No apetite whatsoever

(Alex) #1

33-34th day of Keto.
I am still losing weight (still my goal), but my appetite has disappeared. I guess I need to force feed myself, otherwise I will enter starvation mode. Are there any food groups to stimulate hunger, or is this normal?
Any advice?

(Robin) #2

It was my normal, and a welcome one. Having to make myself eat is such a blessing, versus all those years of trying not to.

Hopefully, you’ll eventually find that the first few bites trigger an appetite. I often sit down to eat just because I should, then I wolf it down like I’m starving.

#3

Starvation mode technically isn’t a thing, but if you’ve got no appetite whatsoever, what most people refer to as starvation mode… you’ve probably been there for a while already and slowed your metabolic rate already.

How much are you eating daily on average? It’s not normal to have no appetite, unless you’re eating so much that you’re always simply full. Don’t buy into the nonsense of “my bodies burning fat so it doesn’t need any more”, because that’s all that is.

#4

This was the way I felt for several months when starting keto. I could do 24 hour fasts no sweat. I lost 83 pounds and significantly lowered my blood sugar. (weight loss was over 8 months). Don’t remember when but my appetite returned.

My weight loss has stalled but I haven’t gained. I do 18/6 intermittent fasting everyday, but I’m struggling with longer fasts. My son said I should expect a plateau on the weight loss.

The great thing is that while my blood sugar dropped quickly in the first three months, it plateaued. Now, it is coming down quite rapidly. The past two weeks I’ve moved into “normal”. Still high but going down.

In the beginning I could not force myself to eat more and I was concerned but that situation righted itself. Since all my metabolic tests were improving, I just continued with my twenty carbs. I need to eat more eggs but that is another topic.

If you’re feeling good, I’d try to stay the course. Going keto is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my body.

(Joey) #5

I guess my advice kind of depends on your situation…

As noted above, for some folks, there’s a point where they are no longer hungry very often for a period of time as their bodies adjust from what was (in retrospect) over-consumption to a healthier pace of food intake.

For others, you can get a bit carried away and allow your body to go into a downward metabolic state (your metabolic rate starts to slow in response to lack of sufficient energy sources).

If you’ve got a lot of weight (= body fat) to lose, and you’re genuinely finding yourself simply not hungry, then sure, dial back to OMAD (equivalent to 24 hr fasting). But continue to listen to your hunger signals.

As long as you’re keeping healthy (no-carb) foods available, simply eat to your satisfaction and enjoy the new freedom from hunger pangs. Those will rarely be a part of your life anymore - sometimes it takes a while to fully adjust to your body’s new healthier reality.

Sounds like you’re making meaningful progress in your first month. Congrats!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #6

One of the benefits of eating to satiety is that, in the absence of insulin, the appetite regulates intake to allow both dietary fat and excess stored fat to be metabolised. Stephen Phinney has data showing that
fatty acid metabolism increases, as well, when we eat that way.

I suppose the answer to your question is how much your appetite has dropped. If you really don’t want any food at all, you may have a problem. If, on the other hand, you find yourself eating less food than before but still getting hungry, eating, and being able to go a few hours between meals, then you are probably doing fine.

Most people on a ketogenic diet with excess fat to spare find themselves automatically eating about 1000 calories below their daily energy requirement, because the 1000-calorie gap is being made up with fat released from storage. This continues until the fat excess has been consumed, and if you continue to eat to satiety, you will automatically find your appetite increasing to the point where your food intake is matching your energy requirement (because, of course, there is no excess fat any longer). And the point of all this is to allow the body to determine how much we eat, not to set a specific target. Granted, this all feels weird to someone used to the constant hunger of a high-carb, high-insulin diet. Your body is not going to let you starve to death.

In any case, even if you are eating just as many calories as before, you will be consuming an amount of fat that weighs less than half the weight of the carbohydrate you are no longer eating. My current favourite example is that 133 g of fat supplies the same number of calories as 300 g of carbohydrate, because of their different caloric values per gram.

(Joey) #7

It’s like suddenly noticing stacks of canned goods you’ve accumulated in your kitchen pantry - and so you don’t bother to go grocery shopping while working through the backlog.

Eventually you’ll be back at the store. But while working through your inventory, you don’t need to buy more for a while. (The difference is that you’ve been carrying these cans around in your abdomen.)

Enjoy.

#8

Very few people can pull off serious undereating so yep, I would do my best to eat even if it’s borderline forceful - I would try to do it more normally though if possible.

