When I did a post recently on the reasons not to cheat on this diet I mentioned lack of hunger, this is one of the many benefits of a low carb diet. If you try a low carb diet you are almost guaranteed to noticed that your hunger levels drip.
Think about the diets you have done in the past and see if the following sounds familiar.
You start the diet full of enthusiasm thinking that this time you are going to stick with it you are going to lose the weight and you just know that it is going to work. You get off to a great start, sure you feel a little hungry having that small salad for lunch and an apple as a snack but you see results on the scales and are happy that things are going in the right direction. Yippe.
After a month things have gone great you have lost a stone or perhaps even two and you think to yourself that it might be nice to have a slice of cake today, after all you have been so good the rest of the week. The next day you have a tony biscuit, after all it was just a mouthful. The end of the week comes and you have still lost weight so you think fantastic I am still losing weight. The next week comes round and having broken your diet once you see no harm in doing that again and you have a little but more to eat and from there you go to a party and end up eating a slice of pizza or a sausage roll, or five. From there things start to spiral out of control because you get fed up with being hungry, this has happened to me on almost every diet I have ever been on. Your body does NOT LIKE BEING HUNGRY.
So what happens on a low carb diet? Well your body is burning fat as the main energy source so you more or less have a constant supply of energy and as a result your hunger levels are greatly diminished. On a typical diet you are still eating carbs or just not eating enough so your sugar levels vary and you never end up settled, I think basically you are fluctuating being starving and eating carbs so you end up with constant Keto-Flu? Perhaps.
Anyway on a low carb diet you don’t have the same cravings as you don’t rely on carbs for energy, your body doesn’t have that constant up and down swing as your insulin and carb levels go through every changing peaks and troughs.
Here is are a few examples, some regular some not so that I have experiences so far:
If I have bacon and egg for breakfast I won’t need to eat anything else until 2pm (SEVEN HOUR GAP) and if I exercise in the hour before 2pm I am often not even hungry then and I eat because I know it is good for recovery and because I will need to eat before dinner.
On several occasions when I have been really busy at work I have actually gone from having breakfast at 7am through to leaving work at 5:30pm without having lunch and the thing here is that I wasn't starving myself, really I wasn't, I just didn't’ get hungry and forgot to eat my lunch. I didn't find I lost any extra weight doing this but hey it was easy.
Waking up and not feeling hungry. This is great for me. I used to wake up and feel low on energy and really hungry but there are times when work and commitments mean that I have to go for an early morning run (thinking 5:30am) and I don’t want to get up any earlier than that in order to eat. Using this diet I can get up and go for a run and then eat my breakfast and not be hungry or feel drained during the run.
So think about what I have covered in some recent posts, 1 if you cheat you put yourself back and potentially have to go through the transition process and keto flu again. This reminds that you mind find yourself getting hungry in the first couple of weeks, for that see below. And 2) if you stick with the diet you are not likely to be hungry. So now imagine that cake comes across your desk, amazing chocolate cake from a bakery, smells really good and loaded with butter and flavour, do you take it? Where I work and live I have to ask myself that daily and you know what I have not eaten cake, chocolate, sweets, pastries etc in 2015, none. Have I been tempted, to be honest yes but have I ever come close, nope.
Another side effect of lack of hunger or really I should say reduced hunger, is that you cut out snacking and so many extra calories. As I said typically if I have bacon and egg for breakfast I don’t need to eat until 7 hours. That means I can have a relatively small lunch of a chicken drumstick and small salad with cheese and easily make it through until I have dinner at around 7pm. At no point in there am I really hungry and this allows you to fairly easily stick to the diet, but you do need to do just that otherwise it doesn't work. The first few weeks can be a bit harder and it is in this time that it is good to have a bit extra, just make sure that it is fat or protein. So we had egg with breakfast and now just have bacon, used to have 2 pieces of chicken and other bits for lunch and we have now decreased our portions for dinner. In the first few weeks you will likely lose weight through water lose so it is a great time to eat a bit more as your body adjust to the new diet you are giving it. You will notice over time that actually you are not eating a huge number of calories, a post is soon to come on this.
Don’t get me wrong it does take willpower you still have to say no to the comfort food on the bad days. You need to be able to say no to those foods and need to be able to keep going. Just look at the scales.
So there you go, a low carb diet is fairly easy to stick to because if you cheat you lose out massively and if you stick to it you don’t feel hungry. In my eyes a diet that makes you starve yourself is asking for trouble, you are more likely to fail and your metabolism is going to slow to the point that you are going to stop losing weight at a stage before you are happy and so you give up.
Don’t give up, give it a go.
(Sorry if I covered anything twice, I ended up writing this post twice and merging them together due to IT problems when commuting on trains in 2 different countries!)
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