Bottomless hunger day...: How annoying... - Weight Loss Support

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Bottomless hunger day...

Cooper27 profile image
19 Replies

How annoying are those days where you feel starving no matter how much you eat? I seem to have been starving since 11am yesterday, and I've tried everything. Fibre, carbs, protein, veg, fatty foods, sugar... Lots of water too.

OH arrived home as I put dinner on the table yesterday, started to tell me about his day, and I said "sorry, no talking, too hungry, eating"!!

What is it that triggers these days?

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Cooper27 profile image
Cooper27
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19 Replies
IndigoBlue61 profile image
IndigoBlue61

Wish I knew!!! I work on a weekly eating plan to allow for this . . . Also eating earlier in the day, if I am tempted to skip breakfast I am hungry all day 😕

Hope you enjoyed your dinner! 😊

Cooper27 profile image
Cooper27 in reply to IndigoBlue61

There just was no allowing for it, I probably ate 3x my calorie allowance before lunchtime! I gave up calorie counting as soon as soon as i tucked into my second breakfast, so no idea what the damage was. Thankfully days like this are rare, but man are they annoying!

IndigoBlue61 profile image
IndigoBlue61 in reply to Cooper27

I suppose looking at the big picture one day doesn't break the rest of the week eating properly 😕

Good luck!

Fran182716 profile image
Fran182716

Must have been something in the air yesterday Cooper, I kept getting really hungry and because I was working a long day and had run out of my healthy snacks I normally take but often don't need I ended up eating the junk on the table at work, now have the bloaty stomach ache and thick head that results! Yuk

Sheila32 profile image
Sheila32

Strange! The same happened to me too yesterday. Good breakfast, delicious salad for lunch out with friends, mid afternoon incredibly tired, only solved by eating, grazing, snacking when I got home.

Should have thought to put mayo on salad, and have had more drinks.

(Gave up mayo on Weight Watchers more years ago than I can remember, sometimes forget that I am now on LCHF!)

Fran182716 profile image
Fran182716 in reply to Sheila32

Hi Shiela, that's the problem with tiredness, it would be better to have a nap but not always possible! Think that was my problem yesterday, workload more complex than usual and required a lot of mental concentration - a reminder that the brain uses more calories when working hard ! ☀️

Cooper27 profile image
Cooper27 in reply to Sheila32

See afternoon dips are usually the result of either something you've eaten (either something you're mildly intollerant to, or sugar crash), or caffeine withdrawal. Do you drink much caffeine?

Either that or it's because spring is in the air!

Fran182716 profile image
Fran182716 in reply to Cooper27

Hi Cooper, agree re the afternoon dips, I used to get that problem a lot but have spent quite a long time tweaking what I eat and drink to combat it and usually pretty successful, haven't had one of those blips for several months so hope yesterday was a one off for all of us! ☀️

Hi Cooper,

My thoughts are sometimes there are no triggers it's just where we are at. I'm sure there will be so logical explanation but some days I'm more hungry than others !!!

It's a bit like craving do you give in or not 🤔 For me I'd I do than I want more !! vicious circle sometimes!

Maybe just keep track and the next day if can eating a little less ??? It's awful though I know !!😕

Have a lovely weekend

😇

TheHud profile image
TheHud

Indigestion, its not hunger. Plus feeling hungry is not the bad thing that we are all brought up to believe. Sometimes we should just give our systems a break and accept a hungry feeling. Its only if its a painful hunger that it needs checking out, that could be acid over production. A few on here have mentioned various problems.

Stress and certain foods can also trigger acid production :(

Stressing about being hungry can do it, eating foods to try and stop being hungru will do it.

Sometimes its best to just eat a small pot of jelly or eat a jelly sweet and try not to think about it.

Since I started nearly 4 weeks ago I have not felt hungry, before I did :)

Cooper27 profile image
Cooper27 in reply to TheHud

I did wonder if it was some strange tummy upset, but it wasn't typical of indigestion or wind. I thought perhaps acid, but again, not like normal acid. I will try to have acid neutralising foods today to see if I can keep the feeling at bay.

