'Hungry' all the time? Some days are like that!

A big spoon full of peanut butter works well for me . I've found that the low carb peanut butter only has a couple of carbs less than regular peanut butter and costs way more. I try to keep it at a minimum, but it will fill you up for awhile anyway.

Peanut butter works, even if I don't trust myself with a jar, but make my peanut butter by chewing up shelled nuts - a couple at a time. For me, that's as good as it gets. Fresh!

Hi Zer!

I definitely have issues with false hunger. I spent so long being properly physically hunger due to undiagnosed insulin resistance that now I overeat as compensation. I have an irrational fear of hunger. I have started drinking a lot of water recently and found that helps.

I have finally figured out how this blog works so I'll be back!!!

Far as I can tell, I always benefit from focusing on water intake that facilitates all body functions and is even said to kick metabolism up a notch. I'll drink to THAT! (glug)

Looks as if I'm willing to sit with my 'hunger' tonight - or is it my inertia winning out over my impulse to give in to 'hunger'?

Here's some of what I've been posting as I seek a way to stall my impulse to do some serious damage to a good run of LC weight loss in the past few days. Three late-night posts, as I write to keep myself busy, to keep from eating.

10pm...and I got over my fear, got past my 'hunger'
Funny how sometimes just writing things out resolves what seems to be 'hunger' and dulls the urge to do something destructive - like eat as a pastime.

Am I hungry? I don't think so. I maybe DO need some protein. Might do a tin of sardines, just to make sure my cells have some nourishment. Might also do a hot slosh, but I think that 500calories will mess up my chances of a good loss on the scales for my midweek peek, where I am truly hoping to see 415 <g>.

So what if I am hungry, truly deserving of some food, some protein. Can I sit with the feeling, drink a bit of water, let myself feel hungry until the feeling passes? Thin people do that all the time, observe hunger as a feeling that will pass with time. It's only fat folks who regard 'hunger' as a 4-alarm urgency, a call to avoid famine and starvation that might set in if food is not stuffed into a mouth. What gives? I can sit and feel what might be 'hunger', as I sip water and explore the possibility that a handful of pumpkin seeds or freeze-dried crans (they crunch at first, then are chewy and bitter - yum!) is just as good as a bellyfull of stale donuts. Yeah, I know. They are still on the back of my mind. I'm thinking I might go scramble an egg or two, but I know too well that once I'm in the kitchen, I'll eat stale baked goods as if it is going out of style. I can stuff a donut in while an egg is cooking. Oh, damn!

But inertia is working on my side. I'm more likely to lie here typing than to rise and struggle to walk to the kitchen. Yay for inertia. My friend at night!

- - - 03-25-2008, 09:18 PM - - -
Sending you positive energy...as I struggle with my own demons!
... pray for me as I battle my own demons and fight the urge to give in to carbs calling to me, enticing me to betray my own best interests, to give in, to give up on myself. I hate carbs!
- - - - -
Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508/416.8/199 [just to pinpoint current weight and current goal of weighing in at 415 tomorrow, a hope that I can destroy by eating mindlessly tonight...]

9pm and all is well...so far...
Made it past a box of stale donuts today, midday, and am struggling to avoid going back to the kitchen today. I know those are awful carbs and not worth sacrificing my LC self on the altar of wasteful indulgence. These are not food that I'd offer to a homeless person, so why am I considering eating them? Why? How I wish I understood what it is that motivates me to shovel empty carbs into myself as if it was a special 'reward' or a delicacy. It's awful food. Stale.

But I am absolutely sure that I'd eat one or all (4 or 5) of them if I drift back to proximity, having twice opened the box to 'check out the contents' when I was passing by earlier today. By the grace of god, I did not do more than poke at what I knew to be rigid dried cake covered in god-awful tasteless frosting. Agh! Hopefully they will be eaten or disposed of when next I pass that counter. If I can, that will be at least 12hrs from now, long after I've done what I can to get myself nourished tonight - maybe with a hot slosh of WPP+cacao+VCO - and a similarly nourishing hot slosh to start off my Wed morn (after my midweek sneak-peek to weigh myself - with a slight chance of seeing 415 or so on my talking scales). Oh, I hope I can distract myself and avoid passing that way tonight. I know 40g of protein in a hot slosh will satisfy me, although I'd like to pass up the 500calories if I can get by with a drink of water and a handful of pumpkin seeds - the ones with husks intact that seem mostly fiber as I chew their woody papery hulls. Lots of zinc too!

Pray for me, please, if you pass this way and can feel how I'm struggling.

