Hunger pangs!!

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Mangoperson88
Mangoperson88 Posts: 339 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I eat healthy most days of the week and workout 5 times a week(5 days morning walk and sometimes a 40 minute weight training session in the evening 2-3 times a week.) I eat enough. ALOT actually!! I believe I'm eating enough protein but still I feel like I haven't eaten for hours. I just had a bit of a binge session right now :( idk how to deal with this constant eating- my weight is going up like crazy! I joined in March this year starting at 81 kgs, took me 6 *kitten* months to come down to 78! I'm 80 kgs again. Help!!

Replies

  • Noreenmarie1234
    Noreenmarie1234 Posts: 7,493 Member
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    What are your meals like? Are you eating high volume ?
  • Mangoperson88
    Mangoperson88 Posts: 339 Member
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    I'm indian so is my diet. I eat a lot of lentils everyday and also supplement my diet with protein powder. I'm not comfortable taking it 2x a day.
  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
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    The following is not advice, I'm just sharing my personal experience.

    I used to get brutal, extremely painful hunger pangs, I don't even like to call them "pangs" because they were stabbing, churning, substantial PAIN, and I can take pain, but these were unbearable, I HAD to eat for them to stop.

    It turns out, my stomach is a bit overeager when it comes to prepping for meals. I have some health issues that cause this, but the simplest solution for me was to start messing up my eating schedule so that my stomach wouldn't know when to start churning in expectation of food. I used to work a very strict schedule, and the longer I ate at the exact same time every day, the worse it got. I was put on a PPI, but it stopped working after a month.

    I now have a totally chaotic intermittent fasting eating schedule. I started with a predictable eating window, which helped get rid of the pain during the fasting window, and for once I didn't have constant stomach discomfort, but I've now started experimenting with moving around the eating window and changing it's length. My body is constantly left guessing when it's next meal will come.

    I never feel that feeling like I'm "STARVING" anymore, because it turned out for me that that was schedule driven, not a need for actual calories. That was just my stomach churning acid because it was expecting food, totally irrelevant to whether or not I needed more fuel.

    Now I know when I REALLY need food because I feel tired. So for example, if I don't eat enough during my eating window to fuel the length of the fast, I can't make it through the fast, I have to eat. But if I eat plenty during the eating window, then I have only the mildest of hunger pangs during the fasting window because my stomach isn't expecting food, so it doesn't churn.

    For me, and this is JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE for any disagree-button-happy folks out there, I now separate out the sensation of needing more fuel from the sensation of whatever my stomach is doing. Before, say I binged on a giant brunch and ate double the calories I needed for the day, then by the time my next scheduled meal came around, I would feel like I *had to* eat or my stomach would chew through itself. Now, if I eat double my daily required calories in one meal, I don't feel an energy dip for a long time, and my stomach feels empty and grumbly, but also much, much calmer than it ever used to with frequent small meals.

    Now again, this is my personal experience, and IF was prescribed to me by my doctor because of my medical needs. Your body may be completely different from mine.

    But I wanted to share my personal experience of going from feeling like I would die if I didn't eat, often having the urge to binge and stuff my raging tummy into silence, to now having a nice, calm stomach that leaves me alone for the most part, and I eat more according to my energy needs, not what my little dictator of a stomach tells me to.

    It's taken me decades to figure out how to eat in a way that makes me feel my best, just keep trying things and learning your own body's needs, and eventually, the more you listen to how your body feels in response to things, the more you will figure out what it needs.

    I NEVER thought this way of eating would make me feel better, but trial and error over time is what it takes because we are all unique.
  • Mangoperson88
    Mangoperson88 Posts: 339 Member
    edited November 2021
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    Xellercin wrote: »
    The following is not advice, I'm just sharing my personal experience.

    I used to get brutal, extremely painful hunger pangs, I don't even like to call them "pangs" because they were stabbing, churning, substantial PAIN, and I can take pain, but these were unbearable, I HAD to eat for them to stop.

    It turns out, my stomach is a bit overeager when it comes to prepping for meals. I have some health issues that cause this, but the simplest solution for me was to start messing up my eating schedule so that my stomach wouldn't know when to start churning in expectation of food. I used to work a very strict schedule, and the longer I ate at the exact same time every day, the worse it got. I was put on a PPI, but it stopped working after a month.

