I'm losing weight but I'm so hungry 😭

[Clemopesea]

I've been about a stone to a stone and a half overweight for pretty much all my adult life, yo yo-ing back and forth on various diets (I've tried them all including keto). After a shit time and 3 back to back miscarriages I comfort ate my way into oblivion and had a nasty shock when I realised I was now nearly 2.5 stone overweight and had just tipped into the "obese" BMI range. at 5ft 3 with a desk job my TDEE is 1700 cals so a 1lb loss requires me to eat no more than 1200 calories a day. I've been doing this for 8 weeks (that's the longest I've ever stuck to a diet) and I've lost nearly a stone which is obviously great. However, I'm starving all the time and I'm finding it is seriously affecting my mood. I follow a Mediterranean style diet with plenty of protein, healthy fats, fibre etc (which I always did, just ate too much of it) and I am just starving. To the extent that I'm often so hungry it wakes me up at night. I eat two meals a day, 400 cals for lunch and 600 for dinner with 200 left for milk in tea or a small snack etc. I cannot do any high impact exercise due to a knee injury but I walk 10-15k steps per day and do some yoga. I'm completely healthy otherwise. My thyroid is normal (not just within NHS normal ranges but genuinely completely normal).

I would have thought after 8 weeks I'd be getting more used to the smaller calorie allowance but I'm so hungry I can't bear it. I tried upping my calories to 1400-1500 but weight loss completely plateaud. With all previous diets I've felt hunger like this but always assumed it was because I hadn't stuck to them so hadn't adjusted. Am I destined to just feel starving forever now?

Lesina "You are not starving. You are experiencing hunger. Which is normal. There is a ping between meals that all animals feel hunger. Without that all animals get fat."

exactly what I mean when I say I know many thin people who say they are hungry all the time. My bestie says to me "why can't you just be hungry? Ignore it". My mum probably spent 50+ years ignoring hunger. She grew up in a country where food was not abundant - she's probably ignored being really badly hungry.

I would like to learn how to do this.

I am fine feeling hungry, but I feel excessively hungry to the point I can't function or concentrate.

Thank you for this lovely, measured post.

I don't intend to die on this particular hill and I am not especially invested, but this is a scientific study (there are others with similar findings) and as a lay person I will give them some credence. Also entirely anecdotally, from personal experience I have found that if I eat later in the evening I am always ravenous next morning and sometimes during the night, if I eat earlier I am not 🤷‍♀️. I have noticed this consistently and I don't pretend to understand the mechanism for why this is so (for me, at least)

This is more from that research: Results revealed that eating later had profound effects on hunger and appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin, which influence our drive to eat. Specifically, levels of the hormone leptin, which signals satiety, were decreased across the 24 hours in the late eating condition compared to the early eating conditions. When participants ate later, they also burned calories at a slower rate and exhibited adipose tissue gene expression towards increased adipogenesis and decreased lipolysis, which promote fat growth. Notably, these findings convey converging physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying the correlation between late eating and increased obesity risk.

Tbh I don't tend to eat after 6 as that's when I have my dinner and I don't snack after dinner.

1200 cal a day? You’re not a toddler.

I’m the same height as you and 9st 11 and eating 1800 cals a day to lose. I’m active but sounds like you are too.

Up the calories. If you over restrict you’ll end up binging.

https://www.jamessmithacademy.com/macro-calculator/

i recommend this calculator.

I'm not particularly active, I'm sitting a lot of the day except for my walking. I was always told walking doesn't particularly count as being active.

It's sounds like you are losing .75 -1kg a week on what you think is a 500 cal deficit a day? So halve the deficit and halve the weight loss. You might feel like you are stalling, because you have had big losses, but you will lose, just more slowly.

The problem with a big deficit for a long time, besides hunger, is that your body will conserve energy by doing less incidental exercise and you will lose muscle, which makes it harder to lose weight. If you want to diet for a long time you should keep the deficit at a point you can manage physically.

I do this. I'm a healthy weight but sometimes I want to cut for my sport, but I don't want to get too hungry or weak so that it interferes with training. I aim for a 250 deficit and I lose around 0.25 kg a week.

