted, why the tick up of serious hunger. I eat roughly 120 or so grams of fat a day so I cant be lacking there.
Thanks for reading.
How much protein are you getting? You might need a bit more. Do you know what your lean body mass is?
I get certain periods of 3-4 days of dramatically increased hunger too, from time to time. I don’t know if these are just cycles our bodies go through even in a fat-adapted state, interested to see what others have to say.
I’m eating roughly 80-90 grams of protein. I’ve estimated my lean body mass at 130 and I’m fairly sedentary so I think that’s adequate or even more than adequate.
That should be enough, but you could go up to around 118 g and still be okay. You could also tolerate a bit more fat, too, if you want to try that. But don’t go overboard with either fat or protein.
Funny enough I’ve actually increased fat a bit over the week and seem to have gotten hungrier. More fat = hungrier? Hmmmm…
Speaking from my experience: you tend to evolve “fat hunger” as your body becomes more adapted to using fat and the more weight you lose/the more depleted your fat cells become. I know have ZERO cravings for sugary/starchy foods, which is nice. However, my hunger hasn’t diminished; rather has it shifted towards fatty and umami flavored, particularly strongly smelling/tasting foods. I love my limburger cheese and sardines (even in combination) and I will still overeat, if I am not mindful. So for me, keto has definitely improved my hunger signals, but as I have lost water weight mainly (since I wasn’t overweight to begin with), my body has altered the type of craving I have.
I do tend to agree. My hunger is not for sugar or bread, it’s a genuine hunger for salt and fat. With that said, it’s a very strong hunger that I haven’t felt since I started keto 14 weeks as go. It seems so odd to do a total 180.i haven’t had any issue over eating as of yet but this hunger is definitely real and I could see it leading there.
I empathize… unfortunately, I can’t do any better than that and trying to explain what might be going on. I tend to be grateful for the vanished cravings for carbs of any sorts. That makes it far more tolerable, if you think about it. It’s about health and hunger for keto stuff or overeating on keto foods is still a million times better than those horrible sugar cravings or blood sugar spikes. It’s a way to stay positive, even though hunger seems overwhelming at times.