To think you need to deal with a certain amount of hunger to lose weight?

[Cushionwoman]

I feel this way.

I've done exercise and healthy eating. Yes I felt better. But did I ever really lose weight? No.

I'm now sticking to three healthy, smaller meals with no snacking and it's working.

I do go to bed hungry though.

The only other time in my life when I've actually lost weight I had to do this too.

Is that the true nature of a proper lose weight diet? A certain amount of hunger and discipline?

Or is it just me?

I'm not sure about the others but for me, when I say I'm never hungry, I mean outside of meal times. I obviously feel hungry before each of my main meals but rarely do between meals. You don't need to have a constant feeling of hunger to lose weight. You should be able to eat until comfortably full, and then not need to eat until your next meal.

I couldn't tell you how many calories I eat a day as I don't count them. But I have 3 good meals a day.

YANBU. I believe accepting hunger and not responding to it immediately are crucial to loosing weight and keeping it off.

When I finally lost my post-pregnancy weight I realised I hadn't felt and then ignored hunger for almost a year. I'd been ravenous in late pregnancy and while breastfeeding but I'd always responded to it immediately. Accepting that nothing bad was going to happen if I didn't eat for a while was key.

My parents have lost 8 stone between them after they radically changed their diet 2 years ago.

They don't calorie count, and in fact probably consume more than average. They're never hungry and eat really really well.

Low carb, high fat.

But I offer this with the caveat that my dad is retired chef. He is pretty much always thinking about food and developing dishes to fit with his diet.

they are also insufferably smug about it

I completely agree.

I used to be terrified of beng hungry...literally I would take snacks with me in case I was hungry and would stuff myself as soon as I felt the tiniest bit empty. Not surprisingly I was eventually 6 stone overweight.
Then I started to suffer from panic attacks and my stomach was badly affected and I couldn't eat properly. I lost 3.5 stone in 6 months mainly through hardly eating anything most days and being hungry a lot of the time. I quickly learnt that being hungry is unpleasant but it's really not actually going to hurt me.

A year on, I've kept the weight off and started to lost the remaining 2.5 stone slowly. I don't eat after 6pm normally so often go to bed hungry but just accept that's ok and I will eat again in the morning. I also wait now to feel hungry before eating and check that it is actually hunger not thirst or an emotional need instead.

We've been doing the Hairy Bikers, which seems to work. Loads of flavour, no hunger pangs, Dh's blood sugar is far more stable, and he has lost 14 kg in less than a year.

From a maintaining weight perspective, I find that if I eat 3 balanced meals, then I'll get a gradually building hunger an hour or so before a meal, but rarely get distractingly ravenous. I don't snack as a routine, but will sate my hunger if necessary.

Sweet flavours distort my appetite and get me swinging on highs and lows and grazing. If I aim for proteins and regular fat versions of food, my appetite is more stable. I've never followed a plan, just a broadly balanced diet of the major food groups. I have a tendency to be a bit too light on the fruit and veg.

Not hunger, but I suspect it's the same mentality... There's a water fountain outside my classroom and I'm constantly being badgered by students to fill up their water bottles, frequently within 10 minutes of the lesson starting. When I refuse permission, I end up having to point out that it'll take them 3 days to die of thirst, and that one lesson will do them no harm, especially when they've just finished their previous drink! (If someone complains of a headache, the first thing I'll suggest is some water, I'm not a complete dragon)

We have become indoctrinated by messages of instant gratification, and it has distorted our perception of healthy levels of hunger.

I love feeling hungry and one of the reasons I hate set meal times. I find food tastes so much better when I am hungry. the problem is when you are hungry and know nothing is coming then the whole emphasis becomes about food.

Managing your weight = losing weight. If you're hungry you're eating the wrong food.

Eg eat the right food and hunger at the right time - meal times - is a normal hunger, not an overriding hunger. Eat the wrong food and hunger is fierce. Wrong food = simple carbs, sugar etc.

So far lost 2lbs per week eating the right food. The hunger is a revelation - normal hunger, not gnawing hunger.

Nope whenever I've lost weight I've rarely been hungry. Maybe peckish in the first week whilst your stomach shrinks a bit
You just eat more of things that are lower in calories/fat/sugar.
I always include bread in my diet though as I can't give that up. I just eat less of it and eat white bread as that has less calories.

Op I am loosing weight, I am not weighing myself, or measuring but I can see its coming off.

I am aiming for low carb, I have not been hungry once and my appetite has gone?

I am eating things like

steak, mushrooms with cream cheese and garlic, and salade.

bacon, mushrooms and poached eggs

bacon and avacado.

beef tomoatoes with either humous, onions, chorizo, hams, meats and other salade stuff.

chicken and salades.

I have carrots still and sweet potatoes, I had a bacon and avacado sarnie yesterday and relax on one day a week. a little choclate, but I have tried to steer clear of biscuits, and cakes.

Its really odd but I have not once felt hungry and as I said my appetite has gone!"