Have you been tested for diabetes???

I know it's rough on so few calories but you do usually get used to it after a week or so

I usually eat hard boiled eggs and cottage cheese if I'm absolutely starved in the evenings

Have a boiled between your last meal and before you go to bed. it's called Supper so has a name.

It's what they used to do in the olden days to stave off hunger pangs at bedtime.

In fact I might start doing that.

Boiled egg 🥚

there was no difference in hunger levels between that and eating carbs

Can you describe the feelings you are having off hunger a bit more?

One of the main reasons that I eat low carb is how much better I feel on it.

There is no doubt that the change from low fat to high fat low carb was not a pleasant one for me. It took a couple of weeks for my blood sugar levels to stabilise and that screaming feed me from my brain which noticed falling bloom sugar levels to switch off

Doing one week of low carb, even eating to satiety, would have left me feeling as you describe. Another week or so of eating whatever I wanted while staying low carb brought me to a new plateau.

Have a look for the low carb bootcamp threads here on MN to find the low card 'bootcamp' rules. They are very simple and peoples experience might help you with the transition to low carb.

I actually wore a blood sugar monitor for a couple of weeks to help me tune into the feeling of true hunger rather than low blood sugar.

Any other, non-food related reasons for feeling 'hungry' I found helped very much by Gillian Riley's approach to overcoming over eating https://www.eatinglessonline.comm*

There are all sorts of reasons for overeating. I find my brain most adept at coming up with a reason to eat, which happens to reinforce any desire I have to eat.

Hope you find what you need.

Yes, I don't have it. Apart from being overweight I'm in tip top health.

OP are you actually weighing and tracking everything? I.e measuring out your milk for tea? Weighing your porridge oats? Even your banana? Weighing ingredients?

Your body will think it’s being starved and start conserving energy. Eating so little is counter productive.

Im so sorry you are going through this! I really feel for you!
I felt like this after my second child when i went on a diet. I was just barely overweight, but used to be very slim and wanted to get back there! I was hungry for about 2 years! Then i increased the calories again. Just a little bit to not lose the will to live 😃
Im on 1500 calories (more or less, i dont really count religiously anymore) now and have been for 6 years and have maintained my pre pregnancy weight.
But it was hard to get here!
Keep at it! It will be worth it in the end!

This is BS. It might do that for a little while, but it cant preserve energy forever if it doesnt receive enough. So at one point it will have to burn. Stick with it!
If people start hearing this when they suffer they give up and the famous yoyo happens!!

It also makes a difference what you eat. If i eat 1000 calories of spaghetti i would be starving all day, but 1000 calories of healthy proteins and vegies keeps me going much longer.

See, if I had even 700 cals pasta at lunch, I'd be not hungry for several hours

1000 cals of protein and veg, I'd feel a bit ill from all the protein, and be hungry within about 4 hours.

I lost two stone one time but I was miserable, eating a tonne of vegetables just doesn't give you the same feeling of fullness as eating a load of carbs. I think we all have a natural weight and tend to go back to that over time even if we shed a few pounds occasionally.

Same, full for hours with carbs. Bowl of pasta would keep me going til dinner no problem.

I know many very low carbers like to think it's the miracle weight loss diet but for me it isn't. I did keto for 6 weeks a couple of years back, stuck to it, and I was hungry and felt awful the whole time (it was worse than this). I did lose weight but no more than I'm losing now (less in fact).

More to the point, I can't sustain a very low carb diet long term. Realistically, I'm not going to be able to never eat bread or pasta or rice again, I don't want to live like that.

I've lost again this morning and I went over my calories by roughly 200 yesterday, so I may increase slightly for the rest of the week and see what happens.

I'm certainly not giving up, I need to lose weight.

Yes pretty much. I don't weigh green veggies or salad as the calories are negligible, but carbs, fat and protein I do. I'm home all day so it isn't hard for me to do.

Well then you found out what works for you. Thats good. Everyones different. The key is to finding the right way for you. But for very few people its possible to diet without being hungry. So i think that part is normal to a certain point.

Yes you lose weight at the expense of your other bodily functions and overall health.

Read the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.