Could you be pregnant?

Kelly, you've lost over 80lbs already and your body could very well be changing "hormone-wise" if my example is anything to go by. I didn't have a period for over 8 years when I was overweight, and I was diagnosed as perimenopausal. Since losing weight I have been more regular than I have EVER been in my life and the cravings that have come with that have been astronomical!!!!! I am thankful that I lost most of my weight before hormones struck!

A couple of months ago I was put on a contraceptive pill to try to even out my hormones as I was getting extremely 'emotional' at times during the month. I don't exactly know how they work, but I have a feeling that my own hormones may still be battling/increasing the ones provided by the pill. I could be totally wrong medically, but that is certainly how it feels at the moment. I have been told that it can take a few months to balance out.

Anyway... that may not have anything to do with your situation, but I just wanted to let you know that it could possibly be hormonal cravings that you are dealing with. Problem is... I don't have any suggestions to make that could help you. I could basically eat anything that moves at those times and I am very disappointed in myself at my lack of control. At other times I can give or take a lot of foods.

Good luck with getting through this.

Arg, no, it's my TOM right now.

Hi Kelly. Sorry to hear about your sudden hunger strike...they suck! I never had the PMS munchies until I was about your weight interestingly enough. (Started around Thanksgiving/Christmas) Now PMS can be killer.

I make a HUGE batch of a cabbage/cauliflower/squash (+ tons of other "free" veggies")stir-fry and season it up to be a very tasty binge buster! It gets me through the hard times. I love it, and it is the only thing that keeps me from gorging on high calorie food. I'll tell you another crazy thing...when I started getting these weird major hunger episodes, I notice I also lose a lot of weight during these times, (As long as I don't cave.) A few times I have lost like 3-4 pounds during these hunger week periods as long as I stayed faithful to my "diet". It also seems that during these times my anxiety is MUCH worse. Have you noticed increased anxiety along with this hunger?

Are you getting enough sleep? I have difficulty sleeping and find that after a couple of sleepless night, I am more hungry than usual.

That was just what I was going to say. My only other comment would be something I heard from Meganbee. Sometimes the hunger cravings can be caused by a type of indigestion. Try taking a tums or gaviscon - I found that this does sometimes work for me.

Make sure you eat breakfast in the morning - specially one with a lot of protein in it! I know for me when I don't include a protein in breakfast, a few hours later I'm STARVING. But if I do eat protein in the morning, I don't seem so famished later on.

Also, sometimes "hunger pain" is just the bodies way of signaling that you are dehydrated. To find out if you are truly hungry; drinking a glass of water and wait 10 minutes. If it goes away, you were just thirsty. If it persist, go get something to eat!

I sometimes have days (or weeks) where I'm just hungrier than others. During those times I eat a little bit more (while sticking to a reasonable calorie budget). The last thing I want to do is let myself go hungry. Of course, when I say "hungry" I mean experiencing physical manifestations of hunger, and not merely craving. As long as I give my body whatever it happens to need at the time, everything goes back to normal after a while.

Good luck!

thanks for all your answers. I'm feeling slightly less hungry today, so maybe it is the hormones.

Just to toss in one more variable - fat cells were recently discovered to produce estrogen, and of course, the more fat you have, the more estrogen is produced. You've had a massively significant weight loss, which might be changing your balances/ratios and making you feel different. There's a lot of great ideas here for working around the hungry feeling - if they don't work, it might be worth checking with an endocrinologist. I read a theory that the plateaus we hate so much are the body's way of resetting all those glandular outputs. Good luck! :)

Alot of great advice in here. Somtimes to more protein or fiber might help.