> hunger is just another feeling

Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".

> "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".

Another way to look at it that I've found effective: think of food cravings as an adversarial agent. Your body is blackmailing you: if you give me food, I'll make this craving go away. Trick is, the food you're probably craving -- chips, soda -- don't make the craving go away. They make it worse. Once you notice that you're body doesn't actually make good on its promises to make the cravings stop it's easier to not give in to its demands. And that actually makes the cravings stop. It's no different than dealing with any other bully.

Blackmail indeed, although it may be a different phenomena; consider:

You need a laundry list of nutrients, and if your body is short of any one of them, it'll crave something that might have it. If it has it in insufficient density, it won't care that it needs to also get an extra 500 Kcal along for the ride - it needs to satisfy each item on the list.

I've seen this behavior in both cats and people -- feed them better quality food, and their cravings & weight go down as the full set of nutrients is found in fewer calories.

(Different topic, also very big on intermittent fasting, ensuring that there are frequent periods where the body recovers energy from fat stores)

I've no idea about how cravings work in general, but when I have a craving for two pizzas it's absolutely nothing to do with nutrients. I think you're probably correct for some subset of people/situations, but there's also a whole set of people who are effectively addicted to food and the cravings are almost 0% to do with not having the correct nutrients.

Yes, there is that, although I'd put that in a different class of cravings, almost engineered cravings created/exploited by the food industry, where foods are engineered for taste and repeated consumption, e.g., drinks that make you more thirsty, or overladen salt & sweet flavors that we're just generally programmed to seek because they are rare in nature, but engineer-able.

I noticed one study a long time ago just about flavor. Basically, rats, being fed standard rat chow, with nutrients and calories kept constant, both groups had full access to the food. Group A had one flavor, Group B had six flavors. Group B gained a lot more weight. So, merely restricting flavor choice will reduce your inclination to eat, and conversely, food engineers creating foods with lots of flavors will increase food and eating...

You supposedly craving two pizzas rather than just pizza sounds like nonsense to me. It is far too specific to be a craving, if anything it sounds more like a habit to me. Whenever I eat pizza I share a small one with my wife and I still feel like I overate.

Lately (the past few years) I've been struggling with weight gain I couldn't reverse. I have zero self-control and will snack if food is in close enough proximity. I will also not turn down food, so living in Greece, where great food is available 24/7, is hard on me.

A few weeks ago I decided to try 8/16 IF, which basically means I don't eat past 10 pm (mornings are not a problem, I wake up late and never need breakfast). I'll usually wake up around noon, have my first meal at around 3 or 4, then have a small meal at 9 or just before 10 and that's it for the day.

This has made a very big difference. I have already lost 2 kg without even thinking about it. It helps a lot that I will eat a small meal before I'm hungry (at 9), wheras before I'd wait until 1 am when I was starving and then would eat a large meal.

It has also made compliance a breeze by just not giving me a choice. I'm unable to say "I've eaten a lot today so I shouldn't have this snack too", I would just think "eh I'll have this snack and eat less tomorrow", only for the cycle to repeat the next day. Now, if it's past 10 I don't eat anything, simple.

I definitely recommend this to anyone with compliance problems. I can also 100% relate to your hunger statement, which I learnt the last time I dieted, years ago. Being hungry just means that my body is burning fat, and I can go 30+ hours between meals without really any ill effects.

This can work for people who don't really need a lot of weight loss. Obese people are too deeply conditioned, their brains are wired differently and their bodies probably not responding on the hormonal level the same way as yours. To them it's a bit like suggesting a drug addict to just enjoy the withdrawal crisis. According to this research: "a substantial fraction of obese individuals exhibit an imbalance between an enhanced sensitivity of the reward circuitry to conditioned stimuli linked to energy-dense food and impaired function of the executive control circuitry that weakens inhibitory control over appetitive behaviors" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124340/

I guess. I'm a big dude, and I find it a lot easier to fast than to eat carefully on a more typical schedule. Part of it is definitely just acclimating to the sensation of food cravings (and also learning to distinguish that feeling from "hunger"), but also, if I don't eat regularly, I tend not to crave food in the first place. I can pretty sustainably stay on an 18 hour fast schedule without breaking.

