Scared to start fasting - I'm always hungry!

fasting

(Bethany Greenwood) #1

Thought I’d make a whole post about this. . .

People keep going on about how they aren’t hungry on Keto. This just isn’t true for me. What am I doing wrong? I keep my carbs below 20gNet I thought it might be from just not eating enough, but I spent 2.5 days just eating as much as I can and I still wanted to eat every few hours.

My weight loss has stalled and I know fasting is the way forward but I’m scared to try because I just can’t go long without food.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with the Antacid I’m taking?

A typical day of eating for me would be; coffee, soy cream and tablespoon of coconut oil, two eggs scrambled with mushrooms small amount of red bell pepper and spinach. Lunch is cucumber and goats cheese with home made avocado and mayo dip, dinner is some form of protein and broccoli / cauliflower with butter and gravy. I generally have the same food every day, I eat dark chocolate and pecans as a treat.


Not Hungry! THIS IS AMAZING!
Not Hungry! THIS IS AMAZING!
(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #2

Increasing fats usually helps with hunger.

Hunger is driven by other things besides the need for energy. It could be the lack of some essential nutrient, and fasting certainly isn’t going to help that.

What seems to be causing the need for the antacid?


(Joey) #3

There are any number of reasons that skipping meal(s) is challenging for you…

  • You might be a LMHR (Lean Mass Hyper-responder) and have less available body fat to keep you going than others have?

  • You might not be fully fat adapted? Not likely given that you’ve been on diligent keto for many months at this point.

  • You have an attachment to eating (we ALL do!) that adds an emotional dimension to the idea of “fasting.” Using the word “scared” in your heading of this posts suggests this might be part of the challenge?

On this last point …

I would suggest that you don’t even use the term “fasting.” Consider just skipping the occasional meal and restricting your eating window to perhaps two meals/day in an 18/6 window, or some such. Avoid any snacks between meals as a way to ensure you get practice in overcoming the eating urge for brief periods at a time.

Hope some of this helps.

But in the end, if you’ve cut out the carbs and you’re hungry for healthy alternatives, then please eat! Not eating when you’re genuinely hungry is a key ingredient (pun intended) in keto eating.

Best wishes!


(Bethany Greenwood) #4

I wasn’t given proper support when I took anti inflammatory as a young adult and ever since then not matter what I cut out of my diet, I end up in agony.


(Bethany Greenwood) #5

Thank you! It is the idea of ignoring my genuine hunger ques that has me scared, I don’t want to damage my bodies ability to communicate hunger to me. I have never dieted or calorie restricted so I feel, especially now my insulin is low, if my body is saying it needs food, it’s probably true?

I do have body fat. My biggest problem with fasting windows is that I always wake up very hungry, but anytime I’ve tried to miss dinner I end up not sleeping because I’m hungry. I have stopped snacking completely too other than having some dark chocolate and nuts after dinner. I’m running out of comfortable ways to reduce me food intake. . .


(J) #6

For me, satiety comes more from protein than fat. May try bumping your protein up a bit. How many calories are you eating in a day? I am not advocating CICO, but looking at what you eat daily, I wonder if you are getting enough. If your body thinks it is starving, weight loss can stall via metabolic slowdown. Just some thoughts.


(Bethany Greenwood) #7

Actually the more I’m reading here, the more I’m thinking that I haven’t been eating enough. . .I don’t track calories but maybe that’s where my issue is?


(Gregory - You can teach an old dog new tricks.) #8

Regards the antacid: I assume you are talking about heart burn. Correct me if I’m wrong.

I discovered a few years ago, before I went grain free and low carb in general, that it was food combinations that gave me heart burn. Mostly eating bread with meat or cheese. Meat by itself never did it.

Now I find it happens with stuff like adding commercial mayo to my tuna, or eating ribs with a big salad that is otherwise Keto friendly.

Your food list includes things I would be concerned about such as soy products . What’s in the gravy? What’s in the dark chocolate? What’s in the mayo?

I would suggest an elimination diet where you only eat meat ( fatty cuts ), eggs and cheese, homemade chicken or other meat broth… Eat large portions, until you feel full… Drink some broth if you get hungry between meals.

It shouldn’t take more than a few days to find out if eating in such a way helps.

After that, you can start introducing other foods, but you should only do it one food at a time, along with the other foods I mentioned.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #9

You may not be eating enough, or too much of the wrong stuff. The following stood out to me:

A typical day of eating for me would be; coffee, soy cream and tablespoon of coconut oil, two eggs scrambled with mushrooms small amount of red bell pepper and spinach. Lunch is cucumber and goats cheese with home made avocado and mayo dip, dinner is some form of protein and broccoli / cauliflower with butter and gravy. I generally have the same food every day, I eat dark chocolate and pecans as a treat.