I have lost weight on slimming world and eat lots of veg and fruit these days .
I wonder tho about the low fat aspect of this as its fat free cheeses etc and fat free yogurts etc - in the back of my mind I know that good fats are needed and I kno I cd build these into the programme using Syns but tend to use those for what I see as treats such as wine !
I'm fascinated by the reference s here to hi fat hi protien diets and Wd love to know more ? I don't eat red meat but eat tuna and chicken - cd that work ? Any advice much appriciated . I agree about tolerating hunger feelings but I think my stomach as shrunk on sw so I don't feel hungry now but I do still get a craving for chocolate etc which is not really hunger !!!

Just make sure you do not enter a supermarket when you are feeling hungry as it is complete torture!!!!!

Sugar is the devil for me. I've cut it out - yay! - headache for 2 weeks but enjoying the clear-headedness absence of nuttiness . Steadily losing weight (2lbs pw). Portion sizes reduced - basic guide 2oz carb (complex if poss), 2oz protein, 8oz veg. Regular meals - breakfast, lunch, dinner. Approx 4h between breakfast and lunch, 5h between lunch and dinner. Raw veg (carrots, celery eg) and bit of protein (nuts, small bit of cheese) for supper if I need it.

Day at a time!

low-fat/no-fat foods contain a lot of sugar, nb. A's do most processed foods.

I disagree with the op. My diet method is using hypnotherapy to combat emotional eating and eating when bored. The principles include drinking plenty of water, eating when hungry, stopping when no longer hungry.

Therefore, never hungry.

Lost 10kg so far in a couple of months.

I lose weight by low carbing - if your carbs are low enough, you go into ketosis and don't get hungry (or, at least don't get hungry very often.) Also your fat intake is quite high on these kinds of diets and that creates a feeling of satiety.

I have a 'no hunger rule' when I diet yet have lost four stone this way. It really changed my life when I switched from low calorie dieting to low carbing.

You still need the discipline, to resist all the normal, carby foods people eat but if you prioritise weight loss over eating those kinds of foods it's worth it.

Are all the low carbers doing some sort of variation of the Atkins?

I sleep badly but sleep even worse if I don't have a pretty empty stomach at bed time.

It seems odd for adults to be so scared of feeling hungry.
Waris Dirie wrote a book talking about her childhood (desert nomads): only very small children cried or got upset about being hungry. Everyone else shrugged a bit of hungry off, no biggie. Some days they only had one half decent meal (& nothing else). Getting upset about it was just a waste of energy.

It's really interesting. I've lost 6.1kg in the last 7 weeks by eating 1200 kcal and by reducing my carbs - not cutting but sensible reduction (avoiding white potatoes, bread, rice) and switching for complex carbs e.g. sweet potato and barley.

I honestly haven't been hungry and my biggest battle had been eating enough. I was really full and had 300-400 calories left at the end of the day.

Yesterday, for the first time I decided to have a jacket potato for lunch, and by dinner time I was starving, grouchy and miserable. I didn't have any energy to cook so I sent DH to get chips to go e
With the pork I'd cooked. I only ate my correct portion, but later that night I was miserably hungry and felt terrible. I can only assume it was a massive carb spike after weeks of relatively low carbs. It was horrible!

Low carb/Atkins made me feel so ill. Horrible memory.

You don't need to do anything fancy or high falutin' to not feel hungry and lose weight at the same time. All the food groups, smaller portions with half the plate veg, cut down on fats (though not cut them out altogether). And in my case, ditch the sugar.

And I'm post-menopausal when it's harder to lose weight. The above is working for me.

I'm also post-cancer and I don't want to be fiddling about with food groups. I need to have a good diet and maintain a good weight to make sure, to the best of my ability, I'm healthy in future.

Yes to what Springy DAffs says. THis is not the same as Atkins.

There is no need to have no carbs, but it's what they are that counts.
No super starchy and/or refined ones.

Green vegetables and high fibre/low sugar ones are fine. A little whole fresh fruit is fine, unless a person is over sensitive to sugar.

The only time I have been able to lose weight was when I accepted that it was ok to feel some hunger. It didn't make any difference what I ate, it was just creating a calorie deficit. When I was very slim my diet was terrible in terms of eating healthily, which I obviously don't want to go back to. It's the eating 3 meals a day that sadly doesn't seem to work for me as it makes me more hungry

I'm glad I was able to reassure you, Grays :)

I 'graze', too. It took years of swing dieting to work out that my particular metabolism doesn't do well with 3 meals and 3 mini-fasts. Since I agreed with myself that eating when hungry's a good idea (duh!) - even if whatever theories are current say 'no' - my weight's been stable. My settled weight is higher now I'm sedentary and on antidepressants, but it's steady.

I'm now in agreement with those who say that, if we never dieted, we would never get fat - metabolic abnormalities excepted. Dieting buggers up your body's inbuilt ability to know what you need to eat, and when. So does overfeeding, of course, but I think that's far less of a problem.

If I'm eating carbs I get a 'I need food NOW' hunger. - This suggests your insulin response is less than perfect. Mine is - I'm talking about generally, not during a mirtazapine frenzy! - I have PCOS, which is a metabolic syndrome affecting insulin. So when I get that ^ feeling I eat some fast carbs with a protein food, knowing the protein will convert more slowly into glucose and forestall the next potential insulin crash.

It's not rocket science You can't bully a genetically less than ideal metabolism into changing, so I work with it.