Is endless hunger a life-long struggle?

[CathyA]

I have pretty much been hungry my entire life. I know nature versus nurture can be very confusing. Seems like I can be uncomfortably full, and still be excruciatingly hungry.

I think I've mentioned this before, but my mother used to tell me that when I was an infant, she would only feed me every 3-4 hours. If I cried all the time up to that, then tough, I just had to wait.
I can only shake my head at that notion. So I do wonder if my brain was wired to think that every meal I have might be my last.

A couple months ago, I began to have constant benign PVCs........which was a great impetus for me to try to eat less.....thinking that maybe it was my weight, my salt consumption, some food intolerance, etc. I have been very good about not eating in-between meals and trying not to eat until my stomach is totally full.

It was going very well. curious how I was eating so much less, but didn't lose much weight.

The PVCs are less, but my appetite is coming back. Partially because it's Fall and I have a strong "eat enough to make it through hibernation" setting in my brain. haha

Anyhow........every time I go to the store, I stand in front of the ice cream and think and think. I stand in front of the chips and think and think. I stand in front of the coke and think and think. So far, I've made it out alive. haha
What I mean is......I go home without those things. And if I do get something like ice cream for a weekend desert, it's in very small quantities that only last the weekend for DH and me. I guess I thought I would stop craving this stuff after awhile, but it continues to be a struggle.

I guess I should accept that it will always be a struggle? Sometimes I think a food addiction is more difficult than other types, because you HAVE to eat at least 2-3 times a day. I don't think an alcoholic or drug addict would do very well if they were required (to survive), to have those substances every day......but stay controlled.

I just get tired of the struggle.

I do eat healthily. I eat tons of veggies, nuts, some fish, etc. I really try to limit carbs and dairy.

I guess I just need to accept it. But it wears me out.

[Simplemind]

After a vacation last May, coming home and feeling terrible, my husband and I started to eat keto (mostly). The first couple of weeks were a bit rough and then things leveled out. What was really interesting was the loss of food obsession. We kept things very simple and don't try to duplicate what we were eating before in a keto way. We stuck mostly with a grilled protein and non-starchy veggies. We felt full with breakfast and dinner. Since we kept our eating simple it made our shopping simple and we weren't thinking about food boredom and what was new and interesting. We began to eat to live (most of the time) instead of living to eat. We lost weight and started feeling better in other ways.
We just went on another vacation of 19 days and we started pretty well but by the end had totally fallen off the wagon. We also felt terrible when we came home and are going back to low carb/no sugar. It was a great way to pound home how bad sugar is, at least to me. When I started adding it back in with a nibble here and a nibble there, I was feeling hungry all the time.

[frugal-one]

What is PVC?

[JaneV2.0]

Yeah--eating keto, LCHF, or intermittently (interspersed with fasting) pretty much knocks down any inappropriate hunger--which generally results from roller coaster blood sugar/insulin.

[CathyA]

What is PVC?

Premature ventricular contractions.......a type of irregular heartbeats.

[SteveinMN]

For me, eating low-carb-high-fat/keto has done a great job of taking away the "I have to eat NOW" sensations I used to get when my blood glucose dropped from its usual high level. I still can be hungry, but if the occasion to eat does not present itself, it's not this constant reminder I have to bat down from my mind. I do "cheat" from time to time with a bite or two of something I want to try or a food I really like. But it does not take much of that to remind me why I'm eating this way, so it's become a self-limiting behavior.

That said, I am getting a little bored with my LCHF diet. Pretty much the same thing every breakfast and lunch because most times I'm just not interested in cooking while following the macronutritional guidelines. Maybe winter will change that (I hope so). This diet has made the grocery list simpler because there are so many things I choose not to eat and because DW has signed on to largely eat what I eat and supplement what she eats with her own choice of carbs, so it's essentially the same items each week, maybe tweaked a little (e.g., kielbasa one week; jalapeño-cheese sausage the next; butter lettuce one week; mesclun the next). Considering how much of a foodie I was, I've come quite a distance.

All that said, CathyA, I do hear what you say about food addictions being tough to handle. As hard as it may be to quit drinking alcohol or smoking, at least those items are not essential to life. It's not like you can swear off ever eating food again...

[JaneV2.0]

I've long felt I'd be a much better adherent to keto/lchf if I had staff. I'm not an eager cook at all, and I've seen all kinds of LC-compliant recipes/cookbooks that promise an unending parade of delightful meals. People tend to eat the same thing over and over anyway though, which does make things boring.

Intermittent fasting seems to have similar results to LCHF with the added allure of very forgiving nutritional guidelines. At any rate, any of these approaches mitigates the non-stop hunger the SAD produced in many of us.

[ApatheticNoMore]

well I've never experienced endless hunger, I may graze a bit though. Or in my experience chronic dieting causes chronic hunger for the most part. And this applies even in cases where someone has always been overweight, maybe staying thin might be fighting their body. It has it's setpoint it likes and that's not easily changed.

[ApatheticNoMore]

although isn't chronic or disregulated hunger a side effect of many medicines? Some psyche meds for instance but also others.

I don't think it's normal, but besides chronic low calorie dieting and really trying to be a weight the body will not abide under current conditions (there may be tricks to get it to that work for some), aren't medicines a cause of run away hunger sometimes.

[CathyA]

Thanks everyone. I can remember the moment when I was young, when I acknowledged the feeling of endless hunger. I think I was about 8. It's really hard to separate nature from nurture causes. My mother once told me that whenever I cried when I was very young, she would stick a cracker in my mouth. So who knows. I think female hormones play into it too. I have to say, when I'm really busy or running errands, I forget about the hunger.......which is nice. I also wonder about hyperactive eating.
I would say I probably eat healthier than many other people. I just don't seem to have a "shut off" button as far as hunger. It could have to do with not having enough "leptin"? I do have to give myself credit for not passing this on to my children. They are extremely healthy eaters. I tried to hide my over-eating from the kids when they were little, and steered them in a healthy direction. It always amazes me when people don't want seconds and even forego dessert, because they're "full". What's up with that??!! And yes, I'm sure medications can drive up the appetite. I'm on a small dose of an SSRI and a beta blocker.......so that's a possibility. But I guess I'd rather be hungry than depressed. I do have sleep apnea and sleep with a CPAP. I've heard that poor sleep can cause hunger. But I think I sleep pretty well with the CPAP.