Same thing has happened to my wife. The increased hunger has been paired with a massive stall in weight loss as well. I have a theory that for a lot of people their body gets thrifty even on keto, and doesn’t like to have a big chunk of weight lost. Unfortunately you have the lucky bastards that smoothly and effortlessly lose 150 pounds in a year, which gives others the impression if you’re hungry and stalled you’re doing something wrong, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I think periodically you need to change up your eating patterns because your body gets used to whatever you feed it. With the holidays upon us I actually think it makes sense to indulge in the junk you would normally avoid. Break out of the comfortable eating pattern your body is used to, then go back to keto and see if your body responds differently.
WHY do we still feel hungry sometimes after eating a lot?
Interesting your wife is experiencing similar! I have to say though, as a serious lifelong sugar/carb addict in recovery, I do not have the flexibility to break out of the Keto WOE and easily slide back in. For me, eating carbs starts a downward slide that is pretty much life ruining. So I will have to figure out other solutions as I grapple with this new phase.
@akirby83 I am thinking about switching up to higher protein/ leaner meats and seeing what happens. So essentially lowering my fat intake. I have quite a bit of muscle mass and am fairly active and do not have IR, so I want to see what effect this has on my satiety. On the latest episode of the Break Nutrition podcast they interviewed @amber and they discussed the efficacy of eating higher protein and lower fat (read, NOT low fat, just lowering the total amount or eating leaner cuts of meat). I am wondering if this will help me feel more satiated. It’s worth trying!
Ok fair enough, if you have a history of that stuff I wouldn’t ask you to indulge in it. I think it is valuable to change up eating patterns periodically, whatever form for you that takes.
Yes I totally agree! Mixing it up is key.
I only mention my addiction because well meaning advice to intermittently carb up gets suggested on the Keto Forum by lots of folks. It can seem harmless to people without eating disorder issues but be very destructive advice for others like me and I always make a point to gently point that out.
I have found zero carb/carnivory to be the most satiating diet for the calories. Not the most interesting, but satiating as hell. In fact I have no clue how people can eat 5 or 6 pounds of meat a day, 2 pounds and I’m good for the entire day.
When I first started keto, I was actually concerned because I wasn’t eating enough. I just wasn’t hungry. I was warned that my appetite would come back with a vengence after a few weeks. Well it is back. I trust my “satiety” signals like I trust cookie monster with chocolate chip cookies. HOWEVER, I have noticed that exercise as well as fasting seems to increase my appetite. I am not hungry much at all during fasting. As soon as the fast is over and I eat the first bite of food, it ON! I have been told that if you are still hungry, it means that you have too many carbs sneaking in that may be blocking leptin receptors? (I sure hope leptin is the correct word). Does that sound familiar to anyone? I still focus on eating to satiation and I figure if I am still hungry and I Just came off a long fast, then I need to keep eating. Again, I log my calories in MFP, not to control what I eat but to understand what I ate and what it took to feel satisfied and how many calories I took in. I am obese and I have over 100 pounds to lose, so I fast quite a bit. I am really hungry during refeeds. Sometimes though, after I have eaten and eaten and eaten, it’s just time to stop and take my butt to bed.
After 4 days of Thanksgiving feasting, today is Monday with a vengeance. I managed to fast till 10:30 am, then ate a bacon & egg breakfast; still hungry…ate more keto food…still hungry, you get the picture. I think eating my fill of keto foods, plus small tastes of non-keto foods, and too many keto desserts have already changed my body’s idea of what / when / how much to eat.
I knocked myself out making tasty keto Thanksgiving dishes for our potluck & leftovers, but that didn’t stop me from overindulging once I mentally gave myself permission to “cross the line”. I think it’s half mental, half physical.
I’m going back on the training wheels. Today I’ll eat keto food, 2 meals; tomorrow I’ll extend the length of my daily fasting window, with fatty coffee in the morning. I refuse to weigh for a few days until I’m safely back on the horse.
I fast most days till noon - 3 pm, trying to maintain a 6 hr eating window daily, 8 hr max.
1x to 2x / week I fast 24 - 48 hrs.
1x / month I fast longer, around 60 hrs.
Another thing I do sometimes is ADF, alternate day fasting, full 3-meal keto on the alt days.
I follow Megan Ramos’ advice to vary my routine.
Again I want to stress that I am a very big girl. SW-271, CW-218, GW-179. SO I have alot of fat stores to pull from. I fast between 5-7 days per week with a 2 or 3 day refeed in between. Right now however, I am fasting for an indeterminate length of time because I have a goal of reaching a particular weight before the new year. I need to have some minor surgery but my Doc won’t do it unless my weight is much better. So I have to get the weight off quickly. I alternate my fasting periods as well. I don’t do the same exact thing every time. I dont’ plan to fast through Christmas, but I do hope to get in this 10-14 day extended fast before Christmas. My longest fast was 14 days back in October.
I still struggling with being hungry, like I’m going to die without food, in the evening. I’m fine all day but 7pm comes around and I eat non-stop until I go to bed. I’ve tried going to bed early, but then I’m up in the middle of the night wide awake. I have no idea if I’m actually hungry or if it’s emotional, I’m not sure I can tell if I’m really hungry and I don’t feel full, I just have varying degrees of uncomfortable. 