    I now have a totally chaotic intermittent fasting eating schedule. I started with a predictable eating window, which helped get rid of the pain during the fasting window, and for once I didn't have constant stomach discomfort, but I've now started experimenting with moving around the eating window and changing it's length. My body is constantly left guessing when it's next meal will come.

    I never feel that feeling like I'm "STARVING" anymore, because it turned out for me that that was schedule driven, not a need for actual calories. That was just my stomach churning acid because it was expecting food, totally irrelevant to whether or not I needed more fuel.

    Now I know when I REALLY need food because I feel tired. So for example, if I don't eat enough during my eating window to fuel the length of the fast, I can't make it through the fast, I have to eat. But if I eat plenty during the eating window, then I have only the mildest of hunger pangs during the fasting window because my stomach isn't expecting food, so it doesn't churn.

    For me, and this is JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE for any disagree-button-happy folks out there, I now separate out the sensation of needing more fuel from the sensation of whatever my stomach is doing. Before, say I binged on a giant brunch and ate double the calories I needed for the day, then by the time my next scheduled meal came around, I would feel like I *had to* eat or my stomach would chew through itself. Now, if I eat double my daily required calories in one meal, I don't feel an energy dip for a long time, and my stomach feels empty and grumbly, but also much, much calmer than it ever used to with frequent small meals.

    Now again, this is my personal experience, and IF was prescribed to me by my doctor because of my medical needs. Your body may be completely different from mine.

    But I wanted to share my personal experience of going from feeling like I would die if I didn't eat, often having the urge to binge and stuff my raging tummy into silence, to now having a nice, calm stomach that leaves me alone for the most part, and I eat more according to my energy needs, not what my little dictator of a stomach tells me to.

    It's taken me decades to figure out how to eat in a way that makes me feel my best, just keep trying things and learning your own body's needs, and eventually, the more you listen to how your body feels in response to things, the more you will figure out what it needs.

    I NEVER thought this way of eating would make me feel better, but trial and error over time is what it takes because we are all unique.

    What you say makes a lot of sense. I come from a culture where people fast during festivals here in India and of course I'm also familiar with Ramadan but fasting is just not for me. I've made lame attempts at it by eating less and not eating for a couple of hours but that only leads to binging! We're done with diwali and there were sweets in the house and I binged on them. I am feeling so guilty and I know one day won't mess up my diet but it's been happening since the last whole month. I don't know how to bring my eating in control!! I have no will power smh 😥
  • Xellercin
    Xellercin Posts: 924 Member
    edited November 2021
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    Try not to beat yourself up, you're doing nothing wrong, you're just trying to give your body what it's asking for.

    The challenge is to figure out how to modulate what it's asking for. In no way was I recommending fasting for you, I was sharing my story to show that the signals from your body CAN be modified. You don't have to be a slave to what your stomach screams at you, you can modify your own body's signals.

    It takes trial and error though.

    For some people timing will be the key, for others specific diets will be the key, for others it will be something else. For me, intermittent fasting works, for a friend of mine, she has raging, overwhelming sugar cravings that go away when she eats paleo.

    Try not to make it about punishing yourself into "good behaviour", try to make it a process of self discovery in learning what your body needs to feel its best. It may be a good idea to start with a food and symptom journal. See if there are any foods or patterns that correlate with intense pangs and binges, and if they can be modified and managed.

    Instead of trying to constantly deny your body what it's screaming for, focus on figuring out what your body really needs from you in order to not scream in the first place.

    Try to think of this the way you would think about caring for a screaming infant. You wouldn't focus on withholding anything, you would focus on trying to figure out what it needs. Your body, like an infant, only has limited methods for communicating its needs, so it's up to you to invest in figuring out what would make your body run like a well oiled, humming machine so that it stops throwing you into chaos.

    If you can't manage this through diligent self care, then it may be worthwhile to investigate if there is something medical going on. I had no idea my hunger pangs were the product of an autoimmune disease. I was only able to figure it out after years of careful monitoring, symptom journaling, and ongoing trial and error.

    Sometimes it take a bit of scientific method to solve a problem, not more willpower.
  • debtay123
    debtay123 Posts: 1,327 Member
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    YOu can do it- a lot of this is trial and error- keep trying- do not allow yourself to feel starving-- maybe within your window you need small mini-meals-- so long as you are IN a claorie deficit- you should lose weight- also a food scale for me- was the key!!!1

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