Just posted this for someone who reports she is unable to stop eating/grazing all day long, to her distress. She does not 'do' breakfast.... aha, you say! Regardless of what else my LC day's menu might be, each successful LC day starts off with 40g of protein in a hot slosh! This is how I arrived at this plan, a plan that I just posted for someone who cannot face breakfast and who MAY consider a hot slosh as a way of managing her LC life better. Or not. Works for me! Isn't that all we can do, share what works for us?

Breakfast...breaking a night's fast...so important to nourish cells!

Not too long ago, I used to wake up dreaming of what to scramble/fry for a big meal reminiscent of the way my dad cooked his own breakfast that I'd share if I got up and hung around looking hungry as he fried bacon and cut raw potatoes into the bacon grease and then fried up some eggs to top the whole mountain of food heaped on his plate. Yes, I ate that way, in memory of early mornings with a father I did not really know well as I wanted to. I ate mountains of food sizzled up first thing. Got biscuits when I ate breakfast out. I loved breakfast. Used to eat a side of buttery grits when I could get grits. Gawd, how I adore grits. Used to.

Then I got started dieting and found the idea of food first thing was revolting.

So I rarely ate before midday. And I ate too much food at one sitting. Or I ate office carbs in lieu of breakfast and then ate too much food at lunch, more food as I grazed office carbs, more food on the way home from work. Ghastly, huh?

What I started doing lately - as I grew to thinking of food as fuel for my cells - was to stir up a hot slosh for 40g of protein first thing in the morning. It fills me up and seems to give me a feeling of COMPETENCE that surprises me and delights me. How great to feel COMPETENT - and just by stirring up a bit of WPP in hot water. WPP? Whey Protein Powder from ALGittleman is what got me started using WPP, as I read up on how a body works and why a body might not be as functional as nature intends a body to be. ALGittleman is a nutritionist who follows Atkins with some tweaks for health reasons.

The idea of a cold shake in the morning leaves me cold, as does the idea of listening to a blender noise. All the charm of hurling myself into a cold shower or a cold stream. None!

So my morning kick-off is a hot slosh - 2 scoops of vanilla WPP+espresso crystals+cacao (raw cacao powder from MountainRoseHerbs.com) all stirred up with HOT water that is then melting a couple of Tbs of VCO (Virgin Coconut Oil) for all the great stuff that VCO offers, plus the incredible satisfaction that oil offers. This makes 16oz of hot slosh that keeps my motor purring all morning.

Maybe you will want to try this, to see if it helps you get past ravenous?
- - - - -
Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508/416.2/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8)
- - - - -

Hunger surge...overwhelming...
Was hit by a wild-eyed hunger surge Thurs(4/17) about 7pm as I was reading a recipe for LC Potsticker Patties. "Could have eaten the paint off the walls" describes it perfectly! I'm deliberately avoiding sitting for a meal, trying to let my body find its way down to THREEdom instead of bouncing around as I've been doing for so long. I just had to come back to tell you that your turn of phrase fits exactly that hunger surge that hits like a tsunami - BAM! - and I was glad to have sardines at hand. I tore off one lid and snarfled those little fishies fast and then did a 2d tin of sardines, which is unusual for me.

Actually I could have waited 20mins to let the first fishies register. I was satisfied by the time I had mooshed up the fishies in the 2d can, but I ate them anyway just because the tin was open. Sprinkled Mrs.Dash Lemon Pepper on those fish, for a different flavor. This 2d tin was oddly empty, with just 3 wee fishies swimming in quite a lot of olive oil. Curiously packed. Usually the tins are well filled with fillets that I break up to sop up the olive oil. This one was so oily that the fish fillets did not sop up the oil when I mooshed them up.

Anyway, I loaded up on sardines and got by all right. Had I gone to the kitchen area, who knows how many carbs I'd have inhaled in my rush to fill an appetite that was surging, sweeping away all reason like a tsunami laying waste to all my resolve to eat mindfully and to avoid carby binges!

Sardines saved me! I do love my wee fishies. Sardines are so fast to 'fix' - emergency rations!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/413.4/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
Start Date: 432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8)

See "Fooling My Feast Beast" - with sneaky snax disguised as illicit (ch)eats - at Fooling My Feast Beast

Can't GET no satisfaction...says Mick Jagger, rocking on and on and on and on...and it's sometimes like that for me, too.

Add fat to protein to hit more satisfaction points. That's the virtue of mayo/oil or sour cream, that it ups the fat and the satisfaction quotient on almost any meal. That is what I wrote when I read this from a LCFriend in crisis: A few nuts might help you build satisfaction, as the oil in pecans is absolutely evident. I try to keep pecan halves in the freezer. A few halves, chewed slowly, savoring the oil that is 2d only to macadamias (I don't like the texture of macadamias, so pecans are my first choice for an oily nut), really helps me overcome the impulse to stuff stuff stuff me to fill that empty cavern. I swear, inside me, sometimes, there are cavernous voids that make Carlsbad Caverns miniscule in comparison. You are definitely NOT alone in this feeling that what you've eaten got lost on its way to your tummy. Happens!

