Eating less - will I feel less hungry at some point?

[notmoreNetflix]

I am trying to eat in a healthier way. I was previously eating the wrong foods but also way too much. Yesterday I ate a sufficient amount of food and it should have been filling but I felt hungry all day. Same today, I found myself thinking about lunch at 10.30am! Am I so used to overeating that it will take time for my appetite to adjust? How long? I have had about 7 cups of tea this morning to try stop myself snacking!

It took me a solid week or two to adjust back when I started dieting last year. I ate a lot of low calory food like cucumbers, pickles and grapes back then to help myself through it.

Having said that - what have you gone from/to in terms of calories and diet? It might be more sustainable to try and drop a small amount every day or week for a while, and commit to slower term weight loss. Or "just" switch to healthier whole foods, but as much of them as you'd like?

Two weeks for me. God, I went to bed 2 hours early once because I was hungry😂
After the two weeks it settled and I was fine with normal single human size portions.

A second pp above to make sure you are doing something sustainable if you feel you can't ride this out.

Possibly good suggestions. I'm trying 1500 calories so not really low - but was probably eating twice that before. I felt like I was hungry immediately after eating.

I have previously tried dieting by going to 1200 calories, can do it for a couple of weeks but I don't keep it up.

What do you usually eat? I have to steer clear of any diet food because I end up hungry after them. Only thing I can do is 10cal jelly if I fancy it once in two weeks🙈

Yes it does take a while to adjust. I found doing intermittent fasting really helped with hunger. I eat between 12/1 and 8pm. I find if I have breakfast I’m hungry 2 hours later, whatever it is.

I can now happily eat one large, balanced meal a day and no snacks and feel great.

Yes it takes about two weeks.

Then you’ll start worrying that you’re not losing any more because you’re not hungry 😂

Past couple of days mainly fruit vegetables rice lattes with skimmed milk. (My diet before this was extremely unhealthy, too ashamed to include detail!)

Yesterday I had lentil and vegetable curry with rice lunch and dinner. Toast and coffee in morning and a couple of biscuits with coffees throughout day. It's not great actually is it? Need to cut out biscuits and coffees!

If the hunger would ease off after a couple of weeks I should be able to cope.

(Although my track record is generally that I only last a few weeks.)

I would happily keep couple of biscuits. I couldn't do this if I cut out all the things I like. I do account for them and balance everything overall. Nit just calorie wise, but generally. Kind if a rule that when I have crisps on film ir game night, I do more vehlg next day. Makes me feel better😁

I read somewhere that we evolved to feel a bit peckish hours and hours before we actually need to eat to prompt us to go out hunting/fruit picking and you don't actually need to eat at that point. I'm not sure how true it is but it helps me to think I don't have to eat the second I feel a bit hungry.

I thought I might be more likely to stick with it if I allowed a couple of biscuits.

Perhaps I need to grit my teeth and ride out this hungry phase. I haven't felt this hungry when I have tried eating healthily before but maybe that's because I was eating so much this time. Not many ways to find distraction from food these days.
Maybe early bedtime!

That thinking might help Mustardbay thanks.

Have you thought about doing the low carb bootcamp on MN.. New one starts properly tomorrow. It's fantastic for people who are hungry.

I took a few weeks to adjust to eating significantly less. I found that having plenty of healthy stuff which contains negligible calories in the fridge was very useful for snacking on, eg celery, cucumber, carrots, radishes, peppers. Also, not having unhealthy snack food in the house was very important for me.

No @MrsHuntGeneNotJeremyObviously. I will have a read thanks.

What protein are you having OP? Protein and good fats take your body longer to break down so make you feel full longer. You'd be better cutting some fruit which tends to be fairly high calorie to add in more protein.

• cheese string

-peanut butter

• boiled egg or any other form, a medium egg is 65 cals so 2 eggs scrambled with onion, peppers, mushrooms, chillies etc is a great filling meal
• beef jerky

Also green veg and mushrooms are really low calorie so you can go crazy with them to really bulk out a meal without adding much to your count. A cup of green beans is 40 calories, a cup of mushrooms is 20, 1/3 pack of babycorn is about 40. If you have all of those steamed and seasoned you've filled a big plate for 100 calories and it will make you feel full. You can add a tsp of butter for richness which will make you feel full longer, 35 calories and some wafer thin chicken or ham (3 slices = 27 calories) and it's still under 200 calories.

Or 2 slices grilled back bacon (95 calories), 2 eggs fried with the 1 cal spray oil (130 calories), loads of fried mushrooms and a grilled or fried tomato (roughly 20 cals) and you have a mock fry up for 250 cals.

Might stop buying unhealthy snacks "for DC".

If you eat large portions, like I did, it will settle. Look at all this not just as losing weight exercise, but also learning and getting good food habits so you keep the weight off later.
For some people keeping few biscuits or crisps works, for others it doesn't. I personally can't do too restrictive. I just give up.
I sm honestly eating pretty much everything I did before, just smaller portions. That though wouldn't work for someone else

In interested that you’re thinking of cutting out coffee. You can have coffee. I’d keep a couple of biscuits too if you’re able to manage just two!

What’s the proportion of rice to curry? I’d cut down on the rice and have more of the lentil curry. Protein will keep you full for longer. I don’t count calories but just measure my carbs and focus on trying to eat more lean protein and veg.

Don't eat a lot of protein but I do like eggs so could start adding eggs in. Some good ideas thanks. Think I need to do some healthy grocery shopping.

Eggs are great! I sometimes have egg white (have full eggs for breakfast), quark, salt, pepper and fresh herbs on ryvita rye. Bloody love it. Tasty and filling.

It gets easier in a week or 2...and if you eat a large eat you start to feel too full

More protein helps, tea helps (watch the calories in milk though), & you need to find lower calorie and filling foods YOU like to make it sustainable

Green veg & mushrooms, porridge & bean dishes all v filling, also eggs
I’m vegetarian but understand meat also takes time to digest

Stay away from sugar & white flour (bread, pasta etc) as spikes insulin and therefore hunger

Drinking lots of water helps. I also think it’s better to eat a bit more healthy food & lose slowly than starve, binge & give up

I meant cutting down milky coffees that I buy. I drink a lot (generally fuelled by coffee crisps and cake at work).
At home I use less milk and it's skimmed.

I don't think I had a lot of rice yesterday but it was a creamy sauce, might have been better with more lentils/vegetables.

Eating more protein definitely helps you feel full up. I eat moderate portions of things I enjoy for meals, but for snacking I only eat lean cooked chicken breast without the skin. It's very low in calories, and if you eat it cold just on its own you're not really tempted to eat too much. But it's great for filling you up. M and S do half a big cooked roast chicken for £3.50 which I think is quite good value.