Given that you're a "big dude" (aka overweight?) I assume you are that way by choice given your comments about how you can control your appetite?

I'm a bit of a fat bastard myself and I think what I've come to realise is that for a huge segment of the population eating just works fine and they can adjust diet to tweak this or that relatively easily. For the rest (like me), my relationship with food is broken and stuff like IF or keto or whatever are patches to deal with that underlying brokenness. It always works for a while, but it always go to shit eventually.

I've never been obese, so that may be a good point to bring up. At my biggest, I was 187 at 5'10". So not that big, but I lost 35 pounds and have kept it off for 11 years now, using my own style of intermittent fasting.

Yeah but they hint at the reason

> Certain foods, particularly those rich in sugars and fat, are potent rewards [23] that promote eating (even in the absence of an energetic requirement)

If the subjects are used to carb- and sugar-heavy diet, the hormonal spikes will be very stressful on the body.

They also mention fat-heavy foods, but I suspect they are referring to foods high on both fat+sugars, not a green salad with copious amounts of olive oil.

Anecdotal, but one of the things I noticed when I switched to keto for a while was a drastic change in my relationship to sugar. After cutting out sugar entirely, I noticed that water didn't taste bitter anymore, something I'd always attributed to the hard water supply. Coffee is also wildly different now, and I can drink teas without any sugar, which confuses folks when I eat out. (In my part of Texas, iced sweet tea is so popular it's basically the default beverage.)

It's so strange. My whole life I hadn't given sodas a second thought, but that reward signal is strong. I don't think I ever want to go back.

I like to think of hunger as "the feeling of my body burning fat."

>"You know how a workout 'hurts so good"

This is what I exactly tell people. It's the only way to sustain it.

I can think, I can wait, I can fast.

Wise, Sid

I understand your concern and sympathize with those who starve themselves pathologically. However, the posts that you’re referencing are full of joy in the conquering of an addiction to eating. These people are taking steps that truly enhance quality of life and longevity.

I love (and I mean LOOOOOOVEEEEE) food, eating and feeling full or even overfed. So doing straight multi-day fasting is extremely hard for me, psychologically / motivationally.

However, I'm quite lucky in that I don't really get hungry very soon, if I don't eat. It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.

So I just skip breakfast (almost always) and lunch (when I want to lose weight). Greatest diet hack I've ever discovered (actually, psychological hack).

I'm exactly like you (except I hate the feeling of being overfed). I don't need to eat for 4-5 hours after I wake up, but if I do eat something when I wake up, I'll be hungry very soon afterwards.

I've actually had fights with my dietician who insisted I eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, and wouldn't hear any of my links to published research, or even arguments of "if I'm not hungry, why eat extra calories that will just make me even hungrier?!"

Just skip breakfast and eat the first meal when you're hungry (don't wait until you're starving, or you might overeat). You're literally not missing anything.

I'm never hungry when I wake up, but I think that's mostly just a habit thing. Your body adjusts to expect food on a schedule, if you normally eat on a schedule.

I only eat lunch (at noon) and dinner (at 8pm), pretty much like clockwork. It's very rare that I eat outside of these times during the work week. I don't snack through the work day, and I very seldom snack at home on work evenings. But I still end up eating too much; lunch + dinner is more than I need. I'm thinking about paring it back to just dinner (perhaps 2 days a week starting out), since that's the most important, socially.

I didn't have any problem sticking with my normal 60kg weight until I got over 35 or so, now I'm up to 70kg or so and I can feel my body fat jiggle as I run up or down stairs - an alien feeling to me.

