What does "eating to satiety" really mean?

satiety
(Anthony) #21

I picked those two variables because they are the ones that seem to have the greatest effect on me being cold.

I had always been very tolerant of the cold my entire life, then while/after losing the weight I was constantly cold. Wrote it off to being less insulated but it turned out to be I was under eating significantly. Within about 3 days of bringing my calories up it was like someone threw a switch and I got most of my heat back. One reason I’m a proponent of tracking. I don’t think it needs to be 100% exact and to the gram in everything all the time or even every day, but enough to track trends.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #22

This is not an exclusively European problem. My parents both grew up poor during the Great Depression, so it was ingrained in them that if you had food, you never wasted it. At least my mother was good about letting us take a small amount, but if we took it, we did have to eat it. And of course, a high-carb diet promotes hunger, so I got used to large quantities. That was why that first experience of what being satisfied by a meal was so striking.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #23

A study I read a while ago, of people eating an ad libitum diet, showed that while the match between intake and expenditure is not all that close on any given day, over a seven- or eight-day period the match is startlingly precise. One reason I’m a proponent of not worrying about it. And like you, I get quite warm when eating enough food.

#24

I am almost never cold even if I don’t eat. But I still have ~30lbs of extra fat… Eating much does nothing with my warmness, only activity (it’s very serious, walking produces lots of heat so it’s very hard in summer but I often need to find ways to cool down my hand in winter too. my SO has ice cold hands in thick gloves and I am walking next to him without gloves, grabbing snow, metal objects or his hand to cool down… :smiley: I have ice cold hands in my room sometimes, never when I am moving), mood…

I know European families and their obsession with making people eat (fortunately Mom was an exceptional one)… Once I was yelled at because I only “normally” (not mildly but not massively) overate as it was inevitable for me on HCHF and didn’t eat EVEN MORE.
But not wasting food is fine, I never threw out edible food in my life, it’s a very important thing for me (but I understand doing it in certain situations. I won’t do it but I understand if someone else do it. eating and causing harm to us is waste too and worse than throwing it out. it’s best to avoid such situations and I do my best to do that. it’s pretty successful). It has nothing to do with family members wanting to stuff us, at least it didn’t happen in my life, maybe there are odd families… One can eat the food later. It’s usually easy to get only a small amount food if we are unsure a big amount will be needed, at least it is to me, I like to use small bowls and eat 6 bowls of the same food (extreme case but it happened). If someone would hand me a plate with the wrong amount of food, I would just give it back. It’s always me who choose what to eat and how much to eat. I was super stubborn even as a kid.
But it’s no problem for me anyway as eating all the food on my plate is usually fine even if I get satiated quickly, I will eat less for my next meal and it gets balanced out. (It works way better with carbs, though. I actually have a stop sign on carnivore but I still can choose to eat a bit more, maybe a few minutes later. But I am usually at home so I simply put away my plate and eat the leftovers another time.)

#25

My apologies, I didn’t mean make make it sound that Europeans had the exclusive on this issue. I was contrasting with my current privileged life where I have never have to worry about ever having enough to eat.

As a kid, my diet was very high carb. My mom would load a plate full of pasta/rice/potatoes, which was the main course, mostly because it was cheap and plentiful. And the doctors said it was low fat, so of course perfectly fine to load up on. :frowning:

#26

Sometimes when I do OMAD, my hands and feet get cold. Not enough for me to complain, but my poor wife doesn’t want me to touch her, lest I give her hypothermia.

If I fast for 2+ days, then my feet get uncomfortably cold and my hands feel like ice. Upping salt intake helps a little. Socks and a sweater help more :slight_smile:

#27

I had absolutely no “full” signaling whatsoever for decades. Because of dieting for most of my life, plus being completely addicted to carbs, I would eat vast quantities of food and still be hungry. From salads to Chinese food, nothing filled me up. Then I discovered KETO and everything changed.

