So I’m about to go on my lunch break in a bit. I feel like my body has been so attuned to eating at lunch that I “get” hungry when I’m not really hungry. I am trying to eat before and after work because that’s the duration of when I actually become hungry. Aka, I’m trying to listen to my body more than my mind. I can’t even think right now b/c I’m not sure if I’m hungry or not. I’m going to …aaaand I’m back from my lunch break. I ended up not eating. I am feeling a bit tired (this might be because I didn’t sleep enough last night), BUT I’m glad that I didn’t because I actually wasn’t feeling hungry at all. Now I wonder if I really ever feel hungry because I just eat whenever I see food. I’m looking forward to my next meal after work. Very proud of myself for sticking to my meal schedule and not tempting to even eat the snacks I have.
Not hungry but hungry
Good, you’ve overcome the Cephalic Phase Response. It’s your body’s way of ‘expecting’ a carby meal, by releasing some insulin in anticipation of a meal. Which will bring your blood sugar down a bit, but once your beta cells don’t detect any sugar being ingested, the insulin is cut off.
That tiny hypoglycemic blip is likely where that ‘hungry, not hungry’ sensation comes from. If I understand things right.
I think I followed that. Haha but thank you for the information! It’s interesting to here the scientific side (being a science major myself - but chemistry)
Oh good, if you’d like to dive deeper, then try here:
https://idmprogram.com/cephalic-phase-response-hunger-fasting-18/
I just have something little when I’m unsure. Like a string cheese or something. Sometimes that’s all I need to keep me satisfied for hours.
Oh my gosh, this is what I’m going through right now. I’m glad I’m not alone. I spend all day around food so I feel like I should be eating. I wake up, have some water and a glass of coffee with HWC. Then never really “feel” hungry throughout the day, but eat anyway, because I feel like I need the fuel, but my belly is full, mostly because I drink water to try and get rid of the feeling. I also tend to snack on cheese or egg bits, as I feed my kids. I swear when one is a asleep, the other is hungry, the the other wakes up and wants to eat, when the other is napping and then it’s dinner time…
So should I do my best to avoid eating when I’m not truly hungry? Like all day I think “I should eat, but nothing actually sounds good.”
I don’t know how long you have been doing this, but once you get farther into the diet I would look into different forms of intermittent fasting. It got me out of eating out of habit. Once you start going 23+ hours without food you realize that the eating six times a day thinking was absurd.
It’s quite complicated sometimes. I almost always eat without hunger and it’s perfectly fine this way. I do feel I need fuel, I just almost never feel any hunger. And appetite is a third thing… My SO has everything at once. My urges has little correlation. We have to eat sometimes, even if we desire no food in existence (it’s very rare in my case, I usually love food very much but I had that in the last days. but my strong need for fuel sign arrived every day, multiple times as I got hard stops after too little food. but we have to do what we have to do. I feel when I can fast for days and when not).
If multiple tiny meals works and only that is a valid option, do that, hopefully it won’t last very long (or it will suit you longer term, I don’t know if that’s a thing on keto. I am basically an OMAD/TMAD person (but there are rare days when I don’t feel the need to eat. maybe they will be more frequent now that my hunger and appetite changed again but I had them on high-carb too) but sometimes I can’t help but eating more smaller meals. It’s fine, I eat when I feel the need and stop when I had enough and can’t even eat more).
Sometimes we notice so many different urges to eat. It’s good to realize when we should and shouldn’t eat. It’s probably very, very individual.