> I didn't have any problem sticking with my normal 60kg weight until I got over 35 or so, now I'm up to 70kg

Yeah, I put on 10 kg as well once I hit 33. I don't know what happened, everything I've read said your metabolism doesn't slow down until much later, but I exercise more and eat less than I used to, yet I put on a bunch of weight that I can't easily lose.

I'd love to figure out why that is, but I can't find anything.

> Yeah, I put on 10 kg as well once I hit 33. I don't know what happened, everything I've read said your metabolism doesn't slow down until much later

I remained trim eating 4000ish calories a day of junk food from about age 15 to age 22 or so. Attempted to crash diet to a strict 1400 calories a day to make my comes-and-goes six-pack a bit more permanent. Kept it up for about two months. Nothing (more or less) happened. Stopped since it wasn't working. Promptly put on ten pounds. Have struggled to keep my weight under control ever since.

Metabolisms are weird.

Jeez, that sucks. Did you go back to 4000 calories when you stopped? 1400 calories don't sound too terrible, I wonder what happened.

IDK, probably. 4k's a conservative estimate for what I figure the average probably was, it may have been higher, not like I was counting those calories—I was a multiple liters of soda, maybe a whole pizza, perhaps some pop tarts or just eight slices of toast for breakfast kinda teenager. Plus probably some french fries and maybe some potato chips or snack crackers (not a small quantity of either) thrown in there. Maybe a snickers. That'd be one day of food. I have no idea what my body was doing with all that extra energy. Or why my blood pressure was dead in the middle of "healthy".

Man, bodies are weird.

It can be more than just hunger. I don’t typically get hungry until 12-1 so historically do not eat in the am. However I noticed how much more irritable I was in the morning, which is always chalked up to not being a morning person. Now I try to eat a tiny bit, the massive AM mood swings have gone away

Here's a hack that seems to work. Reduce the sides of your serving plates.

We have a tendency to finish all the food that's put in front of us. So many times we continue to eat even if we are not hungry. So by reducing the plate size we end up eating less.

I've noticed that the feeling of hunger only persists for a certain amount of time. If I'm preoccupied with something else or I can't eat while I have that feeling then after a while it just goes away. I think sleep is long enough that it gets over that feeling of hunger and that's why I don't feel hungry when I wake up.

> It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.

I think that's actually a pretty normal effect, though perhaps not usually as pronounced as "only get hungry towards the evening". You don't normally get hungry while asleep, so I think one of breakfast's purposes is to kick-start the metabolism, with the side-effect of getting hungry afterwards. Especially if you're on a diet and are sticking to small breakfasts, making that meal counterproductive.

I cut my soda intake from a few a day to nil a day and replaced them with water. Within a few months I had lost 30 lbs. Cutting soda intake makes a big difference. It's not the magic bullet since I've stalled at my current weight but 30 lbs is a big difference given the small change.

I know I'd be at 250lbs if I still drank soda. I used to pound 3-6 mountain dew bottles a day at the computer (that's 12-20oz per bottle). I stopped and water is delicious and satisfying now. I drink small amounts impulsively now, it's like a fixation. Water is the most delicious healthy thing I consume and thank god for that.

Do you drink fancy water, or just tap?

(I replace my fancy beer cravings with fancy water)

Just tap water, but my state/county has good tasting water and I also have a fridge filter. If the tap water tasted awful, I'd drink less water for sure.

I think snacking in general is problematic for people.

I lost 10kgs in the past three months by doing IF. I didn't really need it but now I'm in the normal weight department instead of the slightly overweight. The best thing is that I learned how my body reacts to different occasions of hunger. By experimenting with different types of food and nutritions each time, I almost feel that now I can tune my body. Much like a digital system.

> hunger is just another feeling

Personally, one of the first things I had to learn when starting IF is to be okay with hunger.

Then, I had to learn what was real hunger. Because of IF I don’t get hungry when I wake up in the morning anymore. But after a week on a holiday with breakfast as a norm, it’s as if my body expects food in the morning and gets hungry just because.

Took some time to reconcile what I experienced with what I was taught growing up, that hunger was bad.

