Hi all,

I just passed the one month point and have lost +/- 13 lbs. Having fewer cravings than before, although I definitely need to diversify my diet. I'm a long way from goal weight (At 203, goal of 154), but I might make Atkins phase 2 the permanent weight loss diet instead of staying in induction for so much longer (I'm currently at 15-20 grams of carbs per day.) and accept the slower weight loss. That's the good news.

The problem is that I'm finding myself getting hungry between meals, although I try to eat three squares per day. After reading Fung, I'm trying to eliminate snacking to keep my insulin in check, but it's hard to eat enough at every meal to keep me full. Something has to break, so I'll probably add in a snack (nuts, berries, etc.), but I'm curious as to what others do.

My concern is that I lost the first 20-25% of my goal loss so fast that it could be because I'm not taking in enough calories and losing the old-fashioned way, i.e., starve yourself and hope for the best, rather than through ketosis. My breakfasts and lunches are 400-500 calories (breakfast of greek yogurt and eggs, lunch of big salad with chicken) and my dinners are more traditional dinners (without the carbs; a lot of meats, eggs and cheese, etc.).

Anyway, I'm curious as to what people do when dealing with between meals munchies, or if you even get them.

Mike

I find that the higher the fat content of a meal, the less hunger I have. When I'm in ketosis, I have no hunger. In the morning I have my coffee, sometimes with HWC, sometimes not. When I get hungry, I have a HF LC meal. Nothing fancy, usually just protein and fat with limited or no veg. That holds me until much later in the day. If I'm fasting, I'll just have broth and water until the next day's coffee. Otherwise I'll have a small meal late in the day.

In ketosis (for me) it's all between the ears.

You'll grow tired of hearing this: if you are hungry; eat (low carb), if you are not hungry; don't eat (low or high carb)

Find a way that is sustainable for now. You may change in the future, in fact, I guarantee that you'll change in the future. This is our nature; change.

This suggestion may sound nuts (no pun intended), but try having your Greek yogurt later in the day as a snack mixed in with your nuts and/or berries. Have your breakfast eggs with something lower carb/higher fat like avocado, bacon, sausage, fatty fish or a generous slab of butter or coconut oil. I think that might help you stay satisfied longer.

One or two low-carb snacks a day should be fine. I believe in eating if you're hungry. The trick is finding low-carb foods that satisfy you in small amounts and don't trigger cravings or stalls/weight gain. It's trial and error, but over time you can compile a list of things and keep them on hand.

BTW, I've been doing Atkins Phase II for six months now and have had great success with it. I feel like it's a WOE I can stick with for life. I've never read or followed Fung, but I do incorporate what technically could be considered intermittent fasting into my eating plan. I stop eating around 8 p.m. and don't have my first meal till around noon the following day.

Hope this helps some. Any more questions, just ask. Good luck!

Hi Mike,

I see a few things right off the bat-

1. If you are eating Greek yogurt, you are already in phase 2, not induction. But that is of no concern. You don't have to stay in induction to lose weight, and it isn't encouraged for you to do so. It's purpose is to kick you into ketosis and stop the cravings.

2. You don't lose weight "through ketosis." It is that ketosis reduces appetite and reduces insulin levels.

3. If you don't mind sharing, how old and how active are you? You might need more calories. In particular, your breakfast and lunch might need more fat.

4. Are you losing weight? If so, great job. Stick to it!

5. I don't eat breakfast. I have lunch, snack, dinner, snack.
I like to graze and find large meals don't sit well.
But I do like a window from 8-9pm until 11-noon where I'm "fasted."
most people on this forum find that snacking makes them eat MORE throughout the day. I'm the opposite. We are all unique snowflakes, so you have to experiment on your own

I just finished posting my message and found Robin's right below it. We said essentially the same things, but I think she summarized it better. Yes! Also, what Thud and bluesinger said.

1. Eat when you're hungry; stop when you're full.

2. Eat within a 8-9 hour window each day; fast overnight 15-16 hours. Meal-snack-meal-snack works fine if that suits you better, or any pattern that does suit you within your 8-9 hour eating window. You can mix it up if you like. Doesn't have to be the same thing every day.

3. Incorporate a little more fat into your meals if you feel unsatisfied.

Also, one more thing - a noncaloric, low-carb beverage makes a great snack and is more filling than it looks.

Finally, to answer your original question more directly: I keep olives, baby dills/gherkins, canned fatty fish, sauerkraut, canned green beans, and small or cut-up raw salad vegetables for quick snacking. When I'm ambitious, I cook up batches of boiled eggs and baked seasoned chicken parts - wings, thighs, drumsticks. These are my go-tos. You'll find yours.

A little hunger between meals isn't the end of the world, at least for a few days. You might find that if you eat less often, you'll get hungry less often--and if you need to, there's a good chance that you'll have an increased appetite at mealtimes. Eating when you have a craving is liable to teach the system to crave.

When they feed rodents snacks, like oreos or potato chips, the animals eat less of their regular chow, save their appetite for the snacks. I know how they feel.

Thank you all! I'm going to take some of your suggestions (including moving to a mid-morning snack), but the general consensus seems to be "if you're hungry, eat something." Makes sense. As the old saying goes, you can't please all of the doctors all of the time.

My "fasting period"
tends to be 13-14 hours overnight, with 10-11 hours in the middle of the day (8 am to 7 pm) for eating. Seems to work for me.