Complete lack of appetite AND hunger (they are very different in my case but I would thing they must be different for everyone, some just get them at the same time) never bothered me much, I still can eat without force. Negative appetite is the problem but strong hunger eventually raises it to zero, lucky me. And yes, some food may help and change the situation. Sometimes I need food but can’t imagine eating my normal food but find something else. Typically solids are the worst then, I still can consume liquids (soup, it usually works if I put poached eggs into it, rich coffees with eggs and cream) or creamy things. Soup is a very good gateway food for me so good candidate to start my meal if I can’t seem to bring myself to eat but I need to.

But many times I just need to take a bite and my body realizes what to do even if I had no hunger and even less appetite before.

Sometimes I can eat without problems like usual but get satiated with a tiiiny meal. I have several meals on those days, unconvenient and I hate that but better than starving…

These are my tiny experiences, I normally have the opposite problem.

Fortunately I don’t get bored of all my normal food at the same time anymore but I had that. When I don’t want the food I have and planned to eat, I easily lose appetite to the point I can’t eat - even if I am very hungry (not like that often happens nowadays but after eating it may). I must find something I consider edible then. So it may be the problem, not tempting enough food, need for more variety…?

#9

33-34th day of Keto

You are just fine. Absolutely normal for alot of us to lose our appetites and it can vary for how long. Do not worry, this is your body healing, changing, adapting, hormones rebalancing, the body repairing your insides…fear not, your appetite will come back, believe me :slight_smile:

just follow what your body is asking, if you truly are not hungry do not eat BUT key is check yourself. You feel no hunger, 0 hunger, but cook a small burger and see if you want a bite. Cook up a good ol’ chicken breast and see if you want a bite…alot of times, you will eat something til you are happy but sometimes ya cook it and say, nope, still don’t want it. Don’t sweat this at all. So new, new body and new appetite changes and new benefits are all being repaired and dealt with in your body so going off food with no appetite is perfectly normal.

(Marianne) #10

I feel the same way. My entire life of conventional dieting (all I knew), was based on deprivation, calorie restriction, willpower and exercise (which I never liked). I only had several times of success getting to my “goal weight,” and it never lasted more than a year. I’d either creep back up or gain it all back rapidly, with no way to stop the progression in spite of being so panicked and depressed by it.

I love my food now! I tend to eat once or twice a day and it’s always a pleasure. In the beginning when I first started, I’d eat three meals a day, which I had rarely done before because I was trying to save calories. It was a complete miracle to me that with keto, I could eat fatty, rich food to satiety without counting calories or exercising and still lose weight.

My suggestion to you would be to think about the clean foods you really enjoy and eat those. In spite of not having much of an appetite, I would make sure you are eating enough to fuel your body and keep your metabolism up. I love bacon, scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, beef and pork on the grill, occasionally some rotisserie chicken or sausage, cheese, cream cheese, some cottage cheese with my meat; that’s about it, but it never gets old. I just pull out whatever I want from the fridge and then grill or sear a piece of meat for dinner. I “cook” every night but I don’t fuss or make anything elaborate. It’s more like throw something in a pan or on the grill and leave it until it’s done. I’ve done that for 3.5 years.

(Marianne) #11

It’s great that you can speak firsthand to what @Voyager is going through.

I love to hear that!!! Me, too!

#12

So true. Wish I’d discovered this 10 or 20 years ago. I love the guilt free eating. Great food. Has keto heightened my sense of taste?

(Alex) #13

I ate 2 boiled eggs and some cheddar today. I’m going to have a burger for dinner, just the meat, some mustard and tomato

(Joey) #14

Back in the groove. :+1:

(Alex) #15

It’s ridiculous. my appetite has come back with a vengeance. Now I’m hungry and had to break my 24 hour IF into eating once every 12 hours.

(Megan) #16

Hi Voyager,

Some people say not to worry about adding in IF until you’ve been eating a ketogenic diet for a good while. They say eat when you are hungry, don’t eat when you aren’t, and how hungry you are can change day to day, week to week. I think it’s hard for us to listen to our bodies and give it what it is asking for, especially in the beginning. For example, my head is full of “information”/conditioning I’m now finding out is largely BS, yet it’s still hard for me not to feel anxious and angry with myself when I have a day or 2 when I didn’t stick to my macros. I’m struggling with that right now - 2 days of eating a lot of meat - freaking out about “wrecking everything” - yet it’s what I wanted at the time and I felt really hungry for it.

