I feel silly for not knowing this, but: if you become hungry, or are hungry for an extended period of time -- is that OK, or does that mean you're slowing your metabolism down because your body thinks it needs to hold on to every resource it has (including fat)?

I know it's ideal to NOT be hungry, at least for comfort's sake, I'm just curious if the body resists weight loss less when it has a constant supply of fuel... or is it really just about calories in vs. calories out, regardless of hunger level?

Why would you WANT to be hungry? Personally, if I can keep myself from feeling hungry I want to! lol.

I don't know the scientific aspect of it, but from personal experience I know if I wait until I'm starving to eat, I usually end up eating more when I do eat.

I wouldn't want to be hungry either! I'm just saying, in the event that I've reached my calorie limit for the day... or am running low on low-calorie foods or something... I just want to know whether there are more reasons to avoid hunger than the "fear of hunger" ...

In "The Beck Diet Soultion" she talks about hunger not being "an emergency". It's ok to feel a little hungry. I only lose weight when I get those hunger pangs.

I also have read that it's ok once a week to do a 24 hr fast and not send your body into "starvation mode". I've never tried it though.

It probably comes down to whether you can tolerate it or not and not doing it for an extended period of time ( > 24 hrs).

Theoretically I don't think you are supposed to ever feel "really hungry", as opposed to wanting to eat. I personally have a hard time knowing the difference sometimes. If you are truly hungry, then you might want to see what kinds of foods and ratios you are eating, and if you are actually eating enough food for your weight, level of exercise, etc. You may need more protein or fat or an extra snack or whatever. Or you may just be thinking about food and like me, you want to eat sometimes when you are not hungry. If you aren't actually experiencing hunger, then a glass of water and a walk around the block might interrupt the cycle so you don't feel hungry anymore right then. Lots of different aspects to consider. It doesn't hurt to THINK you are hungry, but I'm pretty sure nobody will last on any plan for very long if they actually NEED more food that they aren't getting.

Barb

If you're worrying about not eating slowing down your metabolism - stop.

Metabolisms (the rate at which we burn calories) does not get changed all that quickly. It's really "hard" to "ruin" one. They are what they are. They do change throughout the course of our lives. That's natural.

Your body doesn't want to or need to hold onto the fat. That's what weight loss is all about. We create a calorie deficit in order TO use up that stored fat.

That being said - you mentioned running out of calories. Why not plan out your meals/snacks AHEAD of time so that your calories are spread out through the course of your day? You'll know what you're eating throughout, making sure to have enough food to eat into the evening. Also you mentioned running out of low calorie foods - I URGE you to not let this happen. ALWAYS keep a great supply of these foods on hand. Set yourself up for success. HAve the right "tools" on hand.

I for one can count on one hand the times I've been actually hungry in the almost 4 years since I started my weight loss journey. NOT being hungry will not affect your weight loss. I think that's your original question...

My mother had this saying: "Hunger is the best sauce."

I think a little hunger is ok. I know I usually will have my stomach growl if I don't eat 3 meals a day... the trick is to not get to that FAMISHED point where it's too easy to go crazy and eat and eat.

When I have lost over 50 pounds before, I had to recalibrate my body to be comfortable with a little hunger. Not all the time, but it would definitely "ping" me throughout the day. My inner barometer would have me eat too much for my physical needs, especially at night, so I had to be aware of that.

I'm relearning that self-control. I had been trying to do it intuitively, but I think that part of me got broken with years of binge-eating. Right now, I am tracking my calories through using Weight Watchers Points, and finding it a comfortable way to lose weight. I don't restrict anything, but I weigh or measure everything I eat or drink that doesn't come with a nutrition facts label.

I wish I was one of those people who just knew naturally when to stop, or who can eat without worrying about gaining, but I don't think I am designed that way

What sort of hunger are you talking about? For me, the signs of "problem" hunger are when you can't sleep, can't concentrate, have (or really, really want to have) temper tantrums, or otherwise interfere with your life.

However, that doesn't mean it's ok to eat a peanut butter sandwich because you are suffering from serious hunger and have nothing else in the house. It means you get your a$$ in the car and go to the grocery store and get low-calorie healthy stuff.

Oh, boy, I wish hunger was just a physical thing, but it's a mental thing, too, or at least it is with me.

When I am hungry, the reptile brain is thinking: "Arrrgh! I don't want to be like this. You're ignoring me. Aren't you going to feed me? Aren't you going to take care of me? Pay attention! This is awful. I may never eat again. All the world's food supply is dwindling away rapidly and I'll be left among the starving. There's only one piece of food left, and I'm not going to get it. We're entering into a famine, and it will be endless."

In other words, I panic. And then, when I get food, I eat fast & I eat too much. Which I wouldn't have done, if I had kept myself fed.

I've read where you're supposed to monitor your feelings of hunger & fullness & create some kind of scale in your head, ranging from unpleasantly overstuffed to ravenous. I haven't done this. And I don't have this scale naturally. I seem to recognize only the furthest two ends of the thing.

I get hungry worrying I'll be hungry. I fear the state I've described above so much that some of my eating seems to occur because, if I don't, I might end up **being** hungry as that. A state to be avoided at all costs.

Thanks to everyone for your responses!

Good to know that a little hunger isn't necessarily a bad thing. I used to go into panic mode whenever I felt even slightly hungry ... it's good to know hunger isn't really a problem unless it interferes with sleep/thinking/etc.

