Constantly Hungry

When I first started my diet, I had no problem staying within my calorie limit. I chose low calorie foods, and I was satisfied. Sometimes I even had a hard time eating enough calories! Now...as in the past three day, I have been constantly hungry. I am never NOT hungry. a) Why is this happening? and b.) how do I make it stop, because this is so annoying. I never stop thinking about food! (Now that I re-read this, it may sound like I'm pregnant...but I'm definitely not...so don't suggest that!)

Arg! I'm so hungry!!

It looks to me you have misunderstood the meaning of diet. Dieting is not to keep yourself starve. Its replacing your eating habits. Replace whatever you are eating with healthy food with lower calories - collectively reaching the target no. of calories per day. So you can eat a lot more keeping the calories within limits. The ideal way to burn more and more calories is to speed up your metabolism which can be acheived by eating 5-6 meals a day (3 meals + 2-3 snacks). But collectively they shouldn't pass your target calories/day.

If you will try to keep yourself starve, it will benefit you in the short term. But all that weight loss will multiply itself and come back to you as a reaction. Why? Because trying to starve, you shocks your metabilism and it starts using fat deposits to compensate the lower calories intake. But human body is at its best in adaptation. Soon the body will realize that it is in survival/starving mode and it will slower your metabolism to use whatever energy that is coming from food with no fats. This is the danger point. For example if your target calories intake is 1800 and you are taking just 1000, as soon as the body comes in starvation mode, it will get use to 1000 calories per day. So when you will get back to your normal diet (for example 2400 calories), it will count 1400 calories in excess, converting them in fat deposits...

I hope that I was able to explain well. The best method that I have find to lose weight is the combination of Healthy Diet + Cardio + Weight Training/lifting.

Khurram.

Original Post by seallain413:

When I first started my diet, I had no problem staying within my calorie limit. I chose low calorie foods, and I was satisfied. Sometimes I even had a hard time eating enough calories! Now...as in the past three day, I have been constantly hungry. I am never NOT hungry. a) Why is this happening? and b.) how do I make it stop, because this is so annoying. I never stop thinking about food! (Now that I re-read this, it may sound like I'm pregnant...but I'm definitely not...so don't suggest that!)

Arg! I'm so hungry!!

 Have you been running more?  As you are burning more calories, you may need to increase the calorie count you are trying to stay within.  I am having the same issue.  I am supposed to eat 1200 calories to lose weight.  But this morning I attended a spinning class, and this afternoon I did a moderate hike - steep uphill for the first 30 minutes. I also ran around all day - never stopping for more than 5 minutes.  So there was no way I could stay within 1200 calories today.  By 6:00 I had only consumed 600 calories and I was starving!!!  I ate a huge dinner!!! I'm not even going to log the calories because I don't want to know.  I think I'm OK though because I exercised a lot and although my dinner was large - it was very healthy.  Your situation may be similar.  You may need to change your meter from sedentary to active, make allowances for more exercise and recalculate how many calories you need to lose weight.

Good luck.

I agree with the above advice. But for me, it is so hard mentally to up my calories when I am trying to LOSE weight, even when it is the reasonable thing to do. In my mind, if I do more exercise I want to not make up for those calories I am burning, I want to keep them burned off! But I am a wimp for any kind of physical discomfort, so I think my body might just make me do the right thing if I had an extremely active day by giving me hunger pangs. My body has me wrapped around the little finger when it uses those tactics!

I wonder if it would help to kind of split your meal up a bit too, like sometimes I will eat a sandwich for lunch, but instead of eating the whole sandwich at one sitting, I will eat either 1/2 or 1/4 of the sandwich at noon. Then I am not stuffed but I don't feel hungry and uncomfortable. Then around 2 I might eat another 1/4, and then another at 4:00. If you do that, plus add something like, say, 5 or 10 baby carrots to the mix for a snack, you can essentially eat all day without overeating or exceeding your calorie goal.

maybe you do not have enough protien or a little more fat (the good kind)

my son has lost a lotof weight and he said when he felt hungry but had enough to eat he took 1 tsp. of olive oil and that sated his appetite . It was only till his stomach shrunk a bit.

I can relate, it's been close to impossible for me to stick to the 1200 calorie limit because I get so hungry.  I do eat a bit more on days that I've worked out more, but do my best to just eat a little and wait a bit to see if I feel full/better.  It seems like 1500 a day is easier for me to stick to and it does still feel like dieting, I think doing a lot of walking and working out 4-5 days a week means that my metabolism isn't what I'd originally thought since by other appearances I'm sedentary.

There are online calculators to get a better idea of your daily calorie use, like this one:
http://www.ahealthyme.com/topic/calburncalc
it's a bit of a pain to tally everything but may help you get a better idea of what to select in your account goals.  I know the starvation mode thing can be a real pain in the butt so it may be better to listen to your body (be honest though!) and go for long term, permanent changes to your diet and weight than try to drop a lot of pounds sooner but have these kinds of struggles.

Also I found this post in another forum about "go-to snack foods" and got a few good/different ideas that seemed like they'd pacify my body better: http://caloriecount.about.com/snack-food-gt2- 4

I'm sure there are other postings like it.  I agree that a little bit of "good" fat and protein help with getting rid of hunger pangs, though I don't know if I'd be able to swallow straight olive oil - maybe I'll give it a try to see!  A few nuts may do the trick, just be sure to measure out a small portion and put the rest away so you don't get tempted to finish off the bag.