Usually if you eat a heck load of food though, your stomach reaches a point where you feel it might explode full and bloated, but I could never reach that feeling, regardless of how much I ate yesterday. But this wasn't the kind of hunger you could ignore - it felt like I hadn't eaten in days!

TheHud profile image
TheHud in reply to Cooper27

If you don't already know it's the vagus nerve that controls the function of appetite, along with other stuff. Sometimes that nerve can just be overridden by us, or by a blip. The more you eat the more acid you produce to break that food down. Somewhere along that line things have got out of sync. I suppose like any other autonomous nerve, it has the potential to be overwhelmed by our emotions releasing other hormones. If you think of things scientifically and the body as a complex machine, including food intake, regardless of if you feel hungry, if you have eaten a balanced diet, you are not really hungry. Feeling hungry will not hurt you, try drinking loads of fluid, I eat sugar free jellies which let my mouth think I have eaten something, but in my stomach they melt and further down the geletine in them (which is collagen and a protein) enters my system and provides a few bits of essential nutrient.

So I have fooled my brain and I can then distract myself, break the cycle with minimum damage :)

Cooper27 profile image
Cooper27 in reply to TheHud

I wonder then if it's because I recently stopped taking nerve related painkillers. It is unusual to have hunger like this last more than one day...

I wish I could have had something small and then ignored it, but I was so hungry it kept me awake and made it impossible to focus on work.

Zest profile image
ZestHealthy BMI

HI Cooper27,

Hopefully you're feeling a bit better today, and I hope you have a lovely weekend. There can be numerous factors triggering feelings of hunger.

I am just touching base now, and responding to a few posts, but it will be interesting to see the range of responses you get to your post.

Hope you have a great weekend.

Lowcal :-)

Venusflytrap profile image
Venusflytrap

So lovely to find out that I am not alone. I thought I had triggered it myself. I had to get out before breakfast on Thursday and I left my beautifully packed ham & cheese sandwich at home on the stairs. Went for coffee with a friend and had an unbuttered toasted teacake as the best option on the menu. Ate my breakfast for lunch when I got home, and for the next 44 hours was starving. Upped the oil, low fat dairy, veg and protein in all my meals but nothing worked. Had 4 meals yesterday! So now I'm looking at a week with no safety net. What I tried didn't work so I am trying low fat, no sugar, except some fruit, small amounts of starch and masses of protein. Will really schedule in water too. As even with it in front of me, I forget! Here's to a planned Saturday and Sunday. If we can get through that, we can do anything!

nokidding profile image
nokidding

A couple of years ago I started following the 5:2 diet. I restrict to 500 calories or less on 2 separate days a week and eat what I like up to 2000 calories the other 5. At the same time I bullied a very unsympathetic doctor into referring me to the hospital dietitian. That dietitian told me 5:2 is the only diet she recommends because it's so sensible and practical. I lost a stone, then stopped losing. But. I stopped gaining. My blood pressure went down and my pre diebetic state disappeared. I continued to see the hospital dietitian and have now got my first appointment with the bariactric department at Luton university hospital. I am 100 pounds over weight. For some that might not seem a lot. But with my arthritis it's enough to stop me being able to walk let alone work. A bmi of 40 or 35 if you have any condition to complicate weight gain such as diabetic or arthritis qualifies you for nhs bariactric surgery. The way I see it, I've spent 20 years failing to get my weight down and I'm going to cost the nhs 2 knees, 2 hips and a lower spine fusion. The gastric bypass is a heck of a lot cheeper and a whole lot safer. So here's hoping that this year is the last one where I have hungry days where I eat anything in the house, including stuff I don't like. Why do I do that? !!

in reply to nokidding

Hi Nokidding

a couple of things from your post concerned me and i just wanted to say something- firstly i'm not medical so take with a pinch of salt but i just have to say bariatric surgery is a big step and rarely have i seen anyone keep the weight off- in fact i've seen numerous people lose the weight have loads of excess skin, gain the weight and then having gone through surgery feel disappointed and end up back at the diet groups only in a worse position because part of their intestine is missing and they cant absorb certain nutrients (hair loss is common as are nerve problems) i personally believe that there are better ways of doing it and just as quickly without the surgery part. I've reviewed the possibility extensively as i was offered the operation but later declined it.