Are you ingesting anything besides water during your 7 day fast? Coffee? Tea? Vitamins? I'm interested in doing something like this.

Don't do something like this. A 7 day fast of just water isn't healthy. Your body starts burning more than just your fat. Even when doing something like a highly-restricted-calorie diet such as 960Cal/day you don't want to do for more than 3 days without medical supervision.

While it is true that you do burn some muscle, the increased HGH levels immediately replace it when you refeed. This has been studied significantly. And for me, I don’t give a rip about muscle loss right now. I’m just trying to lose weight.

Your body isn’t stupid. You won’t turn into a ball of fat if you fast regularly. Cavemen and even animals have long feast/famine cycles. Our bodies are designed to store fat and burn it when food is scarce.

Now if folks are already in a healthy weight, then yea, extended fasting isn’t necessarily something you want to do a lot of, but for obese people, we have plenty of fat to keep things rolling as long as other essential nutrients are supplemented via multivitamins.

With fasting you generally want to take to take some salt. Any time you feel dizzy or nauseous that's basically an indicator that you're lacking some electrolytes. I usually take a bit of table salt or sea salt on the edge of a spoon and then wash it down with water.

Warning: Don't take too much salt all at once, because that can trigger a regurgitation..

> Any time you feel dizzy or nauseous that's basically an indicator that you're lacking some electrolytes.

If that were true (it's not), there are all sorts of important "electrolytes" that are not in table salt (Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, etc).

The reason your technique resolves your dizziness is likely a combination of placebo and hydration.

Yeah I could've mentioned those, for a short fast it's not so important. For a longer fast, gotta supplement with those or sip on some bone broth.

I've been doing IF and LCHF for a few months now too. Previously, I only did Keto (no IF) and lost 70 pounds but later put some back on.

The biggest benefit to me from IF isn't the weight loss, it's the increased energy level. I don't know how it works, but I have way more energy, consistently, after routinely fasting.

> I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed.

Wait, what ? Could you expand on that ?

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

> Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

Thanks for sharing that. I have a CPAP and your account is one more point to something I have been suspecting for a while now, especially in the last few days.

For me hunger is a major distraction and doesn't quite help me to stay focused. How does one manage to keep going at work with the hunger?

It comes in waves, so after a while the sensation of hunger just goes away. Learn ride out the waves and you'll be fine.

I find the feeling of hunger goes away quite quickly when you're fasting, provided you haven't eaten anything already.

Things that help: - Drinking water - Drinking Coffee - Gentle exercise (something like a walk)

I've started bringing popcorn to work in the mornings. Kills the cravings and basically empty food.

I keep reading mixed reviews about intermittent fasting. One study says it lowers the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus, because your blood sugar level is pretty low during the fast. The next study says this actually increases the risk, because your blood sugar spikes when you break the fast. This quickly becomes confusing.

For me, I was technically over the threshold for type 2 diabetes before I started IF.

After 3 weeks of IF and healthier eating, that number had already dropped below the threshold to just pre-diabetes. Within 3 months I had reversed that as well. This was all verified by bloodwork.

Now it is true, when you eat, even when not doing IF, insulin spikes. That’s how our bodies process food. During extended fasting, your body will become more sensitive to insulin so it is important that when you eat again, not to stuff yourself with high carb foods that will only exacerbate that.

Now how much you’d have to eat to do hurt yourself, I don’t know, but I guarantee the first time you break a fast with just a bit too many carbs you will feel it. The first time was enough for me!

Thanks for sharing. How do you manage the 48 hour and 7 day fast ? I presume you only consume water and nothing else. I skip breakfast always and can skip lunch and breakfast on alternate days. Are there any trick's to learn to fast for more than 20 hours while being mentally active like coding ?

I know I'm a little late here, but intermittent fasting is actually a pretty trendy thing in the valley right now because of increased mental clarity.

