On this diet I'm often hungry. It's not the lack of carb-rich foods that does this to me - it's the long delays between meals. At the moment, I'm skipping breakfast, eating lunch and supper, and squeezing in a small third meal before bed on some days, but not every day. The result is hunger, especially in the morning.
What struck me as I started to get used to this pattern is that I remember being hungry from my childhood in the 1970s. We weren't poor - it's just that in those days, we didn't snack like we do today. Nowadays - even in the house of my parents, who didn't snack in the 1970s - there are always convenient snacks in a handy cupboard, at the front of the fridge, or on the kitchen counter. Snacking has just become such an acceptable thing to do, and we're urged to snack on healthy food (apples, nuts, etc) rather than to avoid snacks. The result in my case is that it's very rare that I'm ever hungry. I believed that eating frequently was helpful for people trying to control their weight, because it curbed cravings and prevented binging.
The trouble with snacking on healthy food, as the book points out, is that you don't rely on your fat stores for energy. Instead, the fat builds up little by little until you realise you're overweight. Why did it not occur to me that this was a problem? I feel I've been seduced into thinking that hunger is bad for you. Right now, I'm pretty sure it is a key aspect of my successful weight loss over the last three weeks. Moreover, once I get to a weight I want to keep, I suspect I'll still need hunger to burn off any excess fat stored after big meals. Perhaps if I only ever ate tiny meals then I wouldn't have to store any fat, but that just doesn't seem realistic. Normal meals, with hunger in between, seems like the better approach.
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