I've also read that there is satisfaction in having five flavors, five textures, five colors on a single plate. The theory is described as a Japanese attitude toward eating and food preparation. Cannot just now call up the name for this, but if you think back to foods that satisfy, perhaps you can affirm that mixed tastes and textures are part of a dish that you particularly enjoy. A bit of sweet pickle and a bit of hot pepper offset each other and wake up the tastebuds - and the result is satisfaction.

Can't GET no satisfaction? Might be had, with a bit of variation in taste and texture and color. Perhaps a slice of crisp bacon on your burger or using bleu cheese instead of a bland cheese? Mustard adds bite, as does onion.

Yum, I'm sooooo in the mood for a juicy burger with a slab of onion on it!

Ah, found what I was alluding to above: Ah...here's a part that applies to us at LCFriends: Here's to a more colorful dining experience - and to more satisfaction in dining - for all of us. Still hungry? I am!

My toddler self was always hungry...as kids are wont to be as they grow in the early years. That's the thought that comes to mind as a LCFriend congratulates me on losing 30# in 3mos of relatively faithful LC eating with data reported by my new LC tool, a talking scale! Interesting idea. Maybe I lost that toddler who set my course for life by deciding that food was a friend to fill the aching emptiness that my toddler self felt in a home that had no comfort to offer. Stuffing me to fill the empty ache started as soon as I could walk and sneak food. I started stealing bread from a kitchen that was off limits to a hungry kid. We were not poor. There was food and liquor and all sorts of stuff - just nothing for a hungry child to eat at will. Food was withheld, used for power. Kitchen was off limits to a child looking for a snack. So I became a thief.

I ate slices of bread smuggled to my bed. First I'd eat the crusts as if I was so poor that I had only crusts to eat, then I'd eat the soft white middle of a too-sweet Pepperidge Farm bread - like cake - and pretend I was a princess. I'd wake in a bed full of crumbs that betrayed me to the wicked stepmother. Not actually a real step-m, just a woman trapped in a loveless union with a child who needed what she did not have enough of to share with anyone. So I ate. Maybe that's the toddler I am losing as I drop weight and seek to find a body that I can live in at 64.

My hinky hip? Aches something awful.
Hurts 24/7, denies me sleep. Cannot lie flat
for long as the knot in my groin spasms
and forces me to sit up in bed to ease
the pain - so I doze with head on a pillow
held on my thighs, with arms locked to hold
the pillow that my head kind of rests on.
This has been my situation since Aug.2006.

Cannot imagine how bad it would be
had I not taken off 100# since 9/9/06
when my top recorded weight was 508.7#.

I'm still in bed 24/7, stretching as a modified Pilates program, listening to my hip give soft pops that SEEM to improve alignment when I get up and move to and from the loo or to and from my sink to replenish my water bottles.

The walk to the kitchen/laundry area is longer and more challenging, leaves me shaking and sweating. Probably burns off some calories - YAY! - as well.

The walk to my car is longer, but at least I can sit in my car as I drive to do errands. Got to tote trash to the dumpster, pick up mail. Maybe mañana.

Can I do this for 9mos? I think I can. If I can manage that, I might be down another 100# and under 300# in time for my new driver's license pic at 65. That's a goal worth shooting for! Imagine, daring to dream of weighing 299 while I am still struggling to reach 399. That's the most optimistic I've dared to dream for a very long time. Thanks to all who support me in dreaming!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/402.4/199
WOE: Atkins+ALGittleman
432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8) 402.4(5/8)
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WoooooHOOOOooooooohoooooohooooo!!!! Ok! With your sassy self!!! If you make it, we want to see you license picture posted! Just the picture mind you...Cuz we know it'll be a good one!

(Oops, shoulda said WHEN you make it...) I have faith!

Hungry or not, I'm committing to eating up to BMR:2423 (as in calories!) daily, so I fully expect to bounce _UP_ before I see THREEdom. In reading various threads about BMR, I can see that I am sending my metabolism a mixed message when I eat too little and shortchange myself on calories my body needs to accomplish basic function at a cellular level. Got to eat MORE than I am eating. Pushing to BMR:2423!

