how long does it take to get used to less food?
 

You know that feeling, you aren't really hungry, but your stomach doesn't have that stuffed feeling it's used to? It might not be growling, but you know it's not completely full so you are kinda hungry but not true hunger where you haven't eaten for hours. You might have just eaten dinner, but are still hungry just because you didn't have a big dinner like you might be used to or had healthier foods and not fattening foods that would fill you up faster.

How long does it take for that feeling to go away and what do you do to hold you over?

People say if you are feeling hungry then you aren't eating enough, but I will never be able to go back to eating as much as I do. I'm aiming for 1500-1600 calories which should be enough for my (lack of) activity level. I'm drinking plenty of water also.

i know exactly what you mean!!!!
sometimes our mind play tricks on us though. Somewhere deep in our brain tells us that we need to eat eat eat... For me this "i want to eat again" sensation comes when i am less busy. It also can be because what you ate was fast diagested too... but i think for me its still my subcontiosness.
Also for me i have this exact thing you described when i had more carbs than my body should for previous meal. For me carbs equals "i will be very hungry soon".
When i have this craving fore more food, i normally drink water ( a full glass) and then 5-10 mins later have small snack that is huge in protein. Protein makes me go longer between meals.

I still haven't worked out my pattern in this. Some days I too can feel stuffed by a can of soup, other days I can have meat and 3 veg. and a pudding and still not feel 'full'.
What makes it not a problem for me is that I don't mind feeling hungry; I have very rarely over-eaten because of being/feeling hungry, very frequently for boredom/emotional reasons.

I also drink a lot of water, and always a glass before meals. Not only does it fill me up, albeit temporarily, it speeds things through when I do eat!

I don't think you have to walk around hungry and eat less food to lose weight. I have learned at WW to make the meat portions smaller and eat more filling foods that are healthier.

And you can fill up on pretty much all the cooked vegetables you want as long as you don't drown it in butter or heavy sauces.

After lunch and dinner I am usually pretty full, not stuffed but full.

I don't eat less than when I was fat, I just eat fewer calories. I hate being hungry. I used to have an ED and hunger is a bad temptation for me to go back down that path. It's best if I don't even go there.
Filling lo-cal foods: beans, wholemeal pasta (in tomato not white sauce), fish, (I heart prawns but they cost £££), yoghurt, milk, lentils, sweet potatoes, squash, mushrooms (love), apples, pears, wholegrain bread, porridge, oat bars, soups (esp. chunky), skinless chicken. Yumm...
I love food. I eat food. And I'm maintaining 108lbs (I'm a small girl) easily.

I have days when I'm ravenous and days when I don't think much about my stomach at all. There is no good reason for either.

See if you can find some information about volumetrics. It's all about very filling foods that don't have many calories.

i think i should look into this volumetrics thing too. i seem to have the same problem and sometimes with no rhyme or reason. thanks for the advice.

I try to eat in a "volumetrics" style, but there are days when it just doesn't make me feel full. I think only part of my perception of fullness is related to food volume - the other part, I think is related to calories - I think my body knows full well when I'm trying to fool it by eating a mixing bowl full of salad for only 120 calories, and some days, it's having none of it!

Well, this is a silly thing but it helps me. I eat my dinner off of a smaller plate now and it looks really full of food, which can many times fool my head into thinking, "Wow, that's a lot of food!" It doesn't always work like I hope but most of the time it helps.

I think it took me a couple of months to become accustomed to not needing to have that stuffed feeling. Now I feel uncomfortable if I have that totally stuffed feeling. That doesn't mean that I still don't struggle with resisting temtpation, though--last night I mixed up cookie dough so I could bake them this morning before I take off to visit my son at college, and I was not totally sucessfull at staying out of the dough. The 4 hour car ride with a bag of freshly baked cookies should be interesting.

As people have said, you can bulk up on veggies or drink some water. Sometimes it's really important to me to feel full, for example to keep me from eating after dinner, I make sure I'm full when I leave the table. If I feel full I won't eat at night, so I save extra calories for dinner.

agree with wind - when I switched down to my salad plate instead of dinner plate, it made a huge difference for me. One of the greatest ideas I came away with from WW for those huge family holiday meals was to put the salad plate on the dinner plate, and absolutely heap it with salad. Then you put the other, more calorie-dense stuff around the remaining edge of the dinner plate (not letting them touch each other). It really looks like a huge mass of food, so you won't be pestered by the "loving saboteurs".

But a quick answer to the question - my stomach needs about 7-10 days to "shrink up" when I reduce my portion sizes.

