Loaded headline there, huh.

I'm curious to see how many of us experience purposeful hunger in a conscious effort to keep our weights down.

Speaking personally you can count me in. I estimate I am going a little hungry about 40% of the time; the other half I am eating adequate and about 10% of the time I am over eating.
I am interested in learning if this is a common strategy in controlling obesity, or if it is "unhealthy and abnormal".

Never. Not intentionally, anyway. I did it long enough on low fat; I'm done with it. If it means I have to keep my carb count lower and fat higher, so be it.

That being said, it could be a matter of how I feel hunger. It's not that stomach-growling low-blood-sugar hunger anymore. It's a mild sensation. Usually the clock will tell me that it's time to eat before my hunger will.

Whoa, you're right, loaded question. I am about the same as you, I watch my weight closely and when I gain a few, I eat very little during the day and stop after 4pm. By bed time I am starving, but it works for me so I'll take it. The only time I overeat is when I am out with freinds, I allow myself desert sometimes too. But I don't go out often. It is a daily struggle.
BTW Wooo, your stats are very impressive, congrats, you look great. How long have you been at goal. Since May for me.

Tanya

I find that when I am eating the bare minimum of carbs I have NO apetiete (SP?) NONE WHAT SO EVER! The problem I have is trying to make myself eat at all, because if I don't eat at all, I stop loseing....does that make any sense at all?!?!? Right now I am eating ONLY meat and eggs, and a little cheese every few days. I don't have a scale, but I can tell I am going down. Thank y'all so much for your posts, they all are so encouraging!!!!

Me, either. I've found maintenance to be an ongoing learning process. For example in Fat Flush, the maintenance phase permits up to 4 servings of "friendly" carbs daily but if I eat that many, I gain weight.

Also discovered I'm lactose intolerant so that I cannot have the dairy permitted in maintenance. Turned out to be sensitive to gluten (yah, yah, so I was not tuned in to my body - isn't that how most of us gained so much weight? by not paying attention?) so I have to avoid most grains.

Even without these prior diet staples, I don't go hungry in maintenance. Don't have to. Like clockwork, I return to Phase 1 of Fat Flush for a quarterly detox and - if I've put on a few extra pounds - this return to P1 always (without fail - yahooooo!) shaves the pounds back off. Yahoooooooo! Viva la Fat Flush!

I guess my point is twofold: I don't have to go hungry in order to maintain my goal weight (and trust me here, I DON'T!) AND I'm still learning what foods to avoid and which ones to repeat even though I've been in maintenance for two years.

Quinoa is LOVELY!
Whole wheat is NOT!

plain yogurt = YES!
Milk = never again in my lifetime (and me, a lifelong daily milk-a-holic pre-FFP! No wonder I was always tired and suffered from brain fog. Jeez, what a dolt!!)

dark chocolate - come to mama!
milk chocolate - too sweet, too adulterated (wax?? phooey!), too too!

Now arentcha sorry you asked?

I never go hungry.....if I am hungry, I eat. Some days I eat more, some days I eat less, but I allow my body to call the shots in telling me what it needs.

NEVER..the only time I go hungry is when I forget to eat....
or I dont schedule a lunch and don't have time to eat until later than my usual time. I am hypoglycemic and hunger pangs are NOT good for me.

With low carb I have never NEEDED to go hungry to meet my "diet" objectives or my lifestyle of eating goals.

I am certainly NOT at my goal weight, but I am very afraid of being "hungry" ever. Not just because it's uncomfortable, but because I have always thought that the state of hunger is what triggers my body to start storing fat, or hold on to the fat that we have, or raise the body's weight set-points.

(I also seem to feel headachey and nauseous sometimes when I am hungry. I'll drop everything to go and eat something, whether low carb is available or not.)

I guess that my point is: I would not even feel good about going hungry to lose all of this dreaded weight. I'd hate to think of being hungry all of the time while maintaining too. To me it feels very counter-productive.

I have "yo-yo"ed quite a bit in my life and the amounts seem to gain interest with each "hungry" diet. I just won't do it anymore. I can't afford to be this weight plus 20 in a few years.

Well, sometimes thats what i do. Lately, i've realized that if i get to the point of being starved, i'll eat anything in site. So i've been trying to make sure i eat full meals, but not overeat at the same time. Fun stuff huh?! Woudln't it be nice if things were easy.

I have not reached goal yet, but in the infamous words of Scarlett O'Hara...

Haha good one, Lisa!!

I actually like going a bit hungry before eating. It's a nice reassuring feeling that my body is working properly. And food tastes sooo good when I'm hungry. But to abstain from eating to the point of feeling deprived and uncomfortable is not something I can sustain for long. I'd rather be a few pounds heavier, in that case. I'd found that my body reallylikes eating just enough. It feels good when I'm light on my feet after eating. I've learned to appreciate that feeling much more now than ever!

I find that after a lifetime of overeating it doesn't hurt to retrain the body to be slightly hungry, and not to always need to feel full. Instead of pigging out at every meal, just having what you know your body needs instead.

I also never allow myself to get excessively hungry. If I get hungry and a mealtime is not coming soon, I have a snack, usually some nuts.

I can really relate to this. I've done "starvation" diets in the past, and it worked temporarily, but as soon as I started eating again, the weight, plus some, would come back.

I LIKE food, and I LIKE to eat. I won't fit into a WOE that requires restriction as a lifestyle. LCing has given me the freedom of being able to actually eat to lose to, and now maintain, a healthy, slender weight....as long as I continue to be able to do that, I know I won't gain it back.

The only time I am hungry, and don't then eat, is early in the morning, if I awaken several hours before breakfast. If I have brekkie before 7 or so, it totally screws up eating for the rest of the day.

I am too new at this maintenance business to have any earth shattering pronouncements, but I really feel that having really followed the pre-maintenance to maintenance part of the plan I am on has helped. I entered pre-maintenance at about 130 pounds and it took me a bit to figure out how much I could add in without losing or gaining. I was lucky in that straying from that has not really been a temptation yet, so I haven't gotten myself in the position (again yet) of having to make an adjustment to lose a few regained pounds.

I'm afraid I would be sorely tempted to skip meals and do other things reminiscent of my previous (failed) attempts to lose weight if I regained, so I'm just skipping that for now .