What do I have to do to not be hungry all of the time?

What combination of diet, exercise, and lifestyle so I have to live to just not be hungry?

Lembas bread

Given that you're coming out of an extended period of what was essentially starvation, you're probably going to take a while to adjust to actually having food again. Your body is basically saying "we have food now? Better eat as much as possible just in case we stop being able to find it again." Keep eating an appropriate amount of calories and making sure you get a good mix of both macro and micronutrients (you may benefit from throwing a multivitamin in there, since I fully expect you've got a few deficiencies owing to the malnutrition), and over time your body will adjust to that as the new normal and stop trying to stock itself up for another period of starvation. Exercise is good, but I'd recommend keeping it a bit light for now while you adjust (like maybe aim for 30-60 minutes of walking a day).

I can't really say what this would be like for a person who isn't overweight, but as somebody who is, i dont have a magic solution.

I've identified there is a disconnect between my brain and my physical stomach. My stomach may say no because i am full or just ate an hour ago, my brain says yes all the time. I've gotten better at this lately to where while I do overeat at certain times I am not hungry as heck constantly any more, and I can't say why. I just figure since i'm 35 now my brain has kind of shifted or just "matured". Though it must be said in my case being hungry all the time doesn't usually mean physical. Just, my brain wants to eat my 3rd helping of roast even though i'm full.

Well, eating a fuckload of food does it for most people, though Im aware that has some downsides.

But seriously, depends on genetics and activity levels. I dont think I felt full until my mid twenties, but I was also always incredibly active. I was a bottomless pit and stayed very lean.

For short-term solutions, drink a lot of water. The sensation of something being in your stomach will send signals to your brain telling you that you're full and shouldn't feel hungry, and thus short-circuit a lot of the cravings. If that doesn't work, try eating a bit of bread or some crackers or other dry carb type foods, which will expand in your stomach with water, increasing the feeling of being full.

You can also look into options like rice cakes or high-fiber foods, where they have a lot of low-calorie undigestible bulk that will take up space in your gut but not translate into fat. Though you may find options like that "Like chewing on styrofoam", so your mileage may vary there.



argonautweakend posted...

I've identified there is a disconnect between my brain and my physical stomach. My stomach may say no because i am full or just ate an hour ago, my brain says yes all the time.

A lot of "hunger" can literally just be you being bored, and your brain is looking for stimulation. I know I've definitely had times when I'm just really bored, and I start looking around the house for stuff to snack on, even though I'm not really hungry (to the point where my GF will notice and call me out on it).

Conversely, there are times when I've got really intense focus on a project or something (or I'm just playing Minecraft and am "in the zone", where it seems like a half-hour has passed for me and then I look up and it's like 10 hours later). That sort of focus makes it extremely easy to ignore hunger cravings (and thirst, and the need to go to the bathroom).

In that sense, if you're trying to cut back on how much you're eating/snacking between meals, or just trying to avoid feeling hungry all the time, one answer is definitely to try and find a hobby or some activity that you have to focus intensely on, which distracts your brain and helps block out the minor internal stimuli.

The only downside there is if, say, you play Final Fantasy VII for 16 hours straight in college, never getting up from the couch once, and pausing only to take a sip of Mountain Dew, and then when you finally stop because you're starting to have trouble keeping your eyes open, suddenly 16 hours worth of hunger and needing to piss hits you all at once and you're almost in physical pain. Not that I know anyone who experienced anything like that or anything!

>_>

<_<

>_>



argonautweakend posted...

Just, my brain wants to eat my 3rd helping of roast even though i'm full.

This is why they say you should eat more slowly (and why you'll get advice like "Chew each bite 20 times" or whatever. It basically takes time for your stomach to realize that it's full, and then it takes even longer to send the signal to your brain to stop eating. So if you keep shoveling food in, you'll overeat long before you realize how full you really are.

There's also the added problem that the brain tends to prioritize new experience over existing input. So, say, if you're just eating an endless bowl of pasta, you'll feel full faster than if you're at a buffet and just sampling a little of this, a little of that, and a little of something else. The more variety there is to your food, the more your brain will just sort of keep telling you "Well, I think we have a little more room. Let's have that dessert!" Which is why, as much as adults kind of give kids crap for acting like their completely full from dinner only to immediately perk up when dessert is an option, it's not entirely just an excuse on the kids' part to avoid eating their veggies and bloat up on ice cream. A kid (or even an adult) may legitimately feel full after a meal, only to suddenly feel like they're able to eat more once the desserts come out. Because in the wild, constantly sampling a variety of foods was a survival trait, because it meant stockpiling lots of different types of nutrients, rather than simply gorging on one thing and suffering from malnutrition.

This is also part of why we all tend to overeat so much for holidays like Thanksgiving. You're in a situation where you have a large spread of food, you're shoveling food in, you're getting distracted from your own body feedback by talking to other people at the table or watching "The Big Game", and then "making room" to cram in dessert afterward. All while potentially drinking regularly at the same time. It's not the tryptophan in the turkey that's making you tired, it's the fact that you've eaten enough food for three people, and your body is going into a food coma to try and digest it all.

