How do you stop feeling so hungry when you cut out/down carbs?

[CatchCatchThePigeon]

I am right at the bottom of the pre diabetic range so trying to change my diet. I'm not hugely overweight but could do with losing about 3-4kg.

I've taken all sorts of advice, I signed up to Zoe so I could monitor my blood sugar but the 'new' way of eating, even if the same calories, is leaving me so hungry, it's stopping me sleeping at night.

e.g. this morning I had greek yoghurt with walnuts and blueberries and about 10 mins later, I was absolutely starving

Yesterday I had salmon for lunch with salad (big salad with avocados and feta) and for dinner I marinated chicken in garlic and herbs and had that with the remainder of the salad

I can see my diet before was way too carb heavy. I love potatoes. I'd often have toast with jam or honey for breakfast. I know this has to change but I just don't seem to fill up on anything other than pure carbs. Has anyone got any recommendations?

Are you eating enough of fat? Lots of oil in your dressing for salad. I think personally that the first few days it’s better to eat more food and keep feeling full while you adjust to the lack of carbs. Your appetite reduces fairly quickly. Could you add low carb veggies as well as salad to bulk out your dinner or lunches? I often roast some med veg or sauté some fine green beans, or broccoli or cabbage.

Eggs might be a better option for breakfast, they tend to keep me feeling full.

Also, look on the low carb boot camp section on here for ideas. Their “rules” are helpful, and lots of recipes.

Do you enjoy eating the low carb way?

Not exactly what you're asking but I started keto 3 days ago and I haven't been hungry once. No sugar cravings and not missing carbs at all. Only think I'm missing is a coffee with milk but tea with almond milk is palatable.

Eat lots of protein, with every meal.

Eggs, cheese, chicken.....

I have a two-egg cheesy omelette for breakfast which lasts me right until lunchtime. In the past I used to have a huge bowl of muesli, yet my stomach was rumbling from 11am onwards.

Drink lots of water and make sure you get a lot of protein!

Not enough fat. Smother the salad, put butter on the vegetables., home-made mayo. Feels weird but it works.

I wonder if maybe you are going a bit hard and fast, particularly if you don’t have weight to lose? Maybe cut out the bad carbs first but have SOME better carbs, E.g. black rice and lentils?

But yes otherwise load up on protein and fat… eggs and eggs

I had gestational diabetes, and after seeing a nutritionist, I personally didn't cut out carbs, just changed the way I ate them. If I cut them out, my readings went way too low, and I was hungry. And the diet wasn't balanced - low/no carb isn't necessarily healthy.

I changed everything to wholegrains. Wholegrain or wild rice, wholegrain pasta, wholegrain and seeded sourdough bread etc? Sweet potatoes and roasted pumpkin or squash instead of normal potatoes?

Food combining was another thing - always pair a carb with a fat. So two slices of seeded wholemeal bread with avocado and a fried egg for breakfast or the same toast with peanut or hazelnut butter and a Greek yoghurt with nuts and seeds and fruit. A homemade carbonara with wholemeal pasta, eggs, cheese and a big side salad. Have the salmon but with roasted veg and include some sweet potatoes or squash etc. Falafels, humus, guacamole and wholemeal flatbreads with salad. Lasagne was bizarrely okay even with white pasta, as the bechemel sauce seemed to even it out.

Another tip the nutritionist gave was move after every meal for diabetes - amazingly a 15 min brisk walk would lower my readings significantly, or even just walking or dancing on the spot

From your diet that you've posted you have gone too far, you're meal plan is now: very low carb, low fat and low calorie.

You need plenty of protein and good fats, you can have carbs just reduce simple carbs like white bread/pasta/potatoes.

A more filling diet would be something like

• Breakfast: omelette with onions, peppers and ham or cheese
• lunch: chicken, tuna or avocado with veg/salad and some rye bread or ryvita crackers
• dinner: protein with small amount of carb and plenty of veg. so chicken thighs with rice and broccoli/cauliflower/green beans

Look up Low GI food lists and use those to build out some meals.

For snacks go with cheese, Greek yoghurt, nuts, beef jerky etc

As above, general rule is to pair a carb with a protein/fat so apple slices with peanut butter, ryvita with cottage cheese....

Don't have low calorie/zero fat versions, you want the fat it's filling and low fat versions usually have more sugar. My worst ever sugar reading was after a muller light.

thanks. I thought I was still doing ok on the fats as I was having avocado and feta in the salad but maybe I need more! And I added walnuts to my greek yoghurt (full fat) this morning.

