What am I doing wrong?!?!


#123

Bump. A good thread.

Virta Health does a great job EXCEPT I have often found their work hard to understand. Like in this link, I was hoping to find suggestions for my protein intake. I found practically everything else and then some -but could not figure out what Virta might recommend to me. :slight_smile:

Their graphs are often misunderstood,too.


#124

This is what worries me. Not being able to eat enough after a fast. I pushed my OMAD dinner as much as I could yesterday, hardly 1000 kcal… that lead to a “basketball-in-my-belly” -feeling long into today so I figured I´ll see what a little fast might do and did not eat anything today. Just water.

No hunger at all. But tomorrow´s dinner time is worrying me already… all this forced eating is making my favorite meat dishes not so delicious any more,that´s not looking good.

It looks like OMAD is trying to cause some kind of eating disorder to me…? I just can´t eat as much as the apps/statistics/common knowledge say when in OMAD.

But I will try eating for hunger for a week now. I wonder when hunger comes…?


(KM) #125

One of the accepted wisdoms of undereating calories is that the body basically starts saying well, ok, if that’s what I’m getting I guess I’ll figure out how to get by with that much. Metabolism slows and appetite lessens.

People say that the body doesn’t have the same reaction to actual fasting, it somehow serenely accepts the natural flow of feast and famine as it might have been for early humans, and so doesn’t ramp down metabolism and appetite in the same way.

Personally, I think this is an N=1. This is how it works for some people, but not everyone.


#126

Yes,thanks, this has been clear to me for ages. But I never really faced this situation myself (maybe?) until now. I always ate much more than needed, always lost weight.

Now my hunger is gone in a new way. And I can´t figure out how little is too little.

My new update in my “Memo Thread” gives some hope though. I may simply have been using massive amounts of my body fat lately. I will not copypaste it here but take a look if interested.

I checked blood ketones and glucose in the morning, then after 1000 kcal exercise in the afternoon and ketones had dropped quite a bit. 4 to 3 about.

My Omron 511 -scale says fat has been lost even though weigh not so much. It says both fat % and visceral fat have dropped, when I calculate lost fat using old and new fat %. I see I may have used up to two kilos of fat in about two weeks. That gives 1200 kcal per day from my own body… that would add up to the recommended 2400 with my average 1200-1600 OMAD dinners.

So my own ketone production / fat burning may just have been so effective, I should listen to my hunger, not apps. I don´t know yet but I will one day.

Waist has been shrinking all the time. This is very interesting!


#127

Indeed. Some parts are pretty much universal for humans as far as I know but lessening appetite? Not for me. If I undereat for 2-3 days, I get a super hungry day, appetite can be anywhere but probably quite high. So a high cal day happens. I rarely undereat but it never lasts for long.
Fasting can go either way for me according to my tiny experience. One force disconnects me from food, the other wants nutrients eventually, probably soon… What will happen if I manage to stop eating for 2 days is anyone’s guess. I had very different experiences there but my goals were different too and mental things may influence body signs, I had that a lot.

Yes it can be a valid explanation. if you have enough body fat to get a serious amount of energy per day from it, there isn’t such a serious reason for your metabolism to slow down. I heard about people losing 2kg fat per week for a very long time without problems, the guy ate little and was quite heavy in the beginning so it made sense. But he was lucky not to feel too hungry. Just because our fat easily gives us a lot of energy, we may totally “starve” even with the tiniest deficit (I could be hungry all the time with a serious surplus too when on the wrong diet).
So it’s a good enough diet, enough body fat and probably individual factor in your case if you ask me.
OMAD easily may play a role too. If I eat my food at once (using the right items), it’s way more effective than eating multiple tiny meals, those just keep me hungry. That is the best way for me to get a deficit while being satiated all day (except maybe right before my meal but it’s welcomed there), food choices are important too but with too many meals, they aren’t enough.