How to beat hunger?

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  • renovak89144
    renovak89144 Posts: 1 Member
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    Stay away from sugar, replace those carbs with protein. They're both 4 calories per gram but protein makes you feel fuller longer while sugar triggers hunger. Allegedly even calorie-free sweeteners have this effect so replace your diet soda with plain water.

    Second, distract yourself. Hunger is a bit like pain, or like an itch. The more you think about it, the worse it gets.

    If you're not losing weight at 1700 calories, you may not be eating enough. I don't know how big you are, but if you don't eat enough, your body will think it's starving and will lower metabolism to help you survive longer. I think the trick is to eat enough calories, but the right kind of calories and to do enough (whatever you're capable of) to burn them off.

    I'm not a doctor, but I can speak from personal experience. I was a long-distance runner and in the military. Got hurt pretty badly and it altered my mobility and I ended up rapidly putting on weight. So I cut my calories way back to 1600 and lost weight for a little while, but then I plateaued. My weight loss stopped and even though I dropped down to 1500 and increased my activity (I was walking by then), my weight wouldn't move. I did a ton of research on this issue because it seems very counterintuitive. I decided to slowly increase my calories back up to 2000 per day and set a goal to add a quarter of a mile every day until I reached a point that weight loss began again. Sure enough, it did.

    I ended up putting on more weight much later because I developed terrible arthritis in my ankle due to the surgeries I went through, and again it limited my mobility and put me back in the same boat. But this time, I'm using what I already know. I'm keeping my calories at around 2000 per day, avoiding most sugar, using protein to fill myself up, and making it a point to walk as far as my ankle can manage. I've dropped 20 pounds in the last 5 weeks or so. That may sound drastic but I had a terrible bout of diverticulitis for a week and couldn't eat or drink anything by mouth. Barring that, I think I'm going through normal weight loss.

    And if I can do it, you can do it because I lack a lot of willpower when it comes to food.

    Good luck!

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