Too hungry to sleep?!?

You do not have to feel hunger to lose weight. You may choose to eat fewer high calories foods instead of lots of lower calorie foods, which could leave you hungry. But if you choose your foods correctly and exercise to earn more calories, there is no reason you to be hungry.

Hi, I'm there with you on this!! Sometimes I feel like my stomach is going to just eat itself at night!! I agree with others about maybe eating something healthy or whatever... but a lot of times you can mistake hunger for being thirsty. So maybe drink some water... it seems to help me!! Good luck!!

I have the EXACT same problem. For the folks mentioning a veggie snack, or an apple, for the big folks it JUST doesn't cut it. My success has only been realized with protein shakes at night...It's the only thing that doesn't hinder my weight loss and keeps me full.

I am a "big" person and the veggie snack doesn't have to be 1 piece of celery... it could be a whole cup full... along with some crackers, or a pouch of tuna, or even celery with peanut butter... there are lots of ideas. Anything with protein will fill you up which is why the protein shakes work well. It's not about how big you are... its about taking in the right things...

I'm sorry to bump this thread but I felt a need to post a reply.

Your eating habits are very inconsistent. One day you are eating ~900 calories then the next you're jumping up to ~2200 calories. Going almost 1000 calories over your daily goal seems a bit excessive to me. Try to stick as close to your goal as you can each day - this should help your body get comfortable with the intake you've been set.

You need to be eating every meal, every day. Skipping breakfast is an absolute no-no! I think I saw some days where you skipped either lunch or dinner as well - both equally as bad. You need a good breakfast in the morning to kick-start your metabolism and keep hunger at bay for a few hours.

Don't avoid snacks! Bridging the gap between your 3 core meals (Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner) with snacks is a good idea. This helps keep your metabolism rolling and stops hunger creeping up on you (often causing you to over-indulge when meal time hits). When I say snacks, I mean something healthy, not a pack of crisps, a chocolate bar or a bottle of coke. With a small caloric intake per-day like yours, these are huge, wasteful deficits. Replace them with something else like a plain/greek non-fat yogurt, a handful of unsalted nuts, celery with 1tbsp. peanut butter, a piece of fruit etc. etc.
Try to aim to have a snack between breakfast and lunch and another one between lunch and dinner. If you still feel hungry around bedtime, intake some protein as said before.

Keep your hydration up. I noticed you haven't logged any water in your diary. I don't know if that means you don't drink water or you just don't count it, but you should be aiming for at least 2 litres a day. People often get hunger and thirst confused. If you feel an urge to consume something, just take a second to think about whether you're actually hungry, or just thirsty. When that feeling strikes, have a glass of water (don't gulp it down) and see how you feel after about 10 minutes. If that hasn't done anything then you're most likely hungry, in which case: eat! it's probably around snack time anyway. Personally I take 3 500ml bottles of water to work with me (I'm a software developer so I am at my desk constantly throughout the day) and could quite easily up this to 4 bottles. 4 of these bottles would be the minimum 2 litres a day. I then usually have glasses sporadically throughout the rest of the day after coming home from work.

Ditch McDonalds. It's not doing you any favours.

Switch white bread/bread rolls for the whole-grain/brown stuff. Same with pasta and rice if you eat it. White bread/rice/pasta are bad (high-GI) carbs - they will cause your metabolism to slow and reduce which means you will working with reduced digestion and greater fat storage. Not only that, but it'll make you feel sluggish - not a feeling you want when you're trying to lose weight and/or muster the willpower to go workout.

Try plan out what you're going to eat for the week and prepare in advance. This way you won't be reaching for the quick options (the unhealthy ones). This also allows you to scrutinise what you're eating in more detail, allowing you to stick to your guidelines much easier. You'll find tons of healthy recipes and dishes online - just have a browse through Google. Ideally though for a meal (for instance: dinner) you'll want a good portion of some sort of lean meat (fish such as wild salmon - also good), a nice helping of veggies (watch out for potatoes though, I would class these as a carb rather than a vegetable) and perhaps a blast of carbs (brown/wild rice, whole-grain/brown pasta, small helping of (sweet) potatoes, etc.) - the carbs will help if you're lacking energy.

Since you work from home, I would assume that means you have access to cooking facilities. If you need a quick to prepare lunch, make a stir fry. Chop up veg, chop up meat, splash a bit of olive oil into wok, heat it up, throw in veg+meat and in less than 10 minutes you have a great tasting lunch. You may want to add a small helping of a type of sauce to give it a bit of extra flavour.

I apologise for the long post, but I hope it helps if you get around to reading it.