I’d cut: soy cream, mushrooms, bell pepper and spinach, cucumber, mayo dip (depending what you put in it - especially the oil - PUFAs may be an issue for you), broccoli / cauliflower, gravy, dark chocolate and pecans. None of these things is particularly bad by itself, but you may be eating way more carbs than you realize. If you feel you must eat veggies, or just want to eat them, I suggest you consider replacing all of the above with bok choy. It’s loaded with micros and has fewer carbs than pretty much any other veg so you get a lot of bang for your buck nutritionally and carb-wise. It tastes good, too, like a combo of celery and romaine.

As for the fasting: that’s an optional extra on keto. Eat more, get and keep your carbs sub-20 grams per day and maybe you’ll stop feeling hungry all the time. You just might start losing weight again.

Being hungry all the time is a signal that you are not eating enough. If you don’t heed that signal, you will slow your metabolism and make losing weight more and more difficult. Eventually you will give up.


#10

This thread interested me because I am just not hungry today. It comes and goes with me which is why it becomes confusing. But I think the reason you are afraid of not eating anything is your heartburn. That can become really painful. I know because once upon a time I needed omeprazol myself. Have you ever been thoroughly checked? Do you have helicobacter in your stomach? Do you have a form of excess excretion of stomach acid? Because I think I would most definitely be afraid of having an empty stomach with too much acid in it. Its like there is nothing for the acid to burn but the inner walls of my stomach! Some people gain a lot of weight because they have an ulcer not in their stomach, but in their small intestine which they never even knew about. They eat so their small intestine is relieved of the pain. Whatever-but a thorough check up by a real gastrointestinal expert might be called for?
Besides this though, I think chocolate and nuts have stalled me.


(Allie) #11

I still haven’t noticed the decreased hunger and I’m six years in :joy:


(Susan) #12

Welcome to the forum, Bethany =).

Keeping your carbs at 20 grams or less is the most important thing for me personally (still this for me, even after a year of doing Keto), and eating enough =) of proteins, healthy fats, drinking enough water and electrolytes, no sugar and (for me personally, no sugar substitutes or I don’t lose weight and have cravings for them).

I had issues of heartburn, (used to take Tums often pre-Keto), high blood pressure, bad asthma, frequent headaches, stomach bloating, terrible, constant aches and pains in my joints -and other things, all Pre-keto — all of this has been resolved since Keto (my asthma is not gone but I rarely use my puffers and it has only been bad when I had a cold/flu thing for about 2 weeks).

I use a free app called cronometer.com to track what I eat.

I generally suggest for people just starting Keto to try to eat 3 meals a day and to try to not snack between the 3 (but eat enough at the three so that you don’t feel a need to snack) and then have at least 12 hours from your supper to breakfast, to give your body that time to burn the fats in your body --most of that time you will be sleeping ideally.

This is an idea of a day’s meals that should do this for you:

Breakfast:

4 scrambled or fried eggs (in 2 tablespoons of butter)
4 pieces of pork bacon
1 coffee with MCT powder and/or coconut oil and/or butter or HWC (if it doesn’t bother you, I am doing Dairy free atm so I cannot have this but I do love it, hehe). You could also use a Keto coffee creamer (there is a wide variety of them available on Amazon).

Lunch:

1 cup romaine lettuce
1 can of water packed tuna
2 tablespoons of Chosen foods or Primal Keto Mayonnaise (other mayonnaise has seed oils that we don’t want to ingest on Keto)
1 pickle, chopped up in little pieces (and/or 3 olives chopped up)
Coffee or tea if you want some --with a fat in it (as mentioned above in the breakfast).

Supper:

Protein of your choice: a nice steak, salmon, fish, chicken, lamb, pork, whatever suits your fancy =)
Low carb vegetables (bok choy, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, etc).
I love the Caullfower Rice that you can make yourself by grating cauliflower or buy already made (Costco sells a 6 pack of envelopes that you can cook in the microwave that is very delicious). I cook regular rice in my rice cooker for the rest of the family and a bag of that for myself. I live with 4 others in my family that are not doing Keto, so I just make all the food, and often the protein selection we can all eat. An example of this is last night I made Breakfast sausages, and then regular rice for them and I fried up cabbage for everyone =).

It is important that you are eating enough; after you are on Keto for a while, (a few months) and become Fat adapted, then you might not be hungry enough to eat 3 meals a day and will want to reduce this to two. I personally now wat my lunch at 1pm and supper at 4:30 and I “Fast” daily from 5pm until 1pm the next day -called TMAD (two meals a day) 20:4 (not eating for 20 hours a day, 4 hours I have the 2 meals, no snacking between) called IF (intermittant fasting). I didn’t do this until I was on Keto for months though and was fat adapted, and I built up to it as well. I did 12:12, then slowly increased the times until I got to 20:4 that I have been on for ages now and I am very comfortable with that. Don’t force anything, and take your time, though =). Keto is awesome but it is a slow and steady lifestyle change; not meant to be a crash diet to just lose and then regain it all, and be on the yo-yo cycle (that I was personally on from 11-54). Keto is freeing and and for life.

I wish you the best, and if you have any more questions, just post away and we will all tell you what we have found helpful and will be cheering you on =)).