Secondly you mention a spinal fusion- again something i have researched extensively as i have constant pain from 2 disc protrusions and degenerated discs and again i was offered this procedure but declined and my reason being that i have spoken to literally hundreds of people who've had it done and at best success rates are 20-40% with many people experiencing further additional problems after the procedure. Again i strongly believe that weight loss is the key as since losing 23 lbs my back pain has improved by at least 25% and by the time ive lost the additional 49 lbs i expect i will be pain free as i was at that weight before.

I dont know you, i'm not medically trained and i dont know your circumstances but please dont put yourself through unnecessary heartache without researching heavily first. I am a great believer that diet can cure most things and 100 pounds is totally achievable without resorting to surgery (after all my original target was to lose 72 lbs and now its 49) : )

P.S. I worked as a cosmetic surgery consultant several years ago and the weight loss surgery is well known in the industry to have success rates of less than 10% after 5 years

TheHud profile image
TheHud in reply to

Agree, we have a friend who had the band, lost loads of weight, had surgery on the skin, mostly private. Because they never addressed the reason they needed to eat the wrong foods and amounts once their lives were perfectly good, they started fretting about scars and skin, stretch marks, they looked older. This was all a cover up for the fact they had started blending high calorie foods into smoothies and rich soups so they could eat loads.

Its about time the world accepted that for some people compulsive eating is a disorder just as anorexia and bulimia are.

Not all of though, most of us are just fat because we ate too much, knew we were doing it and spent our lives saying manana ;)

Today is manana on here, no excuses!

Famous last words :(

nokidding profile image
nokidding in reply to

Thank you for taking the time to reply and I'm so sorry it's taken me so long to realise that you did! My reasons for surgery are because I have been unable to shift the weight with diet alone. I have received excellent care and advice from the obisity clinic over the last year and been closely observed. Every step I take feels like I have razer blades slicing away inside my knees, my back has been subjected to 4 whip lash injuries, I'm insolin resistant and have fibromyalgia. So I'm in pain have no energy,  sleep badly and can't mobilise. I too have read how rarely spinal fusion works and I know that the best answer is to lose weight and build up muscles in my back to help support the damaged parts of my spine. I have the complete backing of a dietitian who holds a PHD in nutrition and she is satisfied that I have the knowledge to take the tool that is given by the surgery and use it wisely. I am lucky enough to have a child who is a personal trainer who has specialised in rehabilitation fitness. She started working with ex military trauma patients and has expanded into post surgery clients who have been discharged from hospital physio therapy. Before my last car crash I often worked with her, I trained as a beauty therapist and found much to my surprise that I enjoyed the massage and fitness side of the business far more than the makeup and beauty side! At this point I have run out of options. And I refuse at the age of 52 to sit back and subsist on benefits while I wait to die. I watched my mother do that. She gave up on life and died at the age of 63. That's not me, life is for living and I intend to do exactly that and if that means letting a surgeon chop my insides up then that's what I'm going to do. Then I will eat to live rather than eat because I'm board and in pain and I will climb back into the saddle, all that's stopping me is my weight and I've had enough of using that excuse on myself. If diet alone could do the job I would have managed it years ago. Yes, many people do regain the weight. But many people don't. The difference is how you change your life. For me it's a case of changing my life back to how I used to live it. Before the pain meds which now I've weaned myself of them I find I don't need! My pain is managed without drugs and Ive seen only a small increase in levels which is worth it to have a clear mind. I wish you luck in your personal journey and hope you reach your target soon.

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