I absolutely have to feel full at least once a day, and I have been working at this for 13 months. Over the years and many failed diets later I have learned I just need to play with the cards I have been dealt. So at least once a day I have a huge meal. It is usually some type of stir-fry mixed vegetables with some sort of lean meat. I make it taste good with loads of seasonings and high quality veggies. I also make sure it is packed with high fiber veggies...so the "Full" feeling lasts for awhile. Some might say that I need to change the mind set of feeling full, but I can't. It's part of me and I have tried to alter it for years. I find that now that I let myself get full, I don't constantly fantasize about food.

To be honest, I've been at this for almost 10 years and I have never gotten used to less food. I started WW in 1999 and lost nearly 70 lbs and kept it off for almost three years (I am overweight again because of ME, not because weight watchers doesn't work) The only time I feel "full" in general is unfortunately when I overeat. I have literally tried everything from food combos to volumetrics to eating for my ayurvedic type and I just do not feel full, ever.

That's ok, it just looks like I am eating a lot all day long :lol:

I eat about every 3 hours, not 3 full meals but breakfsst, snack.,lunch, snack, dinner, snack. My snacks are usually 100 calories or less. Some suggestions are non fat yogurt, sugar free jello or sugar free pudding Laughing Cow Cheese wedge on WASA crackers, a slice of low fat Swiss or Ceddar cheese , an apple or orange, There are many possibilities. This keeps me from feeling ravenous .

I'm actually ravenous right now and I had some cottage cheese with sprouts at 3pm and a bowl of strawberries, mandarin and kiwi with yoghurt at 6pm. At lunch I had a hard boiled egg spinach salad with tons of veg. I really just am hungry all the time.

I also find that sometimes when I think I am hungry , I am really thirsty or bored. Boredom will bring me to the refrigerator or find me ransacking the cupboard . It helps to find something else to do at these times. call a friend , take a walk, log on 3FC and read the forums. Distraction will keep my mind off food and I will be OK untio the next meal.

I've been eating super, super clean for a month (very little processed food, no fast food, no sugar), and now I find that I'm just not anywhere *near* as hungry as I used to be.

I'm also reading the Complete Beck Diet book, and it talks about recognizing that 1) hunger is not an emergency (you can wait), 2) stop eating when you're full, and 3) that you will almost always feel full about 20 minutes after eating something, and 4) learning to recognize true hunger instead of just a craving.

Last night I was eating my very healthy dinner, I realized I was full, and I put the rest in a container for today's lunch. This morning at 10 a.m. I was hungry, meant to grab some carrots and grapes and forgot, and then 20 minutes later I realized I wasn't hungry any more.

But I've always kinda wondered if someone who weighs 130 pounds literally is not as hungry as someone who weighs 230 pounds as someone who weighs 330 pounds, etc.

For me it depends a lot on what I eat, veggies tend not to stick with me very long and I get hungry again more quickly.
The thing I really hate is going to bed and already having some hunger, I have woken up in the middle of the night several times because I was so hungry.

I find it helps a lot to not be done eating too quickly. The most obvious thing is, of course, to eat slower. It really helps a lot. Also, I try to have a small something about 1/2 hr before a meal, and that helps me register fullness sooner.

I am not a happy camper unless I feel fairly full. I don't necessarily eat less food though. I eat at least 4 1/2 cups of veggies a day on South Beach and I usually eat every 3 hours. Sometimes the amount of food on my plate is bigger than my husband's. But it's all the filling, high satiety type foods like whole grains, veggies, beans and monounsaturated fats. It's all about the quality of the food vs. the quantity that can make you feel fuller.

You can always go kiss someone with a cold. I've been down with a bad headcold for two days and simply cannot force myself to eat. I figure there is a silver lining in every cloud, right? LOL

For the full feeling I love smashed cauliflower loaded with salt and pepper and five calorie margarine. I also love anything warm--I make coffee in the afternoons and drink way too much of it usually but it really takes the edge off that hunger feeling. If I snack on baby carrots it helps as well.

You may want to up your super lean proteins for a while. I like egg whites (4-5) topped with salsa. Fish is great--same for chicken breast. Also, from the very, very beginning of my weightloss journey I made sure I was eating healthy fats just as I do now. Avacado (1/5 of one), 1 ounce of high quality dark chocolates, 10-15 raw almonds, or 1-2 TBS. of peanut butter worked into your calorie allotment a couple of times a day will work wonders if you stay after it. The healthy fats (aside from the nutritional benefits) are satiating and will stave off that hunger you are feeling if you keep them in your body at all times.

"But I've always kinda wondered if someone who weighs 130 pounds literally is not as hungry as someone who weighs 230 pounds as someone who weighs 330 pounds, etc."

I found that, on the contrary, now that I'm not carrying extra weight I feel hunger more acutely than when I was fat and ate for other reasons. As though my body is saying "hey, I've got nothing extra to burn, so feed me!"