The change DID NOT happen all at once. Since I didn’t know how to do Keto, I started with Carb manager, a free app for my phone which tells you how much of each macro you’re eating and gives you a goal to hit. I remember those first few weeks. How could I possibly eat that much fat? Although I had done high protein, low starch/ sugar diets before, I was never eating nearly enough fat and, for me, fat is the key. It was not easy. Each night I had to eat a “fat bomb” to get enough fat it, and that wasn’t either easy or particularly pleasant, HOWEVER, after eating everything, I felt full. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t thinking about the left over pasta in the fridge. I wasn’t thinking about food at all. And that, my fiends, was a miracle.

I continued to use carb manager but I used it for 2 things: I used it to track my fat and I used it to track my carbs. I had to make sure, each day, that I WAS eating enough fat and that I was NOT eating more than 15 carb g per day. As I did this, I noticed something interesting. I noticed that I wasn’t hungry all of the time. I noticed that, if I ate some fat in my first bite of my meal and in the last bite of my meal, I actually felt…full! FULL! And this was eating about 1/3 of the quantity that I always used to eat. The longer I did this, the more this happened and the stronger the feeling of “not being hungry” got during extended periods of the day.

I have now been in Keto for about 8 months. I have lost 35 pounds, with about 28 more to go. The weight loss has slowed considerably, but that’s OK with me because I’m not in a hurry. I didn’t put this extra 60 pounds on in 6 months, I don’t need to lose it in six months either. The most important part, for me, is that I no longer have cravings. I no longer overeat my portions. I’m rarely, if ever, hungry between meals, and often have to force myself to eat dinner. My body knows when I’m satiated, and I stop eating as soon as I stop feeling hungry. This is not something I’ve been able to monitor for the past 30+ years.

I don’t use Carb Manager much anymore. I probably track my food 2x per week, just to make sure that 1) I’m getting enough fat and 2) I’m not sneaking up on the carbs. These are keys for me and I know that I can easily get off track if either of these things occur. On the days that I do track, I weigh everything and put it in. I absolutely never look at the calorie intake because it can be triggering for me when I see that I’m eating 2100 calories or more. Regardless, as long as I eat enough fat and keep the carbs below 15 g, I’m still losing weight. AND I feel better, stronger and healthier every day.

So, may this will happen for you, too. Everyone is different. I know that I couldn’t possibly start or end my meals with protein. That would just trigger hunger for me. It has to be something fat.

By doing this, and not freaking out by what I’m eating, my body has started to talk to me again. It is telling me when I’m hungry and when I’m full. It’s miraculous.

Oh, BTW, I ALWAYS get hot after I eat. I run hot anyway, but about 15 minutes after I eat anything (which always has fat in it), I, basically, flush with heat. I’ve always run hot, but I do find this weird. I actually tried to google it recently, but it never gave me a real answer. It just is what it is.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #28

No worries. And I in turn am sorry my reply gave the impression I thought that. :grin:

#29

This was my experience as well. One day I was eating and the fork carrying delicious ketogenic whole foods to my mouth stopped. I looked at it and put the laden fork down. That was it. It was an off switch.

It doesn’t happen all the time but I recognise it when it occurs.

These days I eat 2MAD. I feel hungry before meals. On an evening meal, sometimes I can feel fed but not satiated due to a sweet craving. But that can be fixed with substitution and willpower without going off plan, or by going to sleep. Next morning craving has gone. I have left the days of cravings keeping me awake years ago with LCHF.

This discussion makes me think of the complications of cravings and food addiction in messing up satiety signals.

I think of times I am craving a food, it may be pate or it may be fish as examples these days, as compared to processed packaged junk foods previous to this WOE, and I recognise that a satiety signal, a proper one that requires no mental willpower, is the opposite to a craving. Perhaps?

#30

I like that description :slightly_smiling_face:

(Anthony) #31

That’s a familiar feeling for me and it’s a fat craving. Some heavy cream whipped up or in coffee is what I usually indulge in to satisfy.