I love eggs so I will try that for breakfast and see if it fills me up more.

I was having a v v high carb diet without really noticing so I think any change is probably going to be a shock to my system. Thanks for all your tips. I have got some lentils for dinner to have with fish so hopefully that is a good enough carb for me.

Is rye bread seen as ok? I do quite like that and don't need a lot of that to fill me up

and no I don't enjoy low carb but tbh I also don't want to become diabetic so if I need to eat low carb, then I will do it!

I ate ryvita, its v low cal but I found it filling. Loads and loads of cauliflower, again fairly low cal and very filling. Ditto any other cooked veg really (I dont include salad veg in this as I never found them filling) And this seems weird, but try to embrace the hunger a bit..it means what you are doing is working. Obviously dont take it to the extreme, but being hungry for an hour before you then eat a health lunch is fine.

yes the problem with a high carb diet is you are rarely that hungry so this is a big change for me

I'm the opposite!

Rye bread is a good choice. The basic rule is that the darker and seedier the bread the better it is.

Another good rule to remember is that veg grown above ground is lower carb.

Again you do not need to exclude carbs completely, just make good swaps so instead of white bread have multigrain.

You don't. Complex carbs play a massive role in satiety. Especially if you do cardio. You just need to learn to ignore it, or transition to a diet that incorporates healthy complex carbs and doesn't rely on silly Atkins-lite fads.

Op I’m not sure you’re getting the right advice here. Are you aiming for keto or just reducing your carbs a bit? One poster it appears thinks it is the latter , encouraging you to eat bread etc and and it may well be. But I think you need to clarify as the diabetic comment makes me think you’re aiming for keto.

I found fat just didn’t work for me, protein did. Try to make sure each meal is 30g protein, aim for roughly 100g a day, I found my calories always adjust naturally to sub 1500 once I get to 120g protein and you could try just very small portions of carb like 1/4 cup dry rice.

I agree you need to add small quantities of healthier carbs to you vegetables, healthy fats and protien and eat more of the health fats/protien.

I do 'moderate" carbs for pre diabeties reasons.

I just halved the carbs i used to eat. So i used to eat 100g of white pasta. I now eat 50g of wholemeal pasta but i dont count the carbs in broccoli, tomatoes, onions etc. I used eat a whole jacket with tuna. I now eat half the jacket, same amount of tuna and lots of salad.

I also think eggs are very filling so an omlette for lunch or breakfast is great.

I then make sure I have lots of salad/veg.

Also in my area, if you are pre-diabetic, you can get a referral to a nutritionist for advice so it might be worth asking?

Dr Becky Gillaspy on YouTube has lots of good advice about low carb/low sugar diets that are high in protein and include healthy fats.

I eat scrambled eggs most mornings. I make it with loads of butter.

Lunch will be chicken thighs with skin on, salad and mayo or possibly tuna.

If I get hungry in the afternoon it’s full fat Greek yoghurt and some berries.

Dinner will be anything from bolognaise to meatballs to steak, chicken etc. I eat a lot of cauliflower rice or broccoli rice, low carb veg, salads and olive oil etc.

That’s a rough plan. I do eat more variety but im
ever hungry. Lost 5 stone. 7 years ago and I have kept it off. I am not as strict with myself now and I do have weekends off for special occasions.

I think protein may be your answer. I am a very hungry person but since switching to high protein I'm full for a lot longer and I've lost over a stone in 6 weeks. If you're eating greek yogurt Skyr for example has around 20g of protein in a portion so it can be really quite easy to achieve.

yes I'm not doing this to lose weight but I do need to drastically change the way I eat because of the pre diabetes.

I monitored my blood sugar for a few days and it was absolutely horrendous. But as I say, my typical diet was (I realise now) just way way too carb heavy. Loads of bread, pizza, potatoes with every meal, garlic bread with most things. Getting tired on the way home from work and grabbing a packet of sweets that I would regard as fairly innocent but now clocking it all up day by day, I can see it was contributing to a pretty awful picture.

Interestingly, while the 'new' diet has left me hungry, I have way and I mean way more energy. Usually I'd be drifting off in the afternoon (because i had too much of a carb heavy lunch), now I have absolutely loads more energy. No 3pm slump for me anymore at all which is amazing. So it's obviously doing some good.

Thanks for all the tips though - I will incorporate some carbs. I like rye bread because it's so filling I can only manage one slice of it so I will add that to lunch or breakfast. I've ordered a book with low GI and low GL foods so I will wait for that to arrive and plan around that too.