Random thoughts and question about hunger


(LAURA) #1

Greetings fellow ketonians:

SW: 265
CW: 141
Keto: Since July 2019

I guess I’m at my goal. In the last 2 to 3 months, my ketone levels have dropped. I used to average 2.5 and now I’m lucky to hit 1.0. Which is fine, just don’t understand the drop. I’m not losing weight, I’m not gaining weight. Still doing IF/OMAD but lately, I’ve become “HUNGRY”. Not sure why. Why would hunger return after being OMAD for 8 months. Is it because I’ve lost so much body fat already that I need to eat more? If I eat more, will I gain? I personally feel like I could stand to lose a few more pounds but you can see my ribs and I’m starting to look boney. I guess 140 having lost fat vs 140 counting calories looks different on a person.

Help me understand why I’m hungry and should I listen to the hunger or fight it so I don’t gain back weight?

Thanks!


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Are you hungry simply before meals? Or all the time? If only before meals, that’s not a problem, just the way your body says “It’s time to eat”. If all the time, that’s a problem, the way your body says “You’re not eating enough”. If you can’t eat enough on OMAD then eat more meals. It’s more important to eat enough than to stick to something that’s not working any more. When things change, adapt.

If you’ve been calorie restricting for a long time (more than a month or two), it’s possible you’ve already slowed your metabolism. If so, when you start to eat more you can expect to gain back some of the weight you lost. But if you take it slowly, adding only a couple hundred calories per day every two or three weeks or so, you will minimize the gain and enable your metabolism to recover over time. Stop as soon as you lose the persistent hunger.

Eating more saturated fats and eliminating PUFAs as much as possible will help minimize any weight gain due to metabolic slowdown.


(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #3

Hunger can be a sign of a lack of some essential nutrient, and not just food per se…

Vitamin, mineral etc…

Hard to say what it might be, but something to think about…


#4

I’ll call in @Fangs to give you a perspective. She is an excellent hunger coach.

I would reiterate @OldDog Gregory. After a year you may have depleted some essential nutrient reserves, so the body seeks replenishment by seeking foods.

Adjusting a successful keto WOE to maintenance can focus on nutritional density of foods. For example, look at the work of Marty Kendell https://optimisingnutrition.com/

As for the ketones. Ketones are an excellent hunger suppressor. Reduced ketones may mean reduced hunger suppression. But it is a normal observation that a person who is fat and ketone adapted for dietary fuel will have less measurable circulating ketones as they are being used by the body. The key at that stage is to use the blood ketone measurement as a proxy for blood insulin status. If blood ketones are detectable that indicates a low blood insulin level, which is a long term aim for health benefits once weight loss has been achieved.

Another approach to hunger is considering a gut biome change. We feed ourselves and we feed our internal zoo. Sometimes hunger can be driven by chemical signalling from the gut and that changes with the dominant gut microbes. It’s an area to look into when investigating hunger signals.


(LAURA) #5

My hunger is all day long until I eat. It’s very off since my hunger has been so suppressed for so long. Guess it’s time to change things up.


(LAURA) #6

I suspect my lowering of ketones is why I’m so hungry. With having lost so much weight already, my body isn’t over producing ketones anymore. I guess I need to figure out how to cope with this.


#7

Great work on achieving your goal weight!:grinning:


(db2836752545c4cfea9e) #8

Thank you! It’s been hard work but worth it.


#9

Did you try eat when hungry then? :slight_smile: Even if it’s way earlier than usual or multiple times a day…
I am a simple one, I always eat when truly hungry and enough to get satiated for some hours at least. It caused gain on high-carb but I don’t worry of fat gain on keto, my satiation works well there.

It seems you are very worried about gain. Don’t do that. If you gain more than an insignificant amount, you still can change something but there is a good chance that sticking to keto will be okay.

Yes, I think your hunger is probably due to not really having fat to lose - and eating less than you need.
It sounds very logical but there may be other reasons as the others wrote.

I always listen to my hunger. Of course don’t suffer, eat. Hunger is a sign to eat. If it doesn’t work well for your weight, change your woe a bit, use more satiating food or different timing but still eat when truly hungry.

Oh and congrats, good work to lose all that excess fat!


(Bob M) #10

I think that’s normal. I do not think hunger and ketones are related.

Hunger is quite complex. There are hormones involved, for instance:

In fact, for those of us who don’t get to goal weight, I often wonder if this is because of these hormones? I’m going to get my leptin tested the next time I get tests done.


#11

LOL I appreciate that but my only coaching is eat :slight_smile: I eat all the time, as much as I want at all times and never give it another thought. I am never hungry to the level I ever was in the old days. I can’t possibly ever be hungry all the time at all now on my plan LOL

I agree with Michael and OldDog.

For Lauramt, I don’t know how you ate to lose the weight. no idea on food intake, did you fast alot?, did you? I just don’t know but about 125 lbs in 15 months is stellar, you are at goal and now you have to switch it up to eat enough for that hunger to be at bay. Congrats on hitting your goal!!!

For me I would eat. I would go protein/fat heavy and I would eat first thing in the morning and see where my hunger went from there. Like others said, adapt and change it up is best anyone of us can do.
Wishing you alot of luck in moving forward and maintaining that loss!!


(Bob M) #12

That is stunning. Amazing, really.


(Kenny Croxdale) #13

That Isn’t The Issue

I am not sure of what the cause of your hunger is but it is not due to low ketones; the for foru.