The only real way to fight back against that is discipline. Tell yourself in advance that you're not going to eat dessert, no matter how good it looks (in fact, you should probably avoid looking at it, so as not to let your brain see how good it looks). Try to eat smaller portions of the meal, then give yourself time to process whether or not you're full or still hungry before going back for seconds (and resist the urge to go back for thirds, fourths, etc). Steel yourself against the peer pressure of well-meaning people who are going to try and encourage you to eat more.

Also, try to fight back against the mentality that "There are starving kids in Africa!" or "It's a sin to waste food!" and forcing yourself to finish everything because it's a mortal imperative to never throw food away. Get used to the idea of saving leftovers for later, or throwing a bit of food away if you have to (or get a pet who will eat it for you - though be careful what you feed them, or you're just trading your health for theirs). And try to take smaller portions to start with (knowing you can go back for more later if you need to) rather than heaping your plate full to start and then finding you don't want all the food you took, yet still feeling obligated to finish it all. You're far better off health-wise NOT "cleaning your plate", and realistically, the universe doesn't give a shit whether or not you threw a few forkfuls of pasta or a couple veggies in the trash rather than cramming them down your throat.

One of the drawbacks of living in a First World society that has a massive excess of resources is you sort of have to re-teach your body to not try and eat everything it can because it's still afraid there might be a famine tomorrow.

Goddamn PO that is the longest post I've seen anyone make on here in years.

Judgmenl posted...

Goddamn PO that is the longest post I've seen anyone make on here in years.

Well, it's appropriate that if it had to be someone , it was me!

ParanoidObsessive posted...

This is why they say you should eat more slowly (and why you'll get advice like "Chew each bite 20 times" or whatever. It basically takes time for your stomach to realize that it's full, and then it takes even longer to send the signal to your brain to stop eating. So if you keep shoveling food in, you'll overeat long before you realize how full you really are.

This is also why obesity rates can be lower in regions whose typical diets seem like they should have higher rates. American dining culture tends to emphasize cramming a meal in quickly so you can get back to work. In regions where it's more culturally normal to spend a longer time at the table, treating dining as more of a social experience and something to savour and not just an unfortunately necessary interruption to productive time, you get people eating more slowly and not outpacing their body's ability to recognize that they're full.

Judgmenl posted...

Goddamn PO that is the longest post I've seen anyone make on here in years.

Pssh, that wasn't even close to the character limit (the warning for which shows up way later than it should). Those are rookie numbers.

adjl posted...

Pssh, that wasn't even close to the character limit (the warning for which shows up way later than it should). Those are rookie numbers.

I actually was getting the character limit warning for that post.

But it's not like the old days, where I would occasionally write a post so long I'd wind up having to break it into like a dozen different posts just to get GameFAQs to accept it all. That required way more passion and free time than I still have, and way more interesting people to discuss/argue with.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

way more interesting people to discuss/argue with.

This is something I see as a problem internet-wide. I really miss the days where I would talk to people for hours on end.

It could be insulin resistance. Not saying it is 100% but it's a possibility.

Chewing gum can help some people.
Brushing your teeth also helps me, but you obviously don't want to do that too often and it can mess up your schedule.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I actually was getting the character limit warning for that post.

I didn't get it when I copy-pasted the post and added a few dozen extra characters, so you must have done a lot of trimming. That, or the formatting that would have been left out of a copy-paste added more than I accounted for.

MagicalPrincess posted...

It could be insulin resistance. Not saying it is 100% but it's a possibility.

I just had my blood work done this month. 5.1 A1c =)

josh posted...

Chewing gum can help some people.

This might actually be a good idea. I really just want to gnaw on something through the day while I work.

I heard that chewing gum actually has the opposite effect, because chewing tells your stomach to expect food.

Judgmenl posted...

What combination of diet, exercise, and lifestyle so I have to live to just not be hungry?

exercising kinda removes the want to eat for me.

i started doing an hour worth of exercise just today to get past the problem area of the leading up to lunch time around 2pm (half of a sandwich and a greek yogurt)

this will help trim down some of the calories i would gain through the day (gotta keep under 2k if i don't want to gain weight) tomorrow i won't need to do the hour walk. that is shopping day and it's going to give that and slightly more.

adjl posted...

That, or the formatting that would have been left out of a copy-paste added more than I accounted for.

Probably this.

I do italicize words for emphasis fairly often, and that's +7 characters every time I do it. I also use line breaks (which, because GameFAQs has repeatedly screwed up its own code, I have to use a workaround for), which technically count as 8 characters.

Plus, you have to take into account stuff like < cite > and < blockquote > every time I post a quote, which won't show up when you're copying the post, but which would have been there when I posted it. So that's generally another +38 characters for every quote box.