Want a tasty cracker to nibble on? Got a recipe from a LC friend who is maintaining her trim 5ft frame by being creative with LC snacks she nibbles on all day long: Yes, this lady makes her own crackers. She's got LC down to an efficient daily series of snacks as she makes carby meals for a working DH who likes all the stuff that made us fat in the first place. He's not fat. She's lost a lot of weight and plans on staying trim, so she eats LC all day long, no matter what! She's barely 5ft tall, so it's not easy to keep the weight off. Love hearing how she sets up her fridge for fast-food that is all LC. She snacks all day long on delicious minute muffins and vegies dipped into yoghurt-salsa dip. And she's a go-go gal, on the move, enjoying an active retirement in Vegas!

Hungry all the time? Snack on a superfood: Pumpkin seeds! I munch on a mixture of spicy p'kin seeds with hulls, no-hull pepitas that are roasted, round, crunchy, and an organic p'kin seed that is flat, green, chewy. Nice mixture, as one never knows what texture or taste I'll get as I pick a seed from the mixture. Rich in all sorts of nutrients: Chewy, too! More nutritional info here

Someone asks if anybody likes milk. Do I like milk? Yep! Even more than Cheetos, I crave milk - great gulps of cow juice, quarts at a time. I've retired my 32oz tumbler that I used to carry around the house with me as I sipped and slurped milk flavored with coffee. All day long, I drank milk. Some days milk was all I wanted, all I needed, all I ate. I'd chug milk in the car after shopping, as if I could not wait to get home for a glass of milk. Can you say A-D-D-I-C-T-I-O-N? I sure can! I lost 20% of my 500# body weight just by giving up milk for more than a year. Stopped it one Easter and just did not drink milk until after Easter a year later. Lost a lot of wicked edema that made my feet painful little pillows with tiny toes poking out of folds of pillowy puffy white shapeless feet. As the edema dissipated, I lost shapeless 'ankles' that ballooned over socks in massive stumpy legs. Now have palpable shinbones and anklebones as well as feet that look like feet instead of like puffy white pillows under wider taut legs so swollen that they ached. Lost all of that by quitting milk for a year. 100# of weight in fluid that I gather was held by cells as I fed them a milk diet, with a few carbs from crinkly bags and boxes of nutritionally empty carbs. That's how I see my life when I was a slave to cow juice. I *did* about a gallon a day on my truly decadent days. Probably averaged a half-gallon a day over all.

Do I sometimes crave milk? You bet I do! It's still at the top of my hit list! Whole milk. Buttermilk. Yummers! Skim milk? Bleagh! Only in a pinch. I've got a butterfat craving that makes skim milk seem like a sad substitute for full-fat milk. Oh, yes, I am still addicted to milk. I open the fridge and just gaze at the gallons sitting there. Most days, that suffices. Just remembering. Ah, milk!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/401.2/199
WOE: Atkins+ALG; BMR:2423cals; 182gProtein; 128ozWater
432.4(2/8); 426.2(3/8); 413.2(4/8) 402.4(5/8)
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On a thread discussing faux food sold as LC staples, we are thrashing out the value of LC creations like Cleo's Oopsies and Melle's Cheatos - foods made of nutritious protein (eggwhites) that is not the faux food that bars/shakes and other commercial low(er)-carb foods - used to excess - seem to be. Lower carb foods are all right as an occasional food, not a staple food, for a healthy LC plan. So the exchange thrashes on. This post by Rory struck me as a brilliant summary of what I hope to achieve at journey's end: Not only a lighter weight body, but a brain that thinks like a thin person thinks! Yes! I read somewhere that thin people do not regard 'hunger' as an urgent summons to eat. Some thin people regard 'hunger' as a transient and not terribly significant feeling. Can you imagine that? What a perspective! I am trying sometimes to sit with my 'hunger' and to regard it as a feeling that is transient, rather than as an alarm that I must find food to quench/quell that feeling. Nicely sums up what my goals are - not just to lose the weight, but to lose the thinking that created the excess weight that weighs me down in body and spirit. Thanks, Rory, for your glorious avatar and for this excellent summary of what my own LC journey hopes to achieve. Bless you!
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Stats: 5'10"; 64; 508.7/402.2/199
WOE: Atkins+ALG; BMR:2423cals; 182gProtein; 128ozWater
432.4(2/8) 426.2(3/8) 413.2(4/8) 402.2(6/8)
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432.4#(2/8/08)... [color=fuchsia]Feb -5#[/color] ... [color=aqua]March -13# [/color] ... [color=purple]April -5.8#[/color] ... [color=blue]May -6#[/color]
[color=red]June:[/color] 402.8(6/1) 401.2(6/2) 401.6(6/7) 402.2(6/8) 401.8(6/14) 402.2(6/21)
Interim goals: [color=gray]432.4 430 420 410[/color] 399 390 380 370 360 350 340 330 320
310 [color=fuchsia]299(2/5/09)[/color] 290 280 270 260 250 240 230 220 210 199