Never feel full

[booklover164]

I am hungry all of the time. I have recently started exercising again after a very long time off as I really need to lose some weight. I am still breastfeeding my youngest but only 2 feeds a day.

I cannot get full. A typical day includes:

homemade granola, kefir and fruit for breakfast
banana and apple mid morning snack
lentil dahl ( no rice/bread) for lunch
satsuma and handful of nuts for afternoon snack
dinner with the kids such as spag bol, curry, fajita etc
bowl of homemade yogurt, fruit, seeds and a drizzle of local honey for pudding
one coffee, 3 teas and about 1l of water

sometimes I will have chocolate or crisps, maybe cake or ice cream but not every day at all.

Trying to run x3 a week and do an online work out.

I am absolutely starving all day! Very rarely feel full and very rarely not thinking about food. I haven’t lost much weight yet either 😭

any tips? Thanks

I'm the same.

Can't ever get rid of the food noise in my head and it will be with me until I'm dying.

Have a very large appetite, which I believe is inherited.

I'm thinking about giving up food and moving on to a liquid diet.

I need to lose 3 stone.

@MooDengOfThailand it’s so hard isn’t it 😭

It’s not right to feel full I think

and if you do feel full I suspect your tummy expands so that you need more to feel full… and weight problems

feeling not full and slightly peckish is normal - and after a while it doesn’t feel bad or distracting whereas being full can feel unpleasant

probably takes a long time to accept that state as ok

I try distraction techniques - crafting, knitting, crochet etc to keep my hands and mind busy. I also try to eat low calorie food in bulk, add spinach to spag bol and replace half the pasta with another veg.

A friend using Mounjaro says her food noise is completely gone but she struggles to eat a healthy diet, because she just doesn't get hungry.

As someone on MJ now, I can tell at a glance that you are way over, and you have no chance. I eat:

Breakfast: coffee
Lunch: chicken or egg salad sandwich + apple
Dinner: protein, a few new pots, loads of veg
Snack: small pot yoghurt

On that miserly amount of food I am losing 1lb a week. I am 5ft 6 and reasonably active (walking 5K every day).

No fucking way I could sustain it without the drug.

You need to calculate your TDEE, weigh everything and stick 500 kcals under your TDEE every day. Don't eat exercise kcals and resist the treats. Your TDEE reduces as you do, so keep working it out.

@smilingfanaticcan I ask how much you weigh? I’m the same height as you and 12st 4 needing to lose a stone and I think I would find that amount of food hard to keep going on. But it might explain why my weight loss is so slow.

You need more protein and fat, there’s barely any in what you are eating

You’d do better having bacon and eggs (no toast!) for your first meal, then some chicken or fish for dinner - with veg no pasta or potatoes

You should be able to feel full, but you won’t if you basically just eat carbs

Without animal protein and saturated fat you’re going to be hungry.

Bodies want nutrition not just calories and so will continue to look for food until the minimums nutrition is achieved.

Endless hunger is miserable isn't it? As a Mounjaro user I now know how I need to eat to be satiated and lose/maintain weight and not gain. Your diet is high in carbs and sugar and low in protein and fat. I would bin the granola and fruit at breakfast and choose a savoury high protein breakfast instead. Lunch being dahl is ok but would be better with added protein - tofu or seitan if you're vegetarian or some animal protein. Dinner should be lower carb and higher protein - if you want to eat the same as the family then half your pasta or rice portion and add more protein. Add healthy fat with every meal such as olive oil or avocado. That may help with the hunger.

For me, the endless hunger is very significantly reduced if I go on a very low carb diet -- so, from your listed meals, cutting out the dahl, granola, fruit, pasta, etc.

After the first few days of that, food cravings (or food noise as they now seem to be called!) fade to a background level that it is more possible to control with 'psychological discipline'.

BTW, you don't state portion sizes in your OP, so it could just be that you are eating a mildly restricted quantity (in accordance with your wanting to lose weight) so that the hunger is completely normal?

(Minor edit for clarity)

Ask ChatGPT to give you a high protein meal plan for your requirements - calculate and tell it your calorie deficit, vegetarian etc.

You need to eat protein at every meal. It really does help. Also steadily increase water.

You might still not feel full, but worth a try for a couple of weeks.

I was really hungry when I started losing weight but it did majorly improve over time and now my portions are smaller.

Sure. I started at 13 stone 5, and I am now down to 11 stone 8 (started in May).

I was trying to lose weight for years and now I am on the drug, I realise why I didn't succeed. I think I had lost touch with what we should be eating in a day. When I thought I was restricting and being 'good', I was still way over 😬

Your diet is probably very good in lots of ways e.g. fibre but it's also quite high in sugar. That's probably creating blood sugar up and downs making you hungry. I'd suggest experimenting with more savoury, protein heavy food with good fats. See if that helps.

@smilingfanatic that's really helpful thank you. I eat healthily and from scratch 80% of the time. But it seems...too much!

Not enough protein, load up on protein first thing in the morning. It will help reduce your appetite. I’m talking minimum 30g (absolute minimum).

I was like this too op. I remember going out and having three course meal in a restaurant, walking out afterwards I thought, actually I'm still quite peckish and could quite happily eat something else. Even the eat more protein thing doesn't seem to work for me. Only weight loss injections have worked

It’s the same advice as everyone else - lower the carbs, up the protein for satiety.

But I’d also massively increase your water. 1litrs isn’t enough. Your body needs to be hydrated to properly digest and also help the cells convert your body fat to energy when you lower carbs. Try increasing slowly up to 2.5-3 litres a day.

And lots of bulky stuff e.g. salad. The fibre, combined with the protein, helps you feel full.

Yes, I've been drinking 2.5 + l a day. I actually feel like sh** if I don't. Dehydration headaches that turn into migraines