I didn't start it for the mental side effects, but I haven't noticed any strong negatives during my day job. I get 4-6 hours of meaningful work done and then my brain is about finished like most days.

Many people who do IF actually suggest working/playing to keep your mind off the hunger as it's easier to ignore when you're busy.

>>>I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed

I would like to hear more details on this. Being a CPAP machine user I have never heard of this (lungs failing) before.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admitently irrational fear of them.

CPAP just splints the airway open, but BiPAP actually has an inhale/exhale cycle, so maybe they use it for people who have trouble breathing on their own?

Could you give more details on how the machine caused lung failure? I am thinking of getting a CPAP for my family. Would like to do more research on it.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

Do get CPAP if your sleep study says you need one. It's a complete game changer, depending on the severity of your OSA.

Did you cut out alcohol as well?

I’ve noticed it’s much harder to do in the summer as that cold beer at the end of a hot day is ever so enjoyable.

I did cut alcohol but not because I wanted to. Doctor required it because of meds I started taking for high cholesterol. Once I get off the meds I’ll probably drink again. I’ve only ever been a social drinker though and rarely at that. Maybe 1-2 beers a month.

Really good water, or occasionally a cold glass of milk. I stopped drinking sodas a very long time ago and I never miss it. I think decreasing my sugar intake has increased my appreciation for food in general.

Milk can really spike your blood sugar levels as well, so I would be careful. Go for the whole fat type of milk rather than the skim milk or whatever.

Milk is something like 5% low-GI sugars (lactose and galactose), so you're going to have to drink a lot of it to spike your blood glucose.

If you really do want to drink that much milk, and are worried about blood sugar, you should try lactose-free milk - it's just milk that has the enzyme lactase added to it, which breaks down the lactose to galactose, and also results in a bit less sugar overall (to something like 3.5%). I can't tell the difference, taste wise.

Interesting, I didn't know that about lactose-free milk. Thanks, I'll give it a try.

What's wrong with skim milk? Is something added to replace the fat that was removed.

I expect it’s that skim has the same amount of lactose sugar. But, with less fat you’ll likely drink more of it before being satisfied.

Everyone should try lactose-free milk just once just to see how very sweet it is. It has the same sugar content as regular milk, but regular milk’s lactose is a form of sugar that we don’t taste as strongly.

Lactose free milk does tend to have a bit less sugar overall than regular milk - something like 3.5% sugars instead of 5%.

I don't personally notice lactose-free milk as being any sweeter than regular, and it doesn't look like galactose is any sweeter than lactose?

I'm curious to know what your starting weight was and what is your goal weight is, if it's not too personal.

I started at 310 pounds any my current goal is 200 by Christmas. I’m currently at 237 and I started this in February of this year!

Feel free ask any more questions if you want. If this is too open of a forum for you, my DMs are open @DaronSpence on twitter.

I did it for a little over a month and gained a smidge. Felt really hungry half the day too. YMMV.

Well done, 75 lbs (or 5 stone, 5 pounds in real money) is incredible.

Why would you give a weight in a combination of imperial AND metric units?!

If the purpose of using imperial units is to make it as confusing as possible, then this is probably a slight improvement.

Good point, lol. Unfortunately for me I need convert to stones to get a feel for weight

"UK people" use SI units, it's mostly the old who use imperial.

34 kilograms

When do you think you'll reach your goals, and how will you be feeling a year after you reach them?

My current goal is to weigh 200 pounds by Christmas. So far I’m on track which would be 110 pounds in about 10.5 months.

After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The “healthy” range for my height is a bit lower than 200 but I imagine I’ll cut back on the intensity and focus on reinforcing new habits that I’m starting to form.

Already I’m making better food choices which is a huge first step but my portion control is not great. My drastically cut eating schedule let’s my eat a ton in a short period but I want to stop doing that eventually.

It’s a daily grind though; hard to deal with as a software developer that is used to brute forcing any problem I have.

Overall though, I’m excited for the future and happy I’ve learned this lesson while I’m still young and before I have kids.