Just started keto and feel constantly hungry. Any suggestions?

(Nica) #1

As the title says each time I’m having a meal and hours after I feel hungry. I was told if that happens I should eat a big bowl of leafy salad, extra avocado or egg but that doesn’t really help me that much. I know the amount of food I’m eating should satisfy me. I incorporate enough fats as well according to the meal plan I’m following. I know my body is just adapting to much lower consumption of carbs and it will get better eventually but can anything be done in the mean time?

(Scott) #2

You may need to increase you fat intake. When I started I would have a breakfast of:
2 eggs (scambled) with heavy whipping cream added
Add butter & bacon grease
Add cheese
1 slice of bacon
1 sausage patty
1 tablespoon MCT oil added to black coffee
This would keep me satisfied until lunch where when eating a carb style breakfast I would be shaking at 9:30 and hit a snack bar (more carbs). This weekend I ran 6 miles fasted each day and only ate a noon meal and dinner. The odd thing was at dinner I wasn’t really hungry. So what I am saying is hang in there and try to resist snacking but if you must my favorite is almonds or macadamia nuts. They are salty too which should help.

(Nica) #3

I tried adding more olive/coconut oil, ghee, extra bacon/avocado/egg and coffee with MCT oil and 2tsp ghee but it didn’t help much. I won’t be able to add dairy due to food intolerance. Anything else you could suggest?

(Full Metal KETO AF) #4

I would say temporary up your food intake except for the carbs. You will get to the other side like the rest of us have. Maybe more eggs for a while, when I started it was 4 a day but after a couple weeks I didn’t need as much food to feel satisfied. And be liberal with fats when cooking. Don’t overdo it on nuts. I waited a month on keto before I started small quantities. Main focus for me was lots of meat and veggies. If you’re hungry eat 4 meals instead of three until you’re adapted Drink a big glass of water when you’re hungry and wait 10 minutes. If you’re still hungry eat then just until you’re not hungry anymore. Don’t eat more at a sitting than you need to get by. Your stomach will shrink a bit and you will stop getting hungry so fast. I hope some of this helps you find the success you want and your body needs. :sunglasses:

(Full Metal KETO AF) #5

And also you say that you’re hungry, but how is your energy? Are you tired a lot too?

(Omar) #6

you are not getting nutrition into your blood for some reason.

while your stomach is full you still nutritionally hungry.

It is possible that you are not digesting the food.

If you have no bloating no constipation no IBS and no digestive track issue then I am simply wrong.

(Nica) #7

My energy is fine, no tiredness. Pretty much exactly the same as before I stared keto

(Nica) #8

Thanks, I’ll try that.
With regards to nuts it’s what I thought, I only add a few here or there. Prefer not to overindulge as I used to in the past

(Nica) #9

There is a possibility of me not absorbing certain nutrients although haven’t been able to prove it medically

(Full Metal KETO AF) #10

Then I would say that you’re doing great. One of your goals should be to stop entertainment eating. Just a mouth craving. A little hunger is a natural thing for everyone between meals. Our culture is completely snack food oriented. Most of the foods in grocery stores are carb snacks. They can become very ingrained into our lifestyle and become an addiction. You’re most likely feeling some withdrawal from sugars still. Give it some time and use that hungry as a meditation tool to show yourself that you are in control and not your tummy rumbling a bit in anger over your decision to not give it some carbs. It will all work out soon and you’re going to feel empowered by your resolve.

(Nica) #12

Thanks for that :wink:

(Carl Keller) #13

Hello and welcome Nica.

Cravings and hunger are probably the worst things to have to deal with starting out on keto. I know a lot of keto purists say to not snack, but I found fatty snacks to help me get past the first week. Whenever I felt like I couldnt make it to the next meal, I would eat:

a cheese stick
2 boiled or deviled eggs
an ounce of pork rinds
5-10 almonds or macadamian nuts

I found those things to take the edge off and allow me to resume life without the idea of food hanging over my head. Just be careful if you choose nuts. There are some carbs in them but they did fairly well for me as “appetite supression ‘pills’”. :slight_smile:

(Diane) #14

When I had just started keto, I got hungry all the time. I ate when I got hungry. I had big meals, but added snacks if I needed to. After about 10 days to 2 weeks, I didn’t need the snacks anymore. Now, most of the time I only have 2 meals a day.

Generally speaking, most people find protein and fat the most satiating. Try to find snacks that are very low in carbs. I like pork rinds with guacamole, hard boiled eggs, and macadamia nuts, pecans and walnuts (I personally wouldn’t worry about restricting nuts until you get past “the hungry all the time” phase, which should happen relatively quickly).

Also, I usually drink about 2-3 liters of ketoaid a day. If you search here on the forums or google ketoaid, you’ll find many recipes. If I don’t get enough sodium, I feel hungrier. I seem to need much more sodium than I initially thought I’d need. It’s a kind of n=1 thing, your mileage may vary, but people eating ketogenically need to take in more sodium which helps you hang onto the other minerals you need as well.

Good luck.

(The amazing autoimmune 🦄) #15

When I first started I was hungry all the time what I realized was that I wasn’t really hungry just addicted to carbs. The first couple of weeks I would grab a slice of cheese if it got too overwhelming.

(Nica) #16

I’m sure that’s the reason. If I could have cheese I’d try that, will have to stick to having more eggs, avocados and coconut oil for now

(Scott) #17

Regarding dairy I am lactose intolerant but find that hard cheeses like cheddar and heavy whipping cream have no effect on me at all.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

The idea is to eat enough at meals to be able to go hours until getting hungry again, the point being that every time we eat, we secrete more insulin, and the real goal is to keep insulin as low as possible for as much of the day as possible.

