Want to cry :(

Open your diary and we can help

Maybe too many fruits and veggies? Fruit has a good amount of carbs and natural sugars.

Fruits have quite a bit of sugar in them and if you eat too many it spikes your blood sugar. Which will make you crave more sugar/carbs. Try balancing each meal/snack with carbs and some form of protein. I understand that you're a vegeatarian but you're craving sugar because you need more protein (of some sort)!

You need to be getting a lot more protein and more fresh vegetables. If you don't want to eat meat you should be eating more dairy, soy, eggs and beans. You should also track your sodium instead of fiber, it looks like you have no problem meeting your fiber goal. You should also be tracking your water. Make sure you get at least 8 glasses a day, a few more is better. (I generally get between 10 and 15.) You also need to meet your calorie goal every day. Not consuming enough calories will slow your metabolism and will prevent your body from burning fat.

Also, I'm not sure why you decided to become vegetarian. The reason itself doesn't matter but it does mean you need to be more conscious of your diet. I was vegetarian for 10 years and I have to say I am much happier eating meat. (It does bum me out that an animal has to die in order for me to eat, but honestly, that's the way of the world. That's how we evolved. We're omnivores.) I'm also much, much healthier. Vegetarian meat products are full of sodium and are highly processed. They really aren't good for you at all.

Finally, you don't need a cleanse. If you are eating only healthy foods you won't have toxins or anything in your system. Fresh, healthy foods and lots of water will cleanse your body. Your liver and kidneys cleanse your system every day, that's what they're there for. Fasts, cleanses and everything like that are completely unnecessary.

Are you making sure to eat at least 1,200 calories per day? Are you getting enough lean protein in your diet? It sounds like your diet is really restricted and perhaps your cravings for bread and sugar is your body crying out for nutrients you aren't getting. Cleaning up your diet should make you feel good and full and energized and shouldn't make you feel hungry all the time.

Maybe look into James Dugain's book "The Clean & Lean Diet." It helped me clean out the junk in my diet, and I've never felt hungry during the whole process. Sure, I get "mouth hungry" sometimes--when my mouth is telling me that I want something sweet or bready to eat even though my stomach is full and content. But that's more about kicking my sugar habit then anything else.

Hopefully this helps point you in the right direction!

bump

I've just done a big Lifestyle change/shape up and there were a few things that made a massive difference to how hungry I felt.

1) Make sure you are getting enough sleep. It sounds weird but there is science behind it. When your sleep is restricted your levels of Leptin go down and Ghrelin goes up. These are hormones that work together in a kind of Check and balance system. Leptin is what sends the signal to your brain to tell you that you are full and Ghrelin stimulates your appetite. So if they are out of balance and your appitite is being stimulated and the message that you are full is not getting to your brain then no matter how much you eat you won't feel full. AND Lack of sleep also produces cortisol which promotes abdominal fat and makes us feel hungry even when we are full. SO it really is so important to get a good nights sleep (for me that means 8 hours a night). The only days I feel hungry are the days when I haven't had enough sleep the night before. I was amazed at the difference it made.

2) Try adding a fiber supplement to your water. I assume you are drinking a lot of water throughout the day and if not that also really helps to stave off hunger as often you mistake dehydration for hunger. Just put a powdered fiber supplement into your bottle or glass of water in the morning and it helps to keep you feeling full. You can have more in the middle of the day too if you need it but don't have to much as it can affect your bathroom activity if you know what I mean!

3) Try to eat every 4 hours. Really plan your whole days meals and snacks so that you have the right food with you when it is time to eat and really stick to the timetable. If you are strict with this your body will quickly get used to eating at those time intervals and it means that you are lightly fueling your body regularly and teaching it to stop eating at a reasonable level of fullness as you know it's only four hours until you get to eat again. This requires a bit of planning and organization which can be tough at first but once you get into a routine it becomes easy and is so worth it. It means you don't get stuck starving hungry and the only thing to eat is from a vending machine or junk food. My purse is always full of bags of nuts, pieces of fruit, low fat cheese sticks etc so that if have to eat I am able to make good and inexpensive choices.

4) Pay attention to the type of foods you are eating and make sure it is balanced. Try to get a balanced amount of Carbs/protein/fats(good fats) throughout the day but what worked for me was trying to keep the carbs at the beginning of the day - breakfast and lunch- and not in the evening.

5) work out your BMR and your allotted calories a day and stick to it. When you change your diet your body will be resistant and tell you that you need to eat because it has become used to a certain number of calories (too many!) try to ride through the hunger - at first it will be miserable but once you have retrained your body it will lessen I promise you. Each time you feel like giving in have a picture in your mind (or even better carry one with you) of how you want to look or used to look and use that to motivate you, to tell yourself that you don't NEED to eat and you will feel and look so much better if you don't.

I am in the best shape I have ever been and it was hard work to get here and sometime miserable but it was so worth it. I feel a million dollars and so proud of myself for taking control and making it happen. Hang in there. You absolutely can do it - determination, belief in yourself and a good support system will get to to where you want to be.

Best of luck

:-D

Sugar and grains are highly addictive, so if you're craving them, it's possible that your body is struggling with addiction. It's an endless cycle - the more you eat, the more you want. They also inhibit weight loss by causing insulin spikes, which cause the body to store fat rather than metabolize it.

Cut them out completely for 3 weeks or so - no grains (wheat, rice, anything) and no sugar (corn or cane or artificial sweeteners). Stick to low glycemic index foods during this time.

You will probably shed some pounds during this 3 weeks, and the cravings should go away. Once you reintroduce grains to your diet, stick only to whole grains - no white bread, "multi-grain" etc. Only 100% whole grain breads. Otherwise you'll be right back where you are now with the cravings. Try to avoid corn/cane sugar indefinitely - if you can't, be sure to balance it with lots of protein to avoid the cravings.

I highly recommend checking out a glycemic index chart, and picking foods that you like that fall into the "low" category (things that register a glycemic index of below 55). These things cause less of a spike in insulin and will aid your weight loss.

A few examples that come to mind: apples, berries, yogurt (be sure there's no added sugar), green veggies, cheeses, eggs, avocado, nuts, etc.

Some things I would avoid on a low GI diet: bananas (unless you eat them green...), carrots, rice & grains, anything that contains corn/cane sugar (dairy has natural sugar in lactose, that doesn't seem to have an negative effect). There are a multitude of other high GI foods, which you can identify by researching a good glycemic index chart.

Brown rice seems to give mixed results depending on the source - some conclude it's no better than white, especially if overcooked). With bread... some are worse than others, but there's really not a "good" bread. Sourdough has mixed GI results, with some indicating that it's a lower GI bread. Because it generally has white flour in it (the worst GI food, all other foods are measured against it and sugar), I still don't trust it unless it's a sourdough rye or something whole grain.

Here's another thing to be aware of... when you keep track of your exercise calories, are you tracking TOTAL calories burned during exercise, or NET calories burned? A lot of people on here use the MFP calorie calculators - which track total calories burned - and think they can eat back all of those calories and still lose weight. But since MFP is already assuming you're burning some calories during the time you spend exercising, you could be over-eating back your calories.

For instance, if the calculator tells you that you burned 200 calories walking for an hour, and you plug that into your journal, you might think that you can eat 200 extra calories that day. But MFP already has a calorie burn built in for that hour - it assumes you burned 50-100 calories (totally depends on your body stats) watching TV or something during your normal daily activity. So the extra calories you get to eat from exercise can be significantly less than what the MFP exercise calculators tell you.