I wish I had a car! I have neither car nor license (for now -- I'm working on getting my license), and this is not a good part of town so grocery shopping alone on the bus isn't a good option either. I go to the grocery store when my roommates go once every couple of weeks, which is obviously not ideal. But meh, I guess that'd be a discussion for a separate thread.

saef, me too!

I get really squirrelly if I get too hungry, or if I restrict groups of food. Like freak-out jonesing for a giant supply of food. In times like that, like having a badly-planned day of coffee for breakfast and no lunch at all, dinner becomes a food orgy.

I know there is this other option on my plan to eat focusing on whole foods and low-fat dairy, but with no daily food Points tracking... Just using that scale you mentioned. "Am I comfortable now? How about now?" Most times, I would have blown past "comfortable" into "stuffed" if I let myself have free reign.

On one level, I think it sucks that I can't trust my body, but I am coming around to accept that I need to treat myself like I am overseeing a patient with a regimen in order to restore them to wellness

THIS! Especially when I am out somewhere without direct access to my foods, or when I am with other people and don't feel like I can eat freely without being judged (or we have dinner planned for later).

Sometimes after I eat a big meal, or a meal with a lot of fiber or something in it, I will feel the digestive processes happening in my stomach (sometimes it even growls), and I will start fooling myself into thinking it is hunger, even though intellectually I know that I can't possibly be hungry. And then I start getting anxious and counting the hours until I think I might actually be hungry again. It's a weird cycle.

This is an interesting question, and I honestly don't have the scientific answer. I can say that I've read online (take that for what it's worth) that your metabolism starts to slow down after 3 days of a low calorie diet and this is why zig zagging calories works so well because your body doesn'g have the opportunity to get used to a particular calorie level and is always guessing what is going on. This keeps your metabolism functioning effeciently. I don't know if that is true, but I can say that I am often hungry at the end of the day, sometimes it's mental, sometimes it's TOM related and just the muchies and sometimes it's real hunger. But my metabolism seems to be doing great. That said I do zig zag my calories and I try to aim for the highest calories I can and still lose a resonable amount of weight.

I wouldn't stress about it too much...I can't remember the quote but someone equated hunger to her body munching up the fat cells and that it felt great to know that when she was hungry she was losing weight or something like that.

I firmly believe that crash and yoyo dieting can slow metabolism. I see it as the reason that when a person returns to old eating habits, they don't return to their old weight, they usually end up at a higher weight. I think it's also evident in the people who regain all their weight or all their weight and then some after gastric bypass weight loss surgery. If metabolism weren't impacted, it would be impossible to return to even their starting weight without eating TONS more than they were eating before surgery (with part of the digestive system removed, even returning to old eating habits - even immediately after surgery should still result in some significant weight loss).

All that being said, I think metabolism is a lot more resistant than is often assumed. It seems the viewpoints tend to lie toward the extremes. Metabolism is indestructable and unchangeable, or metabolism is fragile and easily influenced.

I firmly believe that extreme dieting (as well as the normal effects of aging) has drastically altered my metabolism, but I also believe that it took years and years to get to this point. I don't believe metabolism is ever destroyed, it's slowly eroded.

Hunger is a variable that I don't think is directly related to metabolism at all, because there are many variables that go into hunger. A person on a very high calorie diet can experience hunger (carbs trigger false hunger for me, so I can be hungry even on calories high enough to be of no risk to metabolism).

I suspect that usually the major cause of metabolic decline is loss of muscle. Muscle tissue requires more calories to maintain than fat. So when you lose weight (especially on very drastic crash and low calorie diets, because you lose proportionally more muscle than fat, even more so if you're not exercising).

But if metabolism can be damaged, it can also be repaired. The most obvious route is exercise, and eating sufficient protein for the muscle building and repair.

I don't think hunger has much to do with the equation, because hunger doesn't destroy muscle. It's a complicated mechanism, and can occur even with more than sufficient protein and calories.

If hunger is preventing you from being as active as you otherwise would be, you'll burn fewer calories (I don't consider this really impacting metabolism itself - because the rate at which you can burn calories isn't being affected).
But the effects are essentially the same (less weight loss).

I can't trust hunger. I can feel hungry on a high calorie diet, and can feel little hunger on a low calorie diet (if it's extremely low carb), so I use calories as a guide to make sure i have enough energy to do what I want to be able to do. Not everyone has to do that, but it works best for me (when I use it).

In my very humble opinion, I stronly disagree with this statement. I feel that (in my case morbid) obesity is much like (my) alcoholism in the aspect that it is progressive. If an alcoholic stops drinking for say 5 years and then returns to drinking, they don't start out fresh...like a non-alcoholic, they pick right up from where they left off, and get worse quickly, because, well, alcoholism is a progressive disease. When a person crash diets for a time period, and gos off the wagon, they also pick right up from where they left off and get worse quickly. I feel as though the illness is still progressing even though there is abstinence, and rapidly progresses once unlimited food is once again consumed. (like alcohol) There is really no way to tell how much more weight a person would have gained if they hadn't started a crash diet...They could have continued to gain until they died from obesity related health problems.

If I wouldn't have started my low calorie diet a little over 2 years ago and lost nearly 200 pounds, and just kept eating what I was eating to get to 333 pounds, I have no doubt I would either be dead...or 500 pounds by now. That is how sick I was. Metabolism had nothing to do with it. I've crash dieted, yo-yo dieted, properly dieted my entire life, and I can still easily lose weight, (when I work at it) but I can't easily stop gaining once I allow myself to eat unlimited. I have a food disorder...a disease.