Hi Robin,

Yup, already moved into 2. It makes me happier and seems more sustainable. Berries are a big key for me.

I'm 45 and not active enough. I try to walk 1-2 miles per day, about 3 MPH. Will have to figure out something else when the weather changes.

I am losing weight for now. Of course, the first few pounds are always the easiest, but I guess there's no use making too many changes if it already works.

Mike

In my former life (before low carb) snacking was a way of life. Everything seemed to around food. If I wasn't eating I was either hungry, craving sweets, or asleep. I snacked all the time. After going low carb in 2014 I still had the mindset that I needed pop something in my mouth on a regular basis throughout the day so that I wouldn't get hungry. I didn't want to run out of willpower and fall off the wagon.

As you can see from my stats, I was very, very large. Lowering my carbs to below 40 (net) worked to reduce my appetite significantly, even with several low carb snacks throughout the day - right up to bedtime. Eventually my rate weight loss started to slow down. I'd lost 100 pounds but still had a long way to go. I didn't want to stall out, so that is when I added periodic intermittent fasts to my diet (about 9 months in). IFs showed me that my fear of getting hungry was unfounded. I could go long periods of time without eating. 18 hour and later 23 hour fasts were not that hard to do. I also realized that my snacking was adding a lot of calories to my day and I was doing it more out of habit than anything else. So I worked on reducing and then eliminating the between meal snacks. It took some work. I started with not eating after 8pm, then later not eating after dinner. That got me a 12 hour IF everyday. Soon after that I was eating 3 meals a day with no snacking (most days, anyway). I continued to lose weight at an acceptable clip all the way down to my goal weight and beyond.

A little over a year ago I considered myself at goal and in maintenance mode (250 pounds lost). I stayed low carb, but I did add back a few higher carb 'real foods' to my OP food list and I increased my daily carb limit to around 45 net. Snacking crept back into my WOE as well. Well, today I am 23 pounds heaver than I was at my lowest weight. The revised LC WOE was not sufficient to maintain my weight. I started eating too much and wasn't tracking my carbs as well as I should have (often exceeding my 45 net limit). So maintenance is over. I am dialing back on the carbs and working to eliminate snacking again. I'm back into weight loss mode. Hopefully I'll come up with a better plan for maintenance the next time around.

The moral of the story here... we have to figure out what works and does not work for us - tweaking our diet accordingly. It helps to be consistent and brutally honest with ourselves. I don't eat regular bread, pasta, white potatoes, cake or candy -- ever. I know that I cannot have those things in my diet and stay lean. This past year has shown me that some LC foods that I do eat are problematic. I'm working on the self-honesty thing with these foods. The simple truth is that if I eat the right foods and keep my carbs within limits then I will maintain my losses. If I don't, I won't maintain or lose weight. In the end, if we find out how we need to eat and do it, then we will all reach our goals and maintain the loss.

I wish you the best. P.S.

Stay active on this forum. Changing how you eat is a tough thing to do. The support that you get here really does help you stay accountable.

Greek yogurt and any dairy product except a bit of butter/ghee make me hungry, cause cravings and make my sinuses stuffy, so I don't eat them anymore. You should try going without to see if dairy is insulinogenic for you. Dairy, grains & legumes all stoke my hunger & cravings for more even though I stay under 20g carbs. But my hunger disappears when I avoid them even though I tend to eat less food (all real foods with plenty of fat).

I don't usually snack or need to snack because my two HFLC meals within a 6-8 hr window keep me full. But if I need a top up, it is usually ~20g of macadamia nuts for desert.

FWIW, I adore Greek yogurt but it does nothing really to satiate me. Also, in the beginning, I could not make it through a day without at least three snacks in addition to meals(mid-morning, mid-afternoon, evening). But these days I can easily fast 18-22 without even thinking about it.

I eat 3 meals a day - no snacks - and occasionally fast from 18-24 hours. When I first started, I found I could literally eat all day long if I allowed myself too. I'm actually no hungrier now at 3 meals than I was when I was snacking constantly...it was just the mental gratification of filling my pie hole all day that kept me eating, I think....mental hunger perhaps?

I've discovered two things that help with my hunger greatly over time. One...I eat red meat with my first meal of the day. Whether I'm fasting and this meal is at 5 p.m. or I'm eating breakfast that day...hamburger/roast/steak helps me feel full the remainder of that day. I think the higher protein load first thing is what does this. Fat doesn't have much effect on my hunger unfortunately...so eating a lb of bacon for breakfast doesn't do it for me (or adding extra fat or butter)...which leads to:

Second, I had to dump dairy. Even butter. I found I couldn't lose weight when I ate it, and it was far too easy for me to overeat as well. I'm fairly certain that was the casein's addictive nature combined with my insulin response when I ate it. That insulin response meant the weight stayed on and I felt hungrier as well. Again, could have been in my head.

This of course, is all intensely personal to me. You will need to figure out what works for you, as others have stated

Again, thanks all. If nothing else, having to report in and stay active on the forum, as khrussva noted, will keep me honest. I've also heard very mixed reviews on dairy, but I'm doing okay for now (Of course, I'm in my first month, so just about anything will work now.). If I plateau earlier than I like, I'll cut back (which is too bad, since I happen to like both Greek yogurt and cheese).

I'll do some experimenting. I plan on being around for a while!

Mike

Stuffed green olives: my goto snack or BBQ pork skins. Usually it's the salt I crave like a cow to the salt block