Hungry just 4 hrs after eating

#1

This has probably been asked thousands of times, so I apologise in advance.
I’m 50, a single mum, 5’10" and weight far to much (I dont know how much as I don’t have scales) with 56" waist, 55" bust and 60" hip measurements. I’m more interested in health benefits than just weight loss.
I am 4 days in and have been struggling to keep carbs down, but managed 22.2g today, lowest yet. I feel like I’ve got a handle on that one, although I’m sure I’ll blip fairly frequently, at least to start.
My problem is not getting enough calories. I know we shouldn’t be worried about calories but I know I’m not eating enough and not sure what to do about it.

Today I had a protein shake with added double cream for breakfast (don’t have time to cook in morning, or it’s be cooked breakfast), roast chicken breast, mushrooms, cheese, lettuce and mayo for lunch and stir fry with pork strips for tea (I had cauliflower rice instead of noodles). That lot gave me 173.5g fat (73%), 122.2g (23%) protein and 22.2g (4%) carbs. So far so good but it’s only 1479 calories, 1123 under ‘budget’ so to speak, according to my tracker app.
I’m full at the end of each meal, but now, 4 hrs after main meal I’m hungry again. I know I’m not supposed to snack so not really sure how to get calories up. Not even sure if I need fat or protein.
I don’t drink coffee so can’t do BPC. I’m using butter/coconut oil/EVOO to cook with.

I’m putting together some recipes that might help (fat bombs etc) but it’ll be middle of next week before I can actually do any cooking, but not sure what to do between now and then.

Any ideas?

(Robert C) #2

That is around 2140 calories.
That is great if you are sedentary.
Not sure why an app is giving you 2600 calories - is that the amount needed to neither gain or lose weight for someone with a workout schedule? Remember you are feeding your goal weight body.

Protein shakes, roasted chicken, stir fry pork strips - all low fat and the stir fry - if from a restaurant - might have hidden carbs. Adding double cream means you are getting a large amount fat/calories from dairy. These all confound people’s weight loss and, in your case, is not providing satiety (a shake will leave you hungry compared to real food).

Try a couple of days of making the time for a real bacon and eggs (dairy free) breakfast and see how long it is before you are hungry again. Adding fat bomb and BPC while trying to lose weight is a bad idea - those are better for maintenance.

(Justin ) #3

Four days in and being hungry is normal. Your body has been used to sugar to its probably more the sugar and carb crave more than anything.It will take a while for that to subside. Your numbers look good. I think if you do maybe some bone broth when hungry it will probably satisfy your hunger feeling without any added carbs. Maybe trying cooking some up and having it just in case.

#4

Hmm. 700 more than my app says. I’m useless at this kind of calculation but if you’re right and app is wrong then that’s great.
I am very sedentary. Walking kills my back, and I’m in a vicious circle with it. One reason I needed to make a drastic change to my life.

The stir fry was home made, with plenty of EVOO and some coconut oil in mine, so I know there wasn’t any sugars in it apart from what was in veggies.
The meals with the cream and cheese were actually ones I didn’t feel hungry after. Maybe I need to add more in!
Morning is also stressful enough trying to get both sons out the door to school (one is autistic spectrum, probably PDA- Pathalogical Demand Avoidance, the other has school related anxiety issues), adding cooking in to this, which is one of my big anxiety triggers, isn’t happening any time soon. I will, however, boil some eggs to have cold, and see if that helps.

#5

Thanks @JNO that’s reassuring

(Robert C) #6

Might be best to cook at another time - batch cook several bacon and scrambled egg breakfasts, just reheat when needed.
You might always want to have extra real-food batch cooked meals around to avoid shakes.
Just an idea.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #7

I have an autistic son too, now 24. I started him on keto a few weeks ago. He loves the food. I have great hopes for improvements in functionality and mental clarity for him. Don’t the kids eat breakfast, why not join them? The time to instill healthy eating habits is better now than later. You could all benefit from this and it really simplifies things if you don’t have to cook for yourself separately. I would love it if you’d look in on my autism thread.

https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/keto-and-low-functioning-autism/76458

Food ideas worthy of drooling over

An easy guide to starting keto right and easy, Juice’s Keto Manifesto as I like to call it.

#8

Yes they do eat breakfast, at least most of the time, but cereal, which is what I’d normally be having until this week.

Ahhh, yes. Healthy eating. My younger son (the one with anxiety more than ASD, possibly) looked at a food label yesterday and told me it would be ok for me because it had no fat in it. It did however have horrendously high carbs. Trying to explain that it’s the sugar that’s the problem is so difficult, and they are getting the zero fat message from other people. Unfortunately at 10 and 7, and with them having free school meals, having them go keto isn’t really an option. I do think that when they see the differences in me they might be more interested, but there’s no way they’d give up sweets (not that I let them have these very often), bread, pasty etc and school won’t do keto for them - it’d cost to much. I can but sow seeds, and M, who doesn’t like tuna, really enjoyed the ‘fish’ stir fry I did last week and when I told him, he decided it was just the tinned tuna he didn’t like :grin:
If I’m cooking then the main bit of the meal will be for us all, like tonight’s stir fry, then I’ll just swap out the carbs the boys have for something else for me, or I’ll just not have them - noodles for boys, cauliflower rice for me.