(Oh, and I also double-space after every period when I type, because I'm from the old-school where that was what you were supposed to do. But it's not visually obvious because computers tend to automatically ignore the second space these days. So there's a chance that counts against me in the character calculation as well - basically adding +1 characters every sentence.)


Though I also realize "getting the character limit warning" could be interpreted as me saying it wouldn't post at all because it was too long. Which isn't what I meant. I was referring to the part on the bottom of the text box where it says "1362 characters remaining" (which is what it currently says when I C&P the post without any formatting). Basically, the warning that you're getting close to the post limit. Which most people on the site will never see, because it doesn't start showing up until you cross the line at 1692 characters remaining (which is, admittedly, kind of a weirdly arbitrary value to draw the line at).


Also, as an aside, I know it used to be the case where, if you posted extremely close to the post limit, and then tried to edit your post afterward (not 100% sure it still works that way, but it might), it wouldn't let you. Apparently the character limit for edits is at least slightly lower than the character limit for the initial post. So, say, if you posted your initial post with 12 characters remaining, then tried to go back in and edit in 6 more characters, it would tell you that you were over the limit, even though you should still theoretically have room left.

Judgmenl posted...

Goddamn PO that is the longest post I've seen anyone make on here in years.

bread

Now I unironically want to bake some banana bread.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though I also realize "getting the character limit warning" could be interpreted as me saying it wouldn't post at all because it was too long. Which isn't what I meant. I was referring to the part on the bottom of the text box where it says "1362 characters remaining" (which is what it currently says when I C&P the post without any formatting). Basically, the warning that you're getting close to the post limit. Which most people on the site will never see, because it doesn't start showing up until you cross the line at 1692 characters remaining (which is, admittedly, kind of a weirdly arbitrary value to draw the line at).

I think I must have something blocked that you don't, because I never get that (at least, not in the quick post box, so if you're going through the actual post page, your mileage may vary). Instead, a message will appear under the box saying something to the effect of "warning, you're nearing the character limit" that doesn't specify how much room I have, and I don't think I've ever had that come up that I haven't had to immediately trim the post down, let alone just not typing any more. I think it must come up when I actually hit the limit, despite what it says.

Either way, the limit is like 4000ish (I can never remember if it's 4000 even or 4096, but thereabouts), so 1362 left is like 70%. Rookie. Numbers.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

(Oh, and I also double-space after every period when I type, because I'm from the old-school where that was what you were supposed to do. But it's not visually obvious because computers tend to automatically ignore the second space these days. So there's a chance that counts against me in the character calculation as well - basically adding +1 characters every sentence.)

Same. It never shows up at all because GameFAQs always trims down multiple spaces to a single one (which I know creates some problems when trying to create ASCII art, though that's a practice that's fallen out of style), but the habit's in there deeply enough that it'll probably never leave.

adjl posted...

I think I must have something blocked that you don't, because I never get that (at least, not in the quick post box, so if you're going through the actual post page, your mileage may vary).

It definitely does it in the quick post box for me, but it's also worth noting that I'm still using the v13 skin (which is also why I can't upload pictures to GameFAQs). So it's entirely possible it works differently depending on which UI you're using.



adjl posted...

Either way, the limit is like 4000ish (I can never remember if it's 4000 even or 4096, but thereabouts), so 1362 left is like 70%. Rookie. Numbers.

The limit is 7548. At least it is for me - this might be another case where the skin you're using alters the limit. So my earlier post was probably closer to 85% of max, once you factor in the formatting. The post was definitely over 6000 characters.

( I just threw it into a Character Counter - it says it was 6382 characters, 1159 words, and 71 sentences. Though again that's ignoring formatting characters, so it was probably around 6500 characters long when I posted it. Which seems to jibe with what I was remembering. )

Though I swear I remember the limit being closer to 10k at some point. So either they reduced it somewhere along the way, or I'm just having another old man moment (or vaguely remembering a different board).

Regardless, everything is rookie numbers for me at this point. Back in the "mid-oughties", I think my personal record for WALL O' TEXT was a post that had to be split up into 21 separate segments to bypass the limit. Which also helps explain why I had an AMP somewhere around 1000 at that point (at a time when I was only posting on PotD, and the purge rate on PotD was like three days ). It was a sickness.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The limit is 7548. At least it is for me - this might be another case where the skin you're using alters the limit. So my earlier post was probably closer to 85% of max, once you factor in the formatting. The post was definitely over 6000 characters.

You may be right. 4000 might be something else.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Though I swear I remember the limit being closer to 10k at some point. So either they reduced it somewhere along the way, or I'm just having another old man moment (or vaguely remembering a different board).

I don't think it's ever been different. Maybe lower, but not higher.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Regardless, everything is rookie numbers for me at this point. Back in the "mid-oughties", I think my personal record for WALL O' TEXT was a post that had to be split up into 21 separate segments to bypass the limit.

That is indeed pretty impressive.

So is the weeks worth of food not really considered a weeks worth for you?