Portion size and calorie density

(KM) #1

I’ve been coming up against a hurdle lately. I want to eat a LOT of food. By that I mean great big mouthfuls of stuff, shoveled in. I don’t know what’s creating this craving, but it’s challenging me - I know i should trust the process, but eating 36 oz. of fatty ribeye just because I feel like it sounds like a bad idea somehow. (I’m not actually kidding, in my life I have eaten a 3 pound steak once or twice. My stomach is just as big as my eyes!)

Anyone else have a hard time with feeling physically Full? I’m listening to my brain say “that was great, we don’t need any more”, and my mouth saying “that was delicious, let’s do it again.”

I’m filling myself up with cabbage and other very low carb veggies, but I really wish I’d get back to a point where the amount of food that looks reasonable is the amount I’m happy with. :thinking:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

If all you are eating is fibrous plants, a high percentage of which is by definition indigestible, it is not surprising you are starving. You need energy, and if it’s not coming from glucose (carbohydrates), then it has to come from fat. No wonder you are hungry for rib-eye!

My experience is that “enough” and “full” are very different things. For the first few weeks on keto, I continued eating the portion sizes I was accustomed to as a carbovore. I was following the advice to eat to satiety, and it seems this was my body needed. But one day, at lunch, halfway through a plate of salmon, I was suddenly done, between one mouthful and the next. Nothing for it but to put the remaining half of my meal in the fridge for later. I was nowhere near full, but I was satisfied. I used to get full all the time with carbs and would still be ravenous. It was a very new sensation to be no longer hungry while also being nowhere near full.

If you try eating this way, you may be surprised at the results.

(KM) #3

Oh no, I’m eating like, a pound of meat or fish in butter, (or sashimi, my lord I think I could eat an entire salmon) and then still wanting to “graze”. The other day I made a 24 oz pot roast, managed to come back and nibble on it til it was gone, and then was still skulking around wondering what else was in the fridge. And I’ve been doing keto pretty religiously for about 8 months (and have done it twice before). If I weren’t 60 I’d be worried I was pregnant.

(Robin) #4

I have had bouts of being ravenous and stuffing myself with the right food to satisfy the crave monster. And almost every time, I weighed less in a day or 2. Sometimes, there’s a good reason.

Unless it’s me and nuts… in which case, that’s just the devil.

#5

Some weeks ago I had this insane appetite. It wasn’t fun. I even felt the saliva pooling in my mouth in the evening hours while being far from the kitchen, after an overeating day, not wanting to eat actually, trying hard to resist… Just because I desire food I don’t need, I don’t want to do it. I was already a bit too full!
I only had exactly this once, never ever before. I had high appetite due to tempting carby food but I actually am hungrier and can eat a ton comfortably there. But on carnivore or close? I was torn, I didn’t want food but a tiny part urged me.

One good thing was that food boredom had no chance. Everything seemed great. I still used variety as I had it and everything tempted me though.

Oh you have veggies, at some point I wondered about dropping carnivore or anything really close and eating sauerkraut (just when I already had enough food for the day) so I could satiate my eating urge without messing with my body with excessive food… But I had no sauerkraut and I am really stubborn about carnivore, I go off and come back quickly. And my carnivore food, that’s dense. Fat is too easy and quick to eat and makes my overeating severe. And I already minimize my protein as I am prone to overeating it. I just saw NO solution so I tried to resist, subtly failed, still not epically and waited for that stupid phase to end.
And it did. It’s still not perfect but my normal.

(KM) #6

yes, exactly. I’m also wondering if this could be a deficiency of some kind pushing me to eat more when what I really need is something not present in the food I’m eating.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

That reminds me of a study I read (and which, annoyingly, I forgot to bookmark, argh!) about a comparison of food in and energy out on an ad libitum diet, in which they discovered that there’s not much relation between appetite and energy expenditure in a given day, but that over any given seven or eight days, the match was astonishingly precise.

(Robin) #8

That’s me… astonishingly precise! :wink: