One thing that intermittent fasting has done for me is helped sort out what is true hunger.

I won't eat today until around 3:00 PM and I'll start getting hungry around 2:00.

Having said that - I have an empty feeling in my stomach which feels like hunger. However, I know it is not hunger because I know what feeling hungry actually feels like.

Hard to explain.

Try not eating until noon and see how you feel. That is hunger.

I think I know what you mean. It's like I feel like my stomach is about to growl, but usually doesn't actually growl. It's weird. And it happens randomly- even if I've eaten a good dinner or whatever. One thing that REALLY helped me last night was tea. I had a cup of Irish Breakfast tea (which I like because it seems to have a bolder tea flavor that a lot of other teas I have tried that to me were just too weak) with about a tablespoon of vanilla soymilk and a splenda packet.

I don't usually drink much hot tea, and a lot of people on here have said they use it to control snacky feelings, but I just didn't think that would be satisfying for me. But for some reason with just that little bit of milk in it and that sweet taste it really actually stopped whatever weird empty thing my stomach was doing. I didn't feel full, but I didn't feel starved, either.

One of the other things I really like is the no-sugar added Very Cherry Fruit Cocktail. It's only 30 calories for a half a cup, and a can of it is 3.5 servings- 115 calories. It feels like eating a LOT for that few calories (whether you eat just one serving or the whole can) and can really curb sweet cravings for me and make me feel full. It does have artificial sweetener in it (I think Splenda) which I know a lot of people on here avoid, so it might not be for you, but it has helped me a lot.

As much as I might try, I really just can not get into the baby carrots. They're boring and kind of gross to me. I LOVE grape or cherry tomatoes, though and can eat them by the hand full plain or with just a splash of balsamic vinegar.

That's exactly it. I hate hot teas as well, but when you mention adding splenda and a dash of milk, my interests piqued I admit. Sounds very worth a try, and I love flavorful, robust teas, so the Irish tea sounds right up my alley. Thanks so much for the suggestion, and so glad you can relate!

I don't really get hungry..but I want to eat. Especially at night after dinner, I save a lot of calories for the evening because I know I'll want to snack while I do school work.

That's what I refer to as "real" vs "fake" hunger - the stomach vs brain hunger. Stomach hunger is real hunger - while brain hunger is just "thinking" you're hungry when you're really not.

I think that many, maybe most, obese or overweight people have gotten that way because they fail to recognize what is real hunger. FOOD IS FOR SUSTENANCE. That's what our bodies need in order to exist. And the body really doesn't need an over-abundance of food to exist. Too much food and the body will store it - as fat. Regardless of what kind of food it is (protein, carbs, fats, etc.)

While some people eat for different reasons, i.e. the boredom eater, the pain eater, the lonely eater, the social eater, the it's-so-delicious eater, etc. the only reason a human body needs food is to exist but in the modern world, it seems rare that's the reason why people actually eat. Therefore, for us obese or overweight people, we really must learn a way to stop all the unnecessary eating. Whichever diet works best for each individual, whatever techniques we use, the bottom line is that eating when you don't need to eat is what makes us fat.

Are you eating at regular hours? Eating on a strict schedule really helped me stop feeling hungry all the time. It helps train your body to know when to produce hunger signals correctly. If you're eating at random times, hunger and satiety signals can end up all over the place.

I assumed this too, but even animals eat for "brain hunger" not just "stomach hunger." In fact, for millions of years, there has been a survival advantage to eating whenever food was available. In fact, generally food was so scarce, that it was far more important to listen to "brain hunger" than to "stomach hunger," because if you could eat, even when your belly was painfully full - you survived where as your "no thank you, I'm full" peers could starve to death.

The ability to store fat has been a survival trait for millions of years, and now suddenly it's not. Putting on fat no longer has survival value, because the famines never come - but you don't change millions of years of evolution in a century or less.

Reading "The End of Overeating," and "Good Calories, Bad Calories" changed my life, because I saw for the first time that "brain hunger" was physiological, hormone-mediated, very-real hunger.
I learned that the "thought hungers" are indeed true and often (perhaps even usually) physiological hungers. I now know that it was hormones (real hormones, not thoughts. The thoughts weren't causing the hunger, hormones were causing the thoughts, the feelings, and the hunger).

This isn't about "fat people wanting food when their bodies don't need it."

I have spent most of my life dieting, and for most of that time, I was fighting the wrong enemy (my thoughts), when I should have been fighting the physiological hunger that I didn't recognize as physiological hunger, because I thought it was my head that was messed up, not my body.

Two things changed my life. Birth control, and low-carb dieting. Suddenly the "brain hunger" that was so intense, I call it "rabid hunger," is an occasional teeny, tiny, small voice rather than a huge, 24/7, screaming monster.

I learned that the insulin spike that carby foods can generate causes hunger - a hunger that is physiological in origin - and often far more powerful than stomach hunger.

Thin and formerly fat people do not naturally "only listen to stomach hunger." Hormone and brain-triggered hunger ARE real hunger whether you weight 80 lbs or 800.

Two of the best books that explain why non-stomache hunger is physiological "real" hunger (that people of all weights respond to) are The End of Overeating by David Kessler, and Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

I didn't know to treat physiological hunger, you need a physiological strategy. Low-carb dieting turned the giant, rabid monster hunger into a day old kitten.

When I thought the hunger was psychological, I used psychological strategies, and they didn't work well. I either was in tenuous control, and absolutely miserable - not understanding why I couldn't get my mind off food, and why I couldn't stop feeling "fake hunger." Nor could I understand why this "fake" hunger was 1000 times stronger than "real" hunger. It made me believe that I was insane. I chose psychology and got a bachelors and masters degree in large part, to figure myself out, and to learn strategies to fix myself.

Then to discover that the "fake" hunger had physiological causes and I could have fixed it when I was 10 years old?

I feel like I've wasted such a huge portion of my life. If only I had known at 10, that high-glycemic carbs were responsible for 90% of my issues.

I thought I was fat because I was crazy, and I thought that for more than 30 years.

Turns out I was crazy, because of the carbs I was eating, and my hormones were messed up (which also may have been aggravated if not caused by the carbs).

Even by 12, I had noticed the hormonal connection, telling my doctor that just to maintain my weight, I had to spend most of the month compensating for PMS/TOM hunger that I couldn't control. Even at 12, my doctor suggested that birth control could help most of the symptoms, but that weight gain was a likely result (and when weighing potential weight loss against potential weight gain - I was too afraid of the gain to risk it).




We do a great discredit to people by labeling non-stomach hunger as "imaginary" or "false" hunger. It's physiological, and it's real, and it needs to be treated as real. I could have saved myself decades of inner turmoil and mental torture if I had known that there were physiological ways to combat this physiological hunger - if I had only even suspected that it wasn't "all in my head."

Thank you so much for writing that, Kaplods. Very well written and I agree with you completely. Whether it's "real" or "fake" is essentially useless to me right now anyway as the signals are still there and are still annoying me, whyever they might surface. So instead of debating whether or not I'm really hungry (I already know I can't be), I'd rather stick on topic and discuss possible reasons for feeling it and what I can do to combat it - which you did lead into in your reply regarding carbs.

The question now becomes what constitutes low carb? At what point is it considered "low"? How many grams per day can I have at maximum and still be considered to be on a low carb plan? I have noticed that low-carbing does reduce desire to eat and for sweets, but the plan I was on before was far, far too restrictive which is why I could not stick to it. I would like a realistic, healthy low-carb plan that still allows me to eat things like fruit and such.

Thanks to everyone who has indicated possible causes and solutions.

You'll probably need to find that out for yourself, I don't think it's universal. I've gone from being ravenously hungry all the time to being rarely hungry except at mealtimes without restricting carbs, although I do eat a diet with wholegrains and minimal sugar. Complex carbs are actually an essential part of keeping my blood sugar level, and there's been some research on this in relation to PMDD and blood sugar levels. Incidentally, do you have PMS or PMDD? Either way, my point is that it's complicated and variable, you can't just take what one person reports and assume that it will work for you as well. You're better off trying a variety of approaches, making no assumptions beforehand, and hopefully sooner or later you will find one that clicks for you.

Timing seemed to be key for me, so I definitely recommend playing with that. Again, this one varies: some people need to eat every few hours, some people do best on Intermittent Fasting, and some people find that it makes no difference whatsoever. Sleep can also be connected to hunger (and eating patterns to sleep!), so that's worth checking out as well. I don't think I'd have had a chance of losing weight back in the days when I still had untreated Non-24 Sleep-Wake Disorder and completely chaotic routines. I found successful treatment for the N24 a few years ago (look up darkness therapy), but I was so used to chaotic routines, and bear in mind here that I'm housebound and often bedbound with a fatigue-based illness, that they continued to be chaotic. I was now sleeping normal hours but eating completely randomly, and didn't realise that I was eating too much because I literally couldn't remember when and what I'd eaten.

My hunger disappeared when I was temporarily placed on low-dose amitriptyline (which is odd, for most people it does the opposite if anything) and I seized the opportunity to start dieting. At that point I naturally fell into a pattern of mealtimes at regular hours, and my hunger signals stayed stable even when I came off the amitriptyline a month later.

I also reckon some of it was from overeating: I can't offhand remember how this works, but I think I've read that eating too much can actually trigger excess hunger.

I would like to encourage you to Google the term, "Glycemic Index." I didn't discover it until I was well into my weightloss but I sure wish I had known about it sooner!

My recommendation would be to not worry about "what constitutes" or "what is considred" low-carb, because what you call it isn't important at all.

A lot of people tell me that I'm not on low-carb, because I eat fruit and grains - just not as much as I used to (much, much less than I used to).

Definitions of low-carb vary - so much that if you ingest more than 10g of carbs per day, SOMEONE will tell you that you're not "really" on low-carb (which is as pointless a debate, as to which hungers are "real")

Controlling physiological hunger, as Esofia pointed out, isn't always about carbs. It CAN be about carbs, but it isn't always. Also, it may be about the type of carbs, rather than carbs in general. Or, it could be about something else entirely.

Some researchers believe (and have some evidence to support the belief) that there actually may be genes that control which foods (or flavors) we're most likely to overeat. So some people may do best on a low-fat diet, and others may do best on a low-carb diet, or a high-fiber diet (or some combination). Only relatively recently have researchers stopped looking for the best diet for everyone, and have started looking at which diets are best for whom. Unfortunately the science isn't able to tell us that yet, so we're mostly left with trial and error.


So, you really have to be patient with yourself, and be willing to experiment (though it's hard to know how much time to give each experiment, I'd recommend several months at the very least, because it's too easy jump to conclusions when you're looking for patterns).


A lot of people do very well just by restricting or eliminating processed carbs, or by increasing fiber (from fruits, veggies, and whole grains). Others do well by using the glycemic-index.

I also believe that the diet that works best today, may not be best forever, so not only do you have to experiment, you may have to continue to experiment.

Kaplods can you help me understand how insulin spikes drive hunger?

Simple sugars can cause later blood sugar crashes which drives hunger but beyond that I would be curious to see what you mean. You can spike insulin with out a lot of simple sugars.

By the way - I think it is important when ever anyone mentions Taubes to point out that for all the good he has done he is wrong about calories. If anyone would like to pay for me to eat 5,000 calories a day of prime grade beef drenched in butter and herbs I'll be happy to prove him wrong.

Nope. I can't explain it at all. I'm just passing on what I've experienced, read, and have been told by doctors and diabetes educators.

In response to your question I searched for online articles explaining how insulin causes hunger, but all I really found were statements that it did - not how it did so. Common statements where things like: high levels of circulating insulin can cause extreme hunger and cravings. Unusual or extreme hunger is also listed as a side effect of injectable insulin (in fact on many diabetic pages, insulin-using diabetics have even noted that some types or brands of insulin have caused them far more hunger than others).

It seems to be fairly well-established as a potential side-effect of insulin (whether as an injectable, or the insulin your own body produces), so I'm sure any physician, dietitian, or diabetic educator could explain it.