As Bob M posted, noted that in his post, as well

Misconception

Providing you are follow the Keto Diet and have not strayed off course, you are still producing ketones.

Keto Adaptation

Initially, when you start a Keto Diet, you body over produces ketones. Most individual get high ketone numbers.

Over time you body adapts to the Keto Diet. When that occurs, ketones numbers drop.

The body become more frugal. You then only produce enough ketones to meet you energy demands.

Decreased Metabolic Rate

The same occurs when someone goes on a low calorie diet.

After around two weeks, you body will adapt to the lower calorie intake.

That means you Metabolic Rate slows down; which means weight loss stops.

Kenny Croxdale


#14

yea it isn’t your ketones at all. If you are ketogenic fuel burn then that is what you are and if you ‘require nutritional’ ketosis numbers then you have to eat that way to ‘stay in active ketosis’.

but ketones are changing it up as we use ketones as our fuel. what we dump on a pee stick in the beginning won’t ever be how ketones ‘work and fuel’ your body and there are different ketones at work and when you are truly a ketogenic fueled body your ketones after a year will never ‘act’ or ‘register’ like a new person coming into ketosis and a very lc/keto type plan.

So relying on ketones as a factor kinda doesn’t come into play unless you require ‘active state of ketosis’ numbers at all times, as with people doing seizure control or even someone who requires a PKD protocol and that is a very tight plan to handle so??

I had the best darn explanation of how ketones burn in the body and all they do thru time on being ketogenic fuel burn and darn if I didn’t lose it when my 'puter died on me and I can’t for the life of me find that sucker again, but it had all that explanation on how ketones change as we stay on plan.


(Tracy) #15

I went through about 3 week period recently where I was starving all day. It came on all of a sudden and I thought for sure I’d gain weight but I didn’t. I was walking 8 miles a day and had tons of energy and I think my body just needed the extra fuel. I’ve since reduced my walking to about 4-5 miles per day and my appetite went back to normal. I listened to my body and ate. Just keep a close eye on the scale.


(db2836752545c4cfea9e) #16

I have been doing IF and OMAD for a long time. My doctor said there was no reason to go back to eating 3 meals a day as my goal is to keep my insulin down. Maybe I need to switch things up. I’m just so scared to regain the weight and lose control. Losing this weight was 95% mental for me and only 5% about the food.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

Hunger and satiation are the result of a complex of hormones. The two most important are ghrelin, which stimulates a sense of hunger, and leptin, which stimulates the brain to shut off grhelin secretion.

Leptin is secreted by adipose tissue once the fat cells contain enough energy (in the form of fat) to hold us for a while, but if your insulin level is too high, insulin will block the leptin receptors in the hypothalamus (so-called leptin “resistance;” though “blocking” would be a better term). This is useful when we are eating berries in order to store their sugar as fat for the coming winter, but not so useful when we are eating carbohydrate all the time. And it’s the main reason that people on the standard American diet are hungry all the time: their elevated insulin is blocking their leptin, so their brain never gets the signal that they’ve eaten enough.

On a diet more suitable to how the human body was designed, insulin rises appropriately during meals and digestion, so as to cause some of the energy in our food to be stored temporarily in the adipose tissue. When we’ve eaten enough, the adipose signals the brain that we are good for a while, the brain shuts off ghrelin secretion, and we stop being hungry (there are other hormones involved, as well, but this is the gist). Then, over the period between one meal and the next, insulin drops and the stored fat is then released from the adipose to fuel the body’s needs. As the level of stored energy drops, the secretion of ghrelin eventually starts up again, and we again experience hunger.


(LAURA) #18

Obviously I’m fat adapted. I haven’t really changed muchcin months as eating I snack and 1 large meals has been working for me. I don’t think I’ve dropped my calories too low, but maybe I have.


#19

thing is Laura did you ‘starve down the scale’ A BIT and severly control your intake to ‘make goal’ or did you eat all you ever required and always felt happy and full while losing the lbs? Cause that comes into play for sure cause when one ‘hits goals’ some crap happens…we think ‘now I can eat XYZ’ cause I ‘can control me’ and we hunger. Or we think I am smaller and ‘I should require less’ and that ain’t full truth at all. Then we might think ‘omg if I eat I will gain’ and that is putting crazy on us to eat less ya know. Alot of stuff hits at maintenance time and hitting our final goal.

I say just eat. Eat early morning a good keto breakfast and enjoy and then see where this hunger goes? Start the day fueled well and see if this ‘change up’ could be what you need…and just go from there. You gain back it all overnight making small smart changes on what works for you personally on how you need to roll ya know.

Maintenance is a whole new animal vs. ‘lose lose lose’ for goal at all cost.

Now you have to live daily with food choices and they gotta suit you and work ALL IN for you for maintenace, so monkey around a bit, eat a bit more, ‘don’t snack out’ on crap, if you ‘want anything’ you go all in and eat well til satisfied and then let that see how far it takes you.

Your body changed alot, your approach to daily maintenance and lifestyle now has to change with just that. and that is cool, cause people who hit goal have to do just this and if you know it, see it, change it up to suit you and all is cool then you found a sweet spot of long term maintenance. Hope some of that makes sense to ya :slight_smile: I learned alot from long term success people cause once there, you are NOT in losing mode anymore, you are long term healthy maintenance and you havce to take a new step to work it for you on a personal level.


#20

You are Mr Science to me :sunny: