How many only eat when your bellys growling?

I personally think you should get your daily requirement in whatever that may be. Eating on the fly for me would never work I would just fall back into old habits. I like to eat pretty much on schedule this keeps me from getting hungry and over eating.:drinker:

if you're truly satisfied at the end of each day and it happens to fall short of your cals then maybe your calorie requirement on here isnt quite accurate. I think you should go with your satisfaction level, no need to over eat if you're not even hungry. I have the opposite problem. now if when you say you're falling short by 500 and that is below 1200 then thats not very good. what is your calorie goal on here?

there are lots of reasons why you can feel hungry.

really healthy people body's tell them to eat at the appropriate times.

For the rest of us, it's a crap shoot. When you're overweight or obese, the chemistry in your body can get a little whacky. And it's chemicals that tell you when you are hungry (its a hormone called ghrelin produced by the stomach and pancreas). Eventually, if you eat a healthy balanced diet, exercise, and drop to a normal weight, you can begin to trust your body again, but generally, it's a good idea, especially when sticking to a strict caloric deficit, to plan your meals and stick to that plan. Hungry or not. If you plan right, you shouldn't usually be overly hungry or overly full anyway, as the right way to eat constantly gives your body a good amount of calories, not too many and not too few.

Did you know that not FEELING hungry can actually be a sign of starvation? Hands down it is most important to properly fuel your body. MFP has already placed you at a deficit, so you can lose weight, do not eat less than that number. 13 lbs in 3 weeks is generally not a healthy rate for weight loss unless you are severely obese to begin with. slow down, take your time, fuel your bidy even if you don't "feel hungry".

Did you know that your "stomach" growling is usually caused by activity in your intestines and it's not necessarily a sign of hunger? So I don't wait for my stomach to growl and I don't go out and eat every time it does either.

SHBoss is right about ghrelin. Morbidly obese people often have 3x as much of it as normal-weighted people. Plus, as soon as a body figures out it's on a diet, it produces more even if you aren't MO.

Before I had the part of my stomach removed that produces ghrelin, I was always hungry. As soon as my food left my stomach, ghrelin would signal my brain to put more food in. Of course, the intellectual part of my brain knew I couldn't really be hungry 1/2 hour after eating so it would argue with the ghrelin. But it often lost.

Now I have normal hunger and it's great. I can pay attention to my hunger signals and believe them. I generally get real hunger every 3-4 hours so that works out to 3 meals and a snack, maybe two, most days.

As for MFP placing me at a deficit, MFP is just some formulas and they don't work for everyone. I don't take what they say too seriously. I listen to my nutritionist and my surgeon and eat according to their plan. Though I think it's great that MFP lets me set my protein, carb and fat goals to what I want instead of imposing some arbitrary % on my like other sites do and I find their BMR calculator to be more accurate than other sites. But still... they over-estimate how many calories I need based on my actual weight loss.

I eat every 2-3 hours ... I try to NEVER let myself get to the point that I can hear my stomach rumble. When you're really hungry you are more apt to over eat. I also get all my calories in by eating whole foods and not low fat/low calorie gimicky foods

I just lowered my calorie intake from 1,350 something to 1,200. This week I haven't ate all of my calories every day, two days I had at least 500 calories left over, but I wasn't feeling hungry.