I know when my husband was prescribed insulin, it was one of the first things the diabetic educator warned us about - that insulin therapy can cause intense hunger, and cravings for carbohydrates in particular, and that my husband would have to be very dilligent about avoiding eating in respoonse to the insulin-triggered hunger, if he experienced it.



She also showed us diagrams that illustrated the sugar - insulin - hunger - cravings - sugar cycle that she said applied to both my husband (insulin-using type II diabetic) and me (at the time insulin-resistant).

She told us that insulin is a "growth hormone" and that one of it's purposes was to regulate (and cause) hunger.

I've heard this phrased very similarly from other doctors we've had, and also on television, and in books I've read on the topic of diabetes, autoimmune disease, paleo and reduced carb diets and similar subjects. However, I have no idea "how" insulin does so, but I don't know a lot about how any of the hormones do what they do.

From my own experience, low-carb eating cuts my hunger so drastically, that it's almost miraculous. And my "rabid hunger" does seem to follow the exact pattern that the diabetic educator predicted. Eating high-carb foods, triggers insulin release, which triggers more hunger (at least in insulin resistant folks).

Now that I say that I remember that the diabetic counselor actually had two diagrams. The first being how a non-insulin resistant person responds to the release of carbohydrates, and how a diabetic or insulin resistant person responds to carbohydrates (so it very well may be that insulin does not trigger hunger - or at least not to the same degree - than it does for folks with insulin resistance or type II diabetes).


I don't know. I just know that if I eat concentrated carbohydrates, I can't seem to stop eating because of what I call "rabid hunger." It literally feels as if I cannot stop myself from eating. It's the craziest damned thing I've ever experienced (and this "rabid hunger" was a constant companion for most of my life. As a child, almost nightly I would go to bed so hungry that I couldn't sleep, and my parents would tell me that "I couldn't really be hungry.")

If I had only known that "rabid hunger" could be tamed simply by avoiding processed carbs, and being careful with more complex carbs, I would have had a very different childhood and a very different life.

I can't explain what that hunger was like. And I can't explain what a wonder it is to be able to control it (even though I don't have "good control" yet, it's so far from my experience on higher carb eating, that I can't even begin to explain it).

I'm not always perfect or even good about compliance with my low-carb eating, and yet I'be been able to avoid eating to the point of pain in so very long, that I can't remember when. It's almost inconceivable to me (because it used to be an almost daily event).

KAPLODS ~ I've experienced the same thing as you. As you know, my (raging) hormones were screwed up since at least 10 years of age (as I've explained to you before). I was also put on Metformin to help regulate (or balance) my hormones and blood sugar levels, and I experienced what I called "RAVENOUS Hunger" (similar to your Rabid Hunger).

I am on a lower carb (whole foods) plan too (portion/calorie based); and find on the days I have a lower carb dinner/day, that I feel more satiated -- and, that "RAVENOUS" hunger disappears. I have to eat some complex carbs, or my blood sugar levels dip down too low, but I eat very little (if any) sugar or simple carbs now.

I used to think that there are at least two (2) kinds of systems: carb burners and protein burners. My husband, who is 120 lbs soaking wet, can eat all the carbs (and other foods) he wants, and burns them off like crazy. IF he gains 5-10 lbs over the winter, as soon as he gets on his bike in the spring, off they come.

Whereas, I am a protein burner (IMHO), and do better with lower carbs. I do eat some whole grain carbs (but limit them), along with some fruit, veggies & salad. I eat meat, but leaner meat (there's fat in all meat, but I remove the skin and cut off all visible fat). It is working for me ...

A friend of mine (who is diabetic with lots of hormone issues too) said that she felt like her BRAIN was screaming at her to eat all the time. I told her that I think it probably is ... she is now doing much better.

I think that is why some people can lose weight on a higher carb vegetarian diet, and others do better on a lower or low carb plan. I think we each need to find out what our bodies like better; and what can help curb that "RAVENOUS" or Rabid hunger that some of us experience.


OP ~ I must eat regularly and not skip any meals to keep my sugars balanced and hunger pangs at bay. I also like to eat salad, veggies, fruit, and soup to feel full too. Hope this all helps you in some way.

Alright - thought I would check. I've heard the same thing as well but was curious if you knew how the mechanism worked.