Hitting low body fat % craving more junk food!

atmeeks

Hi, has anyone else hit 10% give or take a few and start having the craziest cravings for everything in sight! junk food, more healthy food any and everything! I understand why this happens, just wondering if it's happened to anyone else and what you have done to get through it. I've been eating like crazy since I hit 13% body fat and I'm still losing body fat.

crandos

Cheat days bro usually help me.

battyg13

i dont have any cravings. like has been suggested i have one cheat meal a week where i have what i want but still log it :-)

Majda1234_wechange

It has happened to me, i don't know what my body fat was but i was a little bit underweight and i exercise a lot and do have muscle weight too so i was really underweight and i am guessing my body fat is pretty low. Anyway i have been eating really healthy for 5 months and was just maintaining my weight(that was by bmi calculator underweight) and exercising regulary BUT two weeks ago i started experiencing cravings for sweets and fats. And the previous week was a disaster, i started intaking 2-3000 over my daily calorie intake with all the junk food and A LOTS of margarine since my body was craving fat. I literally had days where i ate margarine and bread all day and in one week i have gained around 5 kg and was at normal weight range.That was actually a day ago, the reason behind that is probably because my 5 month lifestyle had not fat in it, expect for salmon now and then which of course wasn't enough so i just decided to take fat in moderation and maybe you should do it so your body won't crave it so much.Also i haven't taken anything, literally not a single unhealthy thing in those 5 motnths so i had this abnormal sweet cravings and binges in the past week too. I was kind of a health freak and literally tried to eat ONLY what my "body needed" so after 5 motnths of now sweets and fats i had a crash so i am guessing that is happening to you. Maybe just change your lifestyle a bit, no frobidden foods may do the trick. When you want an ice cream have it but i guess it is all about moderation, i am extremist so i literally go for the completely unhealthy or way too healthy as some kind of freak and my entire crash week started because i had one ice cream and i felt as if my entire diet was ruined so from that day i started binging uncontrolably. I understand the cravings but that only means you must change sometihng about your lifestyle cause this is obviusly not working. i know i i am definitely not the right person to tell you about it but it is just my opinion from experience.

dieselbyte

My guess is you, like me, cut out all "junk" food in the beginning. I viewed all sweets and carbs as evil, and restricted my diet to only "clean" foods. I got down to, and still maintain 6.5 - 7% body fat. I started to crave "junk" food, but only because I hadn't eaten it for so long. It wasn't until I did more research and discovered "IIFYM". I realized that I could eat the "junk" food, as long as I was hitting my macros and caloric goals. I still eat "clean", but chocolate, pop tarts, ice cream etc are now staples in my diet. I never would have thought I can maintain low bf and still enjoy certain foods. I'm now at the point where I don't crave "junk" food. There are times when I plan on having ice cream, but I don't have it because I just don't feel like it. Moderation is key, and I found for me that because I eat the foods that I want, I don't crave them anymore.

waldo56

There is a strong hormonal basis for why it occurrs. Your body has an anti-starvation system that starts to become active in the low teens of BF% (for a male). Leptin drops, and it is a master controller for a lot of other hormones. One of the side effects is ravenous, insatiable hunger.

You can slow the rate of Leptin dropping with periodic refeeds. Refeeds are NOT cheats. Cheats are eating anything you wish. A well done refeed will be a huge fat-free carb jolt. Only glycogen has an effect on leptin production, eating any fat whatsoever when refeeding will be stored as fat (you become ultra-anabolic). Protein is neutral, but tends to fill you up (not a good thing). A typical refeed day for me is 50g fat, 200g protein, and 500g+ carbs.

Periodic refeeding just slows the rate of Leptin falling. Diet breaks (10 days+ at maintenance, at least) stabilize the hormone levels and disengage your anti starvation system. Stronger effects like continuous ravenous hunger, no sexual desire/inability to perform (or no periods for women), depressed metabolism, chronic tiredness will go away with a diet break. Many screw up diet breaks though, it takes time for all the effects to recede; diet break/cheat mentality combined with ravenous insatiable hunger is not a good combination. It is much better to diet at maintenance and not allow yourself to cheat as you ride out your homone levels returning to normal.

Machafin

^^ Listen to this, low body fats you start getting worse cravings. Some people in these ranges do 1-2 refeeds per week. They help to keep your metabolism from crashing and keep the weight loss with minimal muscle loss. Def look into it.

dieselbyte

There is a strong hormonal basis for why it occurrs. Your body has an anti-starvation system that starts to become active in the low teens of BF% (for a male). Leptin drops, and it is a master controller for a lot of other hormones. One of the side effects is ravenous, insatiable hunger.

You can slow the rate of Leptin dropping with periodic refeeds. Refeeds are NOT cheats. Cheats are eating anything you wish. A well done refeed will be a huge fat-free carb jolt. Only glycogen has an effect on leptin production, eating any fat whatsoever when refeeding will be stored as fat (you become ultra-anabolic). Protein is neutral, but tends to fill you up (not a good thing). A typical refeed day for me is 50g fat, 200g protein, and 500g+ carbs.

Periodic refeeding just slows the rate of Leptin falling. Diet breaks (10 days+ at maintenance, at least) stabilize the hormone levels and disengage your anti starvation system. Stronger effects like continuous ravenous hunger, no sexual desire/inability to perform (or no periods for women), depressed metabolism, chronic tiredness will go away with a diet break. Many screw up diet breaks though, it takes time for all the effects to recede; diet break/cheat mentality combined with ravenous insatiable hunger is not a good combination. It is much better to diet at maintenance and not allow yourself to cheat as you ride out your homone levels returning to normal.

^^All of this!

atmeeks

I appreciate all the knowledge! What sucks is I'm in Afghanistan and my only food resources are MRE's (Meals, Ready to Eat) and breakfast due to my work schedule. I'm sure I'll be able to tap into my nutrition a little bit more once I return and I'm able to cook and prepare my own food. Yes I cut out basically all sweets my first 2 months dieting and now my body is craving about 2 months worth of junk food! I'm listening to it and I'm giving it what it requires and I'm still dropping inches on waist (32 currently) and dropping lbs in the .3-.5 range weekly while maintaining muscle mass. I understand I probably won't be able to continue refeeding myself like this or I'll be going in the other direction but I'm currently just taking a diet break and eating to my maintenance calories give or take a few 100 calories with a cheat day 1-2 times a week only putting me about 500 over maintenance. Just like waldo said, I'm going to sit here for a another week or so to get my hormone levels back in check and revving up my metabolism... then once my body feels stable I'm going to cut back down about 500 calories and increase my PT. Once again thanks for the awesome input guys and gals!