Hungrier as you raise calories? Is it a thing?

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  • comptonelizabeth
    comptonelizabeth Posts: 1,701 Member
    I actually joined mfp to gain weight and started with a very poor appetite. Now I can't stop eating ! Interesting to read all the above.
  • briannadora
    briannadora Posts: 5 Member
    i know this thread is a couple months old but how long do the hormones last?
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    rainbowbow wrote: »
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Gamliela wrote: »
    I'm hungrier as I raise calories to maintenance level.

    I'm about 50 calories up from what I was doing most days and sometimes 100. I'm aiming for 1400, my mfp maintenance amount.

    Its making me so much hungrier. Seems impossible!

    Anybody else experienced MORE hunger as you moved into maintenance and increased calories?

    Yes...it is a hormonal response.

    Would you mind expounding upon this further? What is the specific cause of this hormonal response? Is it something that passes with time? Is there any way to mitigate it?

    I, too, am having a heck of a time with hunger since I've reached my goal weight range.

    I can! This is generally a result of the hormone leptin. We have two hormones which influence our hunger. We have leptin and we have ghrelin.

    Ghrelin is produced in the stomach when the stomach is NOT being stretched. When the stomach is stretched this hormone is lowered on a curve until the stomach is empty again. Ghrelin is the hormone which signals to eat right then and now.

    Fun fact, ghrelin is lowered when the stomach is stretched regardless of the calorie density of the foods you eat (I.E. by volume instead of density)

    Leptin is produced by our adipose (fat) cells and it's an appetite suppressant. The way it works is that the more fat cells you have the more leptin is produced and the less hungry you should be. This is a way of self-regulating weight.

    So, to re-cap....

    Ghrelin (which causes hunger) is high when the stomach is empty. Nature's way of letting us know we need to eat.

    Leptin (which suppresses hunger) is high when we have too much body fat. Nature's way of helping us burn off fat and maintain a health body weight.


    Nowaday's with the amount of people who are obese and the duration for which they are obese there are people developing leptin resistance. This is a topic for another day though.


    Essentially.... when you now have less body fat you have less leptin suppressing your appetite. This is just nature's way of trying to reach homeostasis. As you maintain this weight over time everything should adapt over-time. For now you can try and eat low-calorie but high-volume foods (think lots of greens and veggies).

    Hope this helps!

    I don't disagree with any of this but I think the topic was about how hunger increases when calories come up. If anything, leptin would increase slightly in response to additional calories rather than decrease provided we are talking about the same body-fat levels.

    I think what people are referring to here isn't the increase in hunger caused from losing fat, but the increase in hunger seen when raising calories.
  • tonyandrew
    tonyandrew Posts: 10 Member
    Yes, but it might be your better fitness is now demanding more calories, telling you "hey, I need fed". I started running and strength training the last few months and now I'm constantly hungry. I feed it. I still balance out for the day but I'm certainly eating more than my target calorie intake. I just offset with calories burned, and eat them all. Weight is holding steady.
  • tonyandrew
    tonyandrew Posts: 10 Member
    This explains some of it....especially if you do lots of cardio like me....hmmm, I'm hungry after my long runs...

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH9ciCUcWavMsFcAJtLUSyw?v=jqwKCoBg7Gs
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    I'm still finding the same reaction: raise calories = hunger increase for a few days which gradually lessens over a week to a point of satiety with the increased calorie level.
    Adding more cardio = increased hunger, and I eat those calories back. ATM I'm reverse dieting and maintaining my weight.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    Cardio for me is minimal though!
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    edited December 2016
    I've been at maintenance almost 4 years and its a vague memory that once I started eating more that I did feel hungrier too, I've heard others say the same.
    When I kept eating what I thought was TDEE I eventually gained around 5lbs over the course of the first 3 months at maintenance. I was simply eating too much and more than I was burning but I felt I needed more food.....

    Anyway, I had to go back to slight deficit again to get back to goal range and eventually when I was ready to maintain again was prepared for being hungry for no reason. So I kept ignoring my stomach telling me it wanted filling! I knew I'd had enough to eat, I'd hit my macros so it really was just a notion. Once I got my head around that and recognising that no, I didn't need to actually eat anything, a new habit was formed (eventually! it took around a month) .... I've found what works for me. It just takes time for our bodies to adjust to maintenance imo.
  • laurenisfitforlife
    laurenisfitforlife Posts: 71 Member
    Yes! This happened to me too! I was like what the heck, Ive been eating way less for two years and felt fine, never (too often) felt deprived and now I'm maintenance and eating more calories and sometimes I feel like it's not enough! What is this phenom :#
  • myfitnesspale3
    myfitnesspale3 Posts: 276 Member
    if your added calories are higher proportion in carbs, then you will tend to get more hungry.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    Gamliela wrote: »
    Ah, thanks all of you! At least its not just some wierd phenomena or some mistake I made during this process of losing and now trying to maintain. Thanks for the honesty, I don't recall much discussion about it.

    A hormonal response to more food.
    Does it ease off, or ...... ?

    Hormones are responsible for hunger cues...when we cut calories and lose weight, we ultimately jack around with those hormones...that's why it's fairly typical to be hungry in the beginning but then for appetite to be suppressed...and it's one of the reasons anorexics "living" off of a handful of calories can claim to not be hungry. I don't know all of the ins and outs, but essentially hormones are largely responsible for the slowing adaptation of the metabolism...

    When you increase calories, you essentially "reset" and normalize your hormones...metabolism increases and many people find that they can maintain on more calories than they thought...with increased metabolism comes increased hunger...essentially you are resetting everything...and yes, it subsides.

    When I was losing I figured my maintenance would probably be around 2500 calories since I was losing so slowly on about 2200...as I increased my calories my hunger went up and I ate in response and worried quite a bit because I was way hungrier than 2500 calories...I ended up around 3,000 to maintain now for over 3.5 years.

    This post and some of the others on page one of this thread give some information that helps describe the phenom!

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