This may be a silly question...

buggleuh749 · June 2017

By the time I leave work around midnight, I am hungry. Not overly so- just mildly uncomfortable I guess you could say. So my question: does being hungry at the end of the day mean I am in a calorie deficit? Or, can I have eaten more than my TDEE and still be hungry?

Alatariel75 · June 2017

Hunger doesn't, and really can't, indicate whether you have eaten over or under your maintenance calories. Only working out your TDEE and tracking your intake can do that.

You could be well over your TDEE and still hungry, or well under and not hungry at all.

kommodevaran · June 2017

Hunger is not a reliable indicator of whether you are in a calorie deficit. This is why you're tracking your food intake and monitoring your weight trend.

manhnguyen123 · June 2017

Yeah it also could be a dehydration issue. Make sure you take in a good glass of water before you consume something. Your body might not be used to eating and processing the food you're eating now since its expected your usual diet.

amusedmonkey · June 2017

Hunger does not always correlate with a caloric deficit. Being in a caloric deficit as per your diary is the only sure way to know. I have days where I'm in a caloric deficit and not hungry at all, and days where I'm in a surplus and pretty hungry. You can have eaten more than your TDEE, no way to know unless you've logged it.

buggleuh749 · June 2017

Hm these are all helpful. It just seemed to me that if I'm hungry, it's my body's signal that I need calories and that if I'm not hungry, that means my body is in homeostasis and doesn't need a thing atm. So confusing that that isn't how it works.

amusedmonkey · June 2017

buggleuh749 wrote: »

Hm these are all helpful. It just seemed to me that if I'm hungry, it's my body's signal that I need calories and that if I'm not hungry, that means my body is in homeostasis and doesn't need a thing atm. So confusing that that isn't how it works.

Think about it: if you eat 500 calories of fritos (that's about 3 oz) you are more likely to get hungry after this "meal" than say, a 500 calorie omelet (which is a pretty hearty meal). Your hunger doesn't care that both have the same calories. There is more to hunger than homeostasis: how much your stomach expands, the macronutrient makeup of the food, what your hormones are doing at the time, the habits you've built, your genetic makeup...etc. Evolutionarily, we are capable of eating over our needs because there are days where we eat under our needs. Even for those whose hunger signals correlate nicely with homeostasis, it works in a continuous manner over time, it does not reset at 00:00 every night.

buggleuh749 · June 2017

@amusedmonkey those are very good points.

ogtmama · June 2017

buggleuh749 wrote: »

Hm these are all helpful. It just seemed to me that if I'm hungry, it's my body's signal that I need calories and that if I'm not hungry, that means my body is in homeostasis and doesn't need a thing atm. So confusing that that isn't how it works.

I'm sure it does work that way for a lot of people...but we're not all on mfp because we were good at following our body's natural cues.

Imagine I ate a pint of Ben and Jerry's for breakfast (no really, let's sit back and imagine that for a second...sigh

). That's almost all my calories for the day and yet I would likely spend the rest of the day hungry.

Seffell · June 2017

If hunger was working like that there will be no obese people.

This may be a silly question...

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