Still Hungry...

jflongo

Add in more Vegetables!!! There are many out there that you can eat quite a few of to add more fiber and fill you up. You can eat a ton of some vegetables and add a very little amount of calories. For example 2 cups of broccoli is only around 60 calories. There are tons of good recipes out there to roast broccoli and cauliflower in the oven, will add very little calories and tastes great.

taramont45

AnnPT77 wrote: »

taramont45 wrote: »

I want to thank everyone for the advice so far.
I did a tiny increase yesterday and changed my settings to maintaining my weight. Realized I just needed an extra 200 -260 calories to be happy. Didn't need the extra 500 the maintaining my weight option gave me
Might be the weather, might be hormones. We'll see. This just gave me the confidence to keep going and not be so hard on myself. Like some of you said, it's good practice for maintaining later on in my life

Thank you everyone for your kind words.

Good show! Going all the way to maintenance for a couple of weeks is still a good idea, just to smooth the path ahead, of course.

When you resume deficit eating, even that 250 calorie daily deficit will result in gradual weight loss, so you can hang out there for periods of time or until you reach goal, too. At a small deficit, it can take weeks for fat loss to show up clearly on the scale (to sort itself out from the background of couple-pound random water weight fluctuations), which can be frustrating/confusing . . . but it definitely does work, and can be very sustainable and healthful.

BTW: At 185 and 5 feet tall, you already aren't technically "morbidly obese", just a little bit into class 2 (at 36.1 BMI). For some intermediate milestones: At below 179, you'll be into class 1, at around 151 into the overweight category. Every pound improves your odds of improved long-term good health.

You've been making great progress, and with the attitudes and introspection you're bringing to this, you're lined up to keep on winning!

I've made progress, yes, but it still feels like I've got a long way to go. My doctor wants me to be in the 110 range within a year and a half.

Unfortunately I find unless I'm very strict on myself I relapse into old bad eating habits. And I'm scared of regaining what I've lost. I'm not exactly the most active person in part due to an injury as well as lung damage from covid. Currently I'm fighting a wave of wanting to eat more than I should, and I'm beginning to suspect it's my body yelling at me to eat more due to the winter- and due to cutting off a medication that killed my appetite. It's been incredibly hard this last week. Even now, after I ate at five (because I was too hungry to wait until six) it's ten now and I've been nibbling on soda crackers and drinking water to try and stave it off, but nothing's working.

Eating at maintenance feels dangerous to me. Like I'm slacking off.
And I'm beginning to suspect that due to me having to stop taking my Vyvanse that I'm suddenly having to deal with hunger pangs I never got before.

KickassAmazon76

Lietchi wrote: »

briscogun wrote: »

Having low cal snacks helps (cheese, nuts, etc)

In what world are cheese and nuts low calorie snacks 😛
Highly individual too, which snacks are satiating. I don't find nuts very filling at all when I have to limit them to a sensible amount, the calories add up very quickly.

Haha I was thinking that too! Cheese is my guilty pleasure. 😊

corinasue1143

If you have recently had covid and you were taking meds for it, and if you are now taking more vitamins, etc, that can definitely mess with your hunger signals. Not that knowing helps with the hunger, but it can certainly help you to understand it.

AnnPT77

taramont45 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

taramont45 wrote: »

I want to thank everyone for the advice so far.
I did a tiny increase yesterday and changed my settings to maintaining my weight. Realized I just needed an extra 200 -260 calories to be happy. Didn't need the extra 500 the maintaining my weight option gave me
Might be the weather, might be hormones. We'll see. This just gave me the confidence to keep going and not be so hard on myself. Like some of you said, it's good practice for maintaining later on in my life

Thank you everyone for your kind words.

Good show! Going all the way to maintenance for a couple of weeks is still a good idea, just to smooth the path ahead, of course.

When you resume deficit eating, even that 250 calorie daily deficit will result in gradual weight loss, so you can hang out there for periods of time or until you reach goal, too. At a small deficit, it can take weeks for fat loss to show up clearly on the scale (to sort itself out from the background of couple-pound random water weight fluctuations), which can be frustrating/confusing . . . but it definitely does work, and can be very sustainable and healthful.

BTW: At 185 and 5 feet tall, you already aren't technically "morbidly obese", just a little bit into class 2 (at 36.1 BMI). For some intermediate milestones: At below 179, you'll be into class 1, at around 151 into the overweight category. Every pound improves your odds of improved long-term good health.

You've been making great progress, and with the attitudes and introspection you're bringing to this, you're lined up to keep on winning!

I've made progress, yes, but it still feels like I've got a long way to go. My doctor wants me to be in the 110 range within a year and a half.

Unfortunately I find unless I'm very strict on myself I relapse into old bad eating habits. And I'm scared of regaining what I've lost. I'm not exactly the most active person in part due to an injury as well as lung damage from covid. Currently I'm fighting a wave of wanting to eat more than I should, and I'm beginning to suspect it's my body yelling at me to eat more due to the winter- and due to cutting off a medication that killed my appetite. It's been incredibly hard this last week. Even now, after I ate at five (because I was too hungry to wait until six) it's ten now and I've been nibbling on soda crackers and drinking water to try and stave it off, but nothing's working.

Eating at maintenance feels dangerous to me. Like I'm slacking off.
And I'm beginning to suspect that due to me having to stop taking my Vyvanse that I'm suddenly having to deal with hunger pangs I never got before.

I can't say whether eating at maintenance would be dangerous for you now, but it's a thing you'll need to wrap your mind around eventually. And there's a decent chance that eating at maintenance now could be a good battle strategy, in pursuit of winning the larger war.

I can't speak to the Vyvanse implications, but that's certainly possible. Ditto for Winter: I think that happens for me. On the other hand, it seems like quite a few people experience a period of hunger/cravings after a long fairly-fast weight loss period, without the Vyvanse ever having been in the picture (and in any season 😉). If your Covid experience was recent, and you dieted through that, that could be another trigger (disease or injury, it can be good to eat at maintenance for a while, or at least near it - bodies like to prioritize healing).

Two weeks at maintenance will cause very little delay in getting you "in the 110 range" within a year and a half, if you can stick with the two weeks. A controlled reaction is better than an uncontrolled one, and only you know how close you are to the latter. Is there someone in real life you can talk with, that's part of your treatment team?

This is a complete aside, and satiation is very individual, but soda crackers and cold water would increase cravings for me, rather than the reverse. What do you think? For me - again, it's very individual - something with a little bit of protein or fat, plus a hot drink like herb tea, or maybe a combo like hot broth (miso or meat broth) would do a better job, if it were me.

I'm hearing in your writing how troubled you are, and I wish I could help, truly. Can you reach out for support to your treatment team, or something like that? I'm quite confident you can wrangle this situation, and that as you do so, it will be turning a good corner in some way. Hang in there - I'm cheering for you!