How to lose weight while being hungry after exercising heavily?

Question

I exercise frequently: running, cycling, football at least 5 days a week.

However, I have a sizable gut. This is due to a few factors: I sit all day at work, high calorie intake from soft drink and other junk food (usually on the weekends for lunch, not every day), Aussie love of beer. I think I only need to lose about 5 - 8 kg.

In the past week or so I have cut out the soft drink, beer and cut out junk food on weekends. However, from day one that I stopped drinking soft drink and my daily beer with my evening meal I noticed that I am voraciously hungry. I have been eating almost two evening meals because I am so hungry.

I may be way off the mark, but my assumption is the body is trying to compensate for the calories it is loosing from me dropping the soft drinks.

Now I'm confused as to what I should be doing. It seems counterproductive for me to eat more food while I am trying to lose weight, but I'm just so damn hungry.

Here is a typical before and after of what I have removed and what I have added to give you some indication of what I am eating to compensate:

Before:

• Equivalent of 2 cans of coke per day
• 1 beer per day
• Added 1x spoonfull of sugar to my breakfast cereal

After:

• 2 extra pieces of fruit (banana, orange, pear, apple etc.)
• Extra medium serve of rice with boiled vegetables approx. 1 hour after my evening meal
• Extra slice of bread or plain biscuits or handful of nuts

My diet is otherwise pretty healthy: plenty of fruit, veg and water

It seems I have just replaced calorie for calorie with better options, but am I going to lose weight in this way?

Is there anything that can be described as high energy low calorie food that I would be better eating instead? I prefer something non-processed (no shakes, energy bars etc.)

Answer 1

You have replaced sugar with other carbohydrate rich foods, which still raise your blood sugar and make you hungry, but don't have quite as many calories. Try satiating foods that do not contain many carbohydrate such as cheese, meat, or eggs. You can match the same number of calories, but you will feel less hungry if you use fat and protein rich foods instead.

Recently, I was also trying to be less hungry between breakfast and lunch, so I exchanged my oatmeal breakfast with the same number of calories of scrambled eggs (2 eggs, 1 ounce of cheese, a little butter). As I hoped, I do not get hungry before lunch any more. An unintended consequence was that I lost 10 pounds in 2 months when I was not trying to lose weight. Your mileage may vary regarding weight loss, but I would place a bet that you will be less hungry.

Answer 2

I do not see much protein in your meals. To lose weight, it is essential to eat enough protein:

• Protein is very satiating.
• Protein has a high TEF

These two factors will help you lose weight by reducing your appetite and spontaneously reducing your net calorie intake.

I would also add weight training and reduce aerobics.

Answer 3

Xiao, in my opinion you need to remodel your insulin response curves.

Notice this answer for some info: What should I eat to recover from eating only `raw' fruits and vegetables for 6 months?

I guess the short story is: hugely reduce the amount of carbs you eat. And do so for some months.

(There is no difference between bread, fruit, pasta, pure white sugar, bread, potatoes, etc. It's all just CHO molecules. There's no difference. You might as well just eat pure white sugar if you're going to eat carbs. If you eat long-chain CHO molecules, your body simply separates them into ordinary CHO molecules almost instantly - no difference at all.)

AND increase the amount of pure fat you eat. Try lots of wonderful full cream, cheese, and so on.

It will take I would say TWO MONTHS for your body to normalize. (Note the graph reproduced above.) Then you will have tremendous energy all the time. For example, I can easily eat no food for a day or two, with no hunger at all, even if running for an hour or two. (Plus I am very old, and was very fat!)

I hope it helps you! I urge you to read as much as possible on the topic, eg., Dr Lutz book "Leben Ohne Brot" as the info may help you.

Again the point is it will take you A COUPLE OF MONTHS to reshape your glucose response curves.