This way of eating is proving hard for me, as a newbie to it (6 weeks in), because I feel on uncharted territory. Eat fat? What are you on about?! Eat to satiety? Huh?! Don’t fill up on a lot of vegetables because they are very low calorie? But that’s what standard advice is when you are dieting to lose weight and watching your calories and you feel hungry.

And worrying if I am producing ketones and burning fat, and constantly worrying if I am in “good enough” ketosis. It’s all doing my head in. I ended up buying a blood ketone monitor the other day. 1st reading 3 hours after dinner with only water drunk 0.2. The next day 12 hours after eating (tho I drink a bit of coffee with a small amount of unsweetened almond milk, or a tiny dash of cream throughout the day) 0.4. I then spent many hours reading reading reading and discovering ketone production is very individual too. Not just individual b/c some people are athletes and others aren’t, some people have been doing keto for 3 years and others just started 1 month ago etc, but individual period. Get 10 athletes doing the same activity, eating the same thing, started keto at the same time, around the same age, same gender etc etc and some will have low levels of ketones in their blood, some will have high, some will have moderate. /sigh!

Soooo, long story short, my biggest problem right now is beginner anxiety. Having read a lot of postings on this forum it seems very common, and despite not feeling reassured and safely guided by all the advice to “relax, keep carbs very low and give it TIME” I know the advice is correct. Tweak stuff later as needed, but stick to the basics for a good period of time 1st. Let my body do some healing, let my insulin resistance settle, learn what actual hunger feels like, learn what foods I love and what I’m not very fussed on and shouldn’t make myself eat just b/c they’re “really good for me” so this way of eating is sustainable long term etc.

Hang in there Voyager, sounds like you are doing great.

(Alex) #17

Thanks! Your post is very inspiring, it sounds like we both are going through very similar situations. I really enjoyed your post!

(Jason Rodger) #18

Hi there, also a noob.

55 days in and its all working well for me;

Cycling endurance performance is coming good (This was my main aim.)
Weight coming off, 33 pounds down, also nice.
Energy levels stable throughout the day.
Hair and nails vastly improved.
Insomnia appears to have gone for now.

But there are downsides/ Caveats:

The weight coming of is probably down to pathological food tracking more than anything else - I go 500-750 kcals short every day depending on exercise levels. I am trying to even this out but I find that eating to satiety this is just where I end up - I am struggling to get the calories in.

I don’t often feel hungry any more, but when I do I start to crave junk carbs, Doritos, full sugar soda, Haribo gold bears, I had hoped this might have gone by now, but no, I may be stuck with this forever.

Overall, its been worth it for me, the proof will be late summer when I am riding several endurance events.

Can I stick with this forever? I honestly don’t know at the moment, I need the carb craving to stop. But being thinner and faster on the bike (For less training effort.) feels great.

Its also getting expensive buying new clothes.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #19

It may be a subtle difference, but you are doing fine, so long as you are not deliberately restricting carbohydrate. When we eat properly, we should be able to eat a meal, be satisfied by how much we eat, and then be able to go for quite some time until the next meal. Eating too much carbohydrate provokes an insulin response that results in more-or-less permanent hunger. Excessive levels of insulin interfere with the brain center that is supposed to register the various hormones involved in appetite and satiety.

You say you are only 55 days into this way of eating. So give yourself time. In A.A., they advise newly-sober alcoholics to give their new way of living at least 90 days before giving up. And many people report that it takes years for their cravings for alcohol to subside. Carb addiction seems to work the same way. Take a page from the A.A. book and take things a day at a time. Don’t swear off your sugary snacks for ever, just don’t have any right now. You can have all you want—tomorrow.

(Shannon) #20

I am at 15 weeks (105 days) of keto and I think sometimes I confuse not having the hunger pangs with not being hungry. It’s a strange feeling to me to think, well, I really should eat but it sure doesn’t feel like I need to. I’m down about 20 pounds in this time, but I really have another 25 more to drop, so perhaps my body is still using my excess fat for energy. I’ve started to track my food (loosely), and sometimes I struggle to eat more than 1100 calories in a day. I am on 16/8 IF, and recently I’ve been able to get myself to about 1300-1500 cals, but many of you on this forum say not to worry about tracking calories, so I really just look at my net carbs. Anyway, my post is sort of pointless except to say, I feel ya, bud.