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #13

I’ll also mention, thank you @Chantarella & @Momof5 for addressing heartburn, that one of the things that happened to me early on after starting keto was I no longer suffered hearburn, reflux and indigestion. These, along with severe flatulence, had plagued me my entire life. Within a couple of weeks of starting keto they were gone - and have stayed gone!

@Bethany I suspect you may be borderline ketosis and probably in/out all day, which is not a good place to be. You’ve cut carbs to the point where they are insufficient to fuel your daily activities, but you’re not burning enough fat and ketones to take up the slack. Hence, the constant hunger and other symptoms of distress. You have to go for one or the other. ‘Low carb’ works for many who don’t want to go full keto. One of my brothers could not make the transition to keto, but still went ‘lower carb’ and is doing well, lost weight and feels good overall. One size does not fit all.


Can you be Keto and get really fat?
#14

If you eat the same every day, it’s easy to track a day, it may be informative. Reading about your food intake, I can easily imagine you eat too little or too much not satiating stuff. What is satiating? It’s individual. To me, fatty protein. So I pretty much avoid vegetables, added fat, cream when I am serious.
Dark chocolate and nuts? I would overeat every day with those for sure… I have a thing for them and they never satiated me.
But if I am hungry, I eat, it’s very obviously the only right action to me. But I should choose proper food then too.

I don’t understand a few things people do. Why don’t they EAT when they are hungry? Yeah, it may be ballooning up on high-carb for many but it’s surely rarely the case on keto…
Why do they want to fast if they can’t? If you are hungry, break your fast. If you really want your fast, change your food, your eating window, wait for longer and make your fat adaptation deeper or something, I am not good with this, I had a sudden change… So try things but if you are hungry, really hungry, eat. At least I would do that for sure. I always did IF quite naturally. I stopped having a meal when I never was hungry at that time. Keto automatically diminish our eating window in many cases - but it’s not the way for each and every persons. I don’t think we should really force it…


(Joey) #15

Yes, indeed…

Add me to the list of former-heartburn-sufferers - and even worse, GERD.

Within 3 weeks of cutting out the carbs, all those problems just disappeared … and 9 months later, still nevermore a problem. What liberation.

For me it seemed to be the combination of carbs with other stuff (spicy pizza toppings, greasy steaks, cheeses, hot dogs…) . Now, I eat all the other stuff (spicy pizza toppings, greasy steaks, cheeses, hot dogs…) with no problems whatsoever.

Turns out, the culprits were those buns, rolls, crust, potatoes, etc. that were actually the problem when combined with the meats/fats. Not the meats/fats in isolation.

Food for thought. :man_shrugging:


(J) #16

Absolutely worth exploring. Good luck!


(Bethany Greenwood) #17

Sadly I’ve already cut out dairy, gluten and now carbs and I am still unable to stop taking my antacids. I put up with the discomfort for 6 weeks before it started to get me down so much (disrupting sleep and distracting me from work) that I went back on it. I haven’t pushed to get it investigated thoroughly as I have so many other things that need tending to, it has just taken a back seat. But maybe now so much else is under control, I can look at finding the root cause.

I am currently dairy free as my other conditions flare up when I eat dairy but I have been off and on with soy and never noticed any difference. I have only recently (6 weeks) started eating nuts regularly so maybe I’ll cut those out. Also didn’t think about stupid oils in the mayo. Yes I am VERY sensitive to those oils so I’ll be making my own mayo from now on!!

I do find it really hard to find keto recipes that are dairy and sweetener free. But I’ll check out the recipe section here and I’m sure I’ll get more ideas to get into a more consistent keto state.

I also worry about cutting out broccoli and spinach as I suffer with anemia.

Thanks you @Momof5 for that day plan, I’m going to follow that pretty close for the next few weeks with some variation for me personally.

Thank you all so much for your advice!! I feel like I have some things that I can try and change to get back on track!! :smile:


(Susan) #18

I really hope that you can tweak some things and figure it all out, we all want you to succeed =). Please keep us posted!


(Utility Muffin Research Kitchen) #19

This is very good advice. We often start craving certain foods if we lack a nutrient. For example, most people will notice that salty food tastes a lot better if they’re salt depleted. But if it’ just hunger in general, I have a different hypothesis what causes it:

That’s a fairly heavy mix of lectins (soy, coffee, bell pepper) and oxalates (spinach, broccoli, dark chocolate and pecans). I’d eliminate those from the diet.

The fact that you need an antacid speaks very clearly that you’re sensitive to some antinutrient, probably one or several of the lectins. My heartburn immediately stopped after I went to a low-lectin diet. (Bell peppers, peanuts or raw tomatos will give me immediate heartburn even today, almost a year later. Some FODMAPs like xylitol too.) Steven Gundrys Website has free information about which foods are high in lectins and which are low lectin keto friendly (look for his yes/no list).

I wouldn’t start fasting before you can go 22h without being hungry. Find the right mix of nutrients, and you’ll notice that you get less hungry with time. (Most likely.)


(Bethany Greenwood) #20

Oh, this is really interesting! I will definitely look into this more!!