I have the opposite I am rarely hungry after lunch but often hungry after dinner but I know it is a snacking issue. No answer
The way you can tell if it is real hunger is do scrambled eggs (or some other fat and protein filled food if you do not eat eggs) sounds good. If they do it is probably real hunger, if not then it is habitual snacking
Your TDEE is about 1600kcal sedentary so it is a fair bet you are undereating. Keto in general prefers overeating to undereating since it there is a focus on metabolic repair and increasing the BMR through feeding and body recomposition. You’ve been doing great but it is probably partially due to undereating as well as the benefits of ketosis/low carbs. At some point, the body adjusts and gets used to too few calories but that will probably put you in a stall too from a lowered BMR. If you are still hungry that is probably a good thing, your body asking for more energy to do the things that low carbs allow it to do.
Everything in keto is an experiment on yourself so I would plan to eat more, and make the excess almost entirely fat. Extra macadamia nuts, butter or sauces on your food would easily add a few hundred extra calories and should remove the hunger and help you continue your keto progress. Give it some time though, a couple of weeks at least… a few days is probably not enough.
Thank you, I have upped my calories in the last week or so and it seems better. I think you are right that I was under eating. I’m still working through the “too much fat” brain I have been raised on for the past 60 years!
I started having a decaf iced latte with butter in it right after lunch and that seems to do the trick for now. Helps me add calories and fat and it tastes lovely.
Same thing (Keto purgatory) happened with me at the beginning and continued for 2-3 months at which point it began to feel comfortable and easy (i.e. not at all forced) to experiment with decreasing the volume of food that I ate. Still not much happened for 2-3 weeks until 40# seemingly vanished over the next 2 months! My counsel is patience, enjoy the changes along the way (better sleep, less hunger, etc) and don’t worry. It took years to get to where you are now, what’s a few months to shift course?