As someone who has been stalled for over a year, I continue to find it helpful to recall that this is a hormonal issue. In other words, if I’m still overweight, and if I’m staying overweight for long periods of time, something is probably wrong. And as far as I understand it, the root cause for most of us is elevated insulin levels.
(Obviously other hormones are involved, and women who’ve had hysterectomies, post-menopausal women, men with low testosterone, and others have other hormonal issues that make things even more challenging for them. But ceteris paribus, the following applies to them too.)
I tried eating “better,” going full keto for a couple of months over the summer. I dropped a little bit of fat, but with nothing like the speed that my first 10 kilos fell off me over 10 weeks last year. (And those 10 kilos came off while I was fairly low carb but still eating at least 1 large mango a day.)
I hypothesize that if we can improve insulin sensitivity, we can bypass these questions of satiety. We are animals. Animals eat till they’re full. I reckon sometimes, maybe often, they eat till they’re fucking stuffed silly. Lions don’t worry that the deer they’re consuming whole is too many calories. They just eat the entire goddamn thing.
We’re animals. So why am I trying to cut down on eating macadamia nuts? Why am I feeling guilty for eating that extra piece of delicious wild salmon? If ketogenic eating is backed by science, I shouldn’t have to.
The question, it seems to me, is how can we improve our insulin sensitivity? There’s two answers I so far have to this:
- Resistance training (buy Doug McGuff’s Body By Science and read it cover to cover)
- Consider fasting
(Well, I have a third, but it’s Metformin, and I’ve only been on it for a couple of weeks so I can’t say whether or not it works.)
If you search for threads I’ve commented on or started, you’ll find some of the great comments by some clever folks who’ve given me some detailed advice on these two potential solutions to our problem.
And hey, if you want to wait, I imagine I’ll be able to tell you by the end of winter whether my adding the McGuff resistance training protocol (<20 mins a week of strength training and that’s it) plus Metformin and maybe a bit of fasting worked for me.
And if it works for me, I bet it’ll work for anybody.
@Joan1 do you usually fast during the day? I think partly our bodies and minds are busy during the day so we can ignore hunger, but at night, when we’re at home, our brains know we’re relaxed and safe and we can finally EAT. I know i came to associate being at home with eating during my eating disorder recovery. I was too embarrassed to eat in public really because I had to eat SO much food, so breaking that association has been difficult. I want to be ok with eating in public more, and not feeling like I have to “save” eating for when I’m at home because I notice I tend to want to eat “all the things” when I’m home because it’s like my brain is scared it won’t get to eat when I’m out of the house. Man, having gone through all of this has taught me so much about hunger, both physical and mental, and I try to really pay attention when I notice something because it teaches me a lot about how my body and brain respond to different cues.
@gabe wow…you are awesome. I love your writing (the Latin especially, did you study logic?? I love a good logic reference!) I think you are 100% correct about the hormonal component of hunger and weight stalls and that the key is improving insulin sensitivity. This is why some of these guys (Sam Feltham who did the overfeeding experiments, Shawn Baker who eats like 5 pounds of meat a day amongst others) can stay very lean while really packing it away. They have loads of lean muscle tissue and excellent insulin sensitivity. As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread when I was very underweight during my eating disorder I was basically all muscle and could eat many thousands of calories of keto foods (including keto “treats”) and not put on weight. I was running and lifting which I’m sure improved my insulin sensitivity. I am familiar with Doug McGuff’s protocol so please let us know how that progresses for you. One other idea is to try going totally carnivorous. I have heard this can be very effective for mitigating the gnawing hunger people eating regular keto foods sometimes have because eating only animal products reduces the variety of flavors you experience and kind of resets your “reward” responses to food. Just another tool in our bag of tricks right? I, like you, refuse to feel bad if I want to eat more of those delicious macadamia nuts or more of the yummy wild salmon. I of course have to work at keeping weight on due to my history of anorexia, but aside from that I find that, I will not punish myself for enjoying food. I look forward to hearing more from you and I will go back and read more of your posts about your experiences!
I have been fasting at least 12 hours but trying to get to 16 hours a day. I don’t feel hungry for the most part until evening. I think you’re right about the association of home and eating. It seems the minute I get home I want to eat something. It doesn’t matter if I’m just getting home from eating out either. That’s going to be a tough one to break. When I quit smoking I stayed away from my smoking place, out on my deck on my favorite chair, but I can’t really stay away from home! I’m trying to be patient, my body didn’t get this way overnight and the more I’m learning the more I see how my body has been screaming at me to listen!
But if the lion wants to eat a second deer it has to run another down, not walk to the fridge. And many animals seasonally over eat and get fat, lions too, which helps them survive the lean season when food is scarce. We no longer have forced lean seasons and I think learning to do periodic voluntary fasting can help us restore balance.
I have experienced this as well. I have found myself not particularly hungry but will eat a small low carb/moderate protein meal. After the meal, I find myself extremely hungry. It didn’t make any sense. But then I read that ANYTIME you eat, even a low glycemic meal, your insulin rises. So I have found that when I am following an IF diet, I do best to eat in the evening. I am hungry AFTER the meal and will struggle to not continue to eat. The only thing that stops me is to go to bed which begins the night time fasting. When I wake, I am no longer hungry and will not be hungry UNTIL I eat again. Insulin is a very powerful hunger hormone!!