(Robert C) #9

Another idea - next time there is a long school break - go all out Keto with them every minute (long enough to fully get over Keto flu).

If you see no difference then you can’t do much.

But, what if you see a dramatic difference? What if they’re both much easier to handle and get some Keto clarity? What if they both like the new feelings they are having? What if, after being asked to do something, they just politely do it - even if they do not really want to?

If you find this to be the case - that your life could be completely different - make their diet a medical necessity. Threaten to take the school to court if non-permitted foods are ingested (just as an Indian family might enforce a vegan diet or a parent might enforce diet due to a peanut allergy). The school probably has to make reasonable accommodations and your kids will be teen-agers soon. Problems during these younger years just means extra talking to the principal and teachers - problems in the teen years involves talking with police.

(Door Girl) #10

I used to think the idea of cold bacon (or sausage) breakfast with eggs was gross. Then I tried some leftovers from my kids, after being refrigerated, later in the day and it was surprisingly good.

I still haven’t tried the recipe, but Alton Brown’s scrambled eggs call for mayo to enhance the emulsion. That’s a good way to load me up. :slight_smile:

#11

I was actually thinking about this. The next break is 2 weeks at Easter. It’s S’s birthday Easter day so there’s no chance of getting away chocolate free, and not sure there’s enough time after that. The next big break will be summer. Hopefully I will be a lot different then, and they’ll have seen it happen. I’ll also have more time to run down the carb rich foods in the house, reducing the amount of temptation, at least at home, and may be able to transition to a lower carb, higher fat diet meantime.

(Alec) #12

Ah yes, the education problem. Anyone doing keto with school age kids will understand this problem:

Kid explains what is healthy from learning at school: anything low fat, fruits and veg. What is unhealthy: fat, especially saturated fat.

“So, Dad, why are you eating all that fat? It’s really bad for you, it will clog your arteries.”

“I am afraid that what they have taught you at school is fundamentally wrong. It is carbs and sugar that are bad, the right fats are really good for you.”

Puzzled look, often frown, not quite understanding… “how can both Dad and the teacher be right? I trust them both, but they can’t both be right. What am I supposed to believe?”

Sigh.

(Alec) #13

My recommendation re the hunger thing. When you first start keto, the most important thing is to get your body living on fat. So, my advice is when hungry, eat something, but make it small and fatty.

As someone above said, in the first few weeks hunger is likely carb cravings. So, offer your body fat for fuel and let it know that is what it has to use now. Stick with it.

As you become increasingly fat adapted, your hunger between meals will go down, possibly stop altogether, and then possibly you might find you aren’t even hungry at meal times… your body has learnt to use fat, and there’s loads available on your body. That’s the process. That’s what you want it to feel like.

I now can go for days without any food and not feel hungry. My body just chews through bodyfat.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

Your profile says you just started eating a ketogenic diet (welcome to the forums, by the way!), so at this point your appetite may very well not be sorted yet. Give it some time. I ate at my previous level of consumption for a few weeks at the beginning of my ketogenic diet, but then one day, my satiety signaling abruptly asserted itself, and my appetite dropped considerably.

What I have found is that these days I am satisfied by my food long before my belly is anywhere near full. In other words, there is plenty of room for more food, I just don’t want it. This is not to say that I no longer experience cravings for sugar and other carbohydrates, just that the distinction between those cravings and real hunger has become startlingly clear now that I am a fat-burner, in a way that was not true when I was a sugar-burner.

If you are looking for some advice, mine would be to eat when you’re hungry, stop eating when you stop being hungry, and don’t eat again until you are hungry again. Continue that for a few weeks, and you are likely to have the same experience I had, of a sharp drop in appetite. When we have enough energy stored in our fat tissue, the fat cells secrete a hormone called leptin, that is supposed to signal to the brain that we don’t need any more food for a while. On a high-carb diet, however, the resulting high level of insulin blocks the leptin receptors in the brain, and it can take a while for our insulin level to drop enough for the leptin signal to start getting through again.

Some people never do recover their satiety signaling, but in most people it tends to reassert itself a few weeks into ketogenic eating. My guess is that the body may actually want that initial period of high appetite, as a means of gaining the resources to start healing metabolically and in other ways.

(Ethan) #15

The indoctrination is quick. My son made the teacher angry in the beginning of first grade when he told her his dad is carnivore and doesn’t eat fruit or vegetables. The teacher was doing a lesson on nutrition for omnivores. Luckily, I had spoken to him first and made sure he didn’t announce, “FALSE!!!” loudly when the teacher says fruit, vegetables, and whole grains are required for us as omnivores.