That said, as long as someone is keeping carb intake under 20 g/day, your suggested fat snacks are a great idea for dealing with hunger between meals. It’s just that hunger between meals often indicates that the previous meal wasn’t truly satisfying, and so the person should eat more at mealtimes.

@Gr8Nica In your first few weeks eating this way, eating to satiety may involve eating a lot of food. After a few weeks, however (for me it was in the middle of week 3), you should start to find your appetite dropping. Insulin blocks the satiety hormones from reaching your brain, and low insulin eventually lets your brain start receiving those signals again. At that point, the appetite usually drops and we find ourselves eating at a level that permits our body to start burning off some of our excess fat. Don’t restrict your calories on purpose; just listen to your body and it will set the caloric intake for you.

#19

Something with a more fiber will fill you up.

Veggies with butter on top.

I don’t know if everyone here does it, but of the 20g carbs most are meant to come from veggies. Fiber is good in many other ways as well.

(Bunny) #20

When ever you (quit eating) don’t eat certain foods like grains (bread) and processed sugars, pre-packaged processed foods, your changing your gut flora biome (gut bugs) ratio compositions[2].

You may not be hungry but the gut bugs are[2]?

So it takes time to get those in control and adapt your gut-biome-metabolic-circadian-physiochemistry[1][2] to kill off the bad ones that are making you so hungry so that may be another reason for that urge to eat[1][2] more?

Footnotes:

[1] “…Ghrelin, has also been found to increase appetite and weight gain. It also antagonizes the effect of leptin (in rats at least). Leptin, as you might recall, is the hormone produced by fat cells which turns off appetite and makes us stop eating. Ghrelin turns on appetite. So, if you want to lose weight on a long term basis, you need to tune down ghrelin. image So, how to do that? As we discussed last week, eating all the time sounds like it will turn off hunger and ghrelin. But that’s far too simplistic. Surprisingly, the answer is the opposite – fasting. Let’s look at this study “Spontaneous 24-h ghrelin secretion pattern in fasting subjects“. Patients undertook a 33 hour fast, and ghrelin was measured every 20 MINUTES. Here’s what ghrelin levels look like over time. There are several things to notice. First, ghrelin levels are lowest at approximately 9:00 in the morning. This corresponds to the measures of the circadian rhythm which find consistently that hunger is lowest first thing in the morning. Recall that this is also generally the longest period of the day where you have not eaten. This reinforces the fact that hunger is not simply a function of ‘not having eaten in a while’. At 9:00, you have not eaten for about 14 hours, yet you are the least hungry. Eating, remember, does not necessarily make you less hungry. Next, notice that there are 3 distinct peaks corresponding to lunch, dinner and the next day’s breakfast. BUT IT DOES NOT CONTINUALLY INCREASE. After the initial wave of hunger, it recedes, even if you don’t eat. Ghrelin shows a “spontaneous decrease after approximately 2 h without food consumption”. This correlates perfectly to our clinical experience that ‘hunger comes in waves’. If you simply ignore it, it will disappear. Think of a time that you were too busy and worked right through lunch. At about 1:00 you were hungry, but if you just drank some tea, by 3:00 pm, you were no longer hungry. Ride the waves – it passes. Same goes for dinner. Further it has been shown that ghrelin spontaneously decreases independently of serum insulin or glucose levels. image Also, note that ghrelin does have a learned component since all these subjects were used to eating 3 meals per day. It is not merely by coincidence that these peaks of ghrelin happen. This is similar to the ‘cephalic phase’ of insulin secretion that we’ve discussed previously. - Dr. J. Fung MD

[2] Your Gut Bacteria May Be Controlling Your Appetite: “…The team noticed that about 20 MINUTES after feeding and multiplying their numbers, E. coli switch from pumping out one set of proteins to another. So Fetissov, of Rouen University, and his team injected tiny doses of those post-meal proteins into rats and mice. They found that the injected rodents reduced their food intake whether they’d previously been freely fed or kept hungry. Further analysis showed that one protein stimulated the release of a hormone associated with satiety. Another of the chemicals found in the animals’ bloodstream appears to increase the firing of brain neurons that diminish appetite, the team reports this week in Cell Metabolism. “It looks like it’s not the host animal that regulates that number, but that once bacteria multiply to a certain number, they will stop growing,” Fetissov says. “We provide the nutrients to these bacteria, and they will produce, more or less, a billion more bacteria and they will stop growing. Why they stop after producing about one billion, I HAVE NO IDEA? But in only 20 MINUTES they produce this new one billion bacteria and then they start producing new proteins that have some inhibiting effect on appetite.” This isn’t the only line of research suggesting that bacteria can play a role in jump-starting or curbing their hosts’ appetites. Previous work by Blaser, for instance, provided evidence of a stomach bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, playing such a role. And earlier this year, Sean Davies of Vanderbilt University engineered bacteria to produce a lipid that signaled feelings of fullness to mice. When mice drank water filled with those bacteria, they ate less and had lower body fat no matter the diet offered them, Davies explained at the American Chemical Society national meeting in March. Last year a different group of researchers also explored the evolutionary reasons microbes might manipulate the way their hosts eat and the ways they might take action. Aside from producing satiety hormones, potential mechanisms include influencing reward pathways in the brain, producing mood-altering toxins and hijacking taste receptors. …More

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(Nica) #21

That is so interesting. I’ve actually noticed it in the past delaying my meal time was decreasing my appetite, sometimes to the point I’d go to bed without having dinner. Thanks for that.