You’re hungry.
To add to that, if the calorie deficit is small enough, the hunger feeling will be reduced over time as your body adjusts to the new calorie intake, but will always be there until the body is a weight that matches the calorie intake.
Example: Someone who is overweight eating the calories for their target weight will have a calorie deficit that becomes less of a deficit until they reach that target weight and at that point they should no longer feel hungry except when they actually need to eat to maintain weight. Obviously other factors can create a feeling of hunger when the body isn’t actually sending the hunger signals or people wouldn’t be overweight.
As someone on semaglutide therapy, I can share that a large calorie deficit hits you in the wills to live. At some point even just eating feels like a stop at the gas station to fuel up, and it hardly matters whether it’s 87 or 95 octane. Hell, rancid fry oil would even work. At some point, you stop caring whether you eat because it feels like another chore.
Eventually your metabolism syncs up again with your energy demand and you start getting interested in food, except you’re way more selective about how you’re (edit:
spending) acquiring those calories. I almost can’t abide by junk food, fast food, or breaded fried crap anymore. But neither do I want salad or vegetables because they’re “fluffy.” Too much volume, not enough calories. I want about 6 or 10 forks full of food, and then that’s it. And it’d best taste good, or I can’t be bothered. Restaurants easily stop looking like a good deal.Anyway that’s a digest of my diary for the last 22 months. Do with the info as you will.
There are many contexts for a calorie deficit, if you are too fat already, a calorie deficit is bringing you back to optimal.
In this context, it’s important to recognize your body is an amazing homeostasis machine, it wants to stay at optimal.
If you don’t eat processed foods, anything that comes in a box. If you eat a very low carb diet, such as carnivore or keto plant based diet. You’re managing your insulin levels to normal, optimal ranges, which allows the entire body to operate its homeostasis magic. And even though you’re in a calorie deficit, you don’t feel hungry. Your body will want to maintain a calorie deficit, till it’s back to normal.
The important key here, is to eat whole foods. Basically anything people ate before 1900, you can eat, and you will feel full with the right time, and you will be in a calorie deficit if you need to lose weight.
The big problem with processed food, sugar foods, the carb rich environment people find themselves in nowadays… These diets tend to spike glucose, maintain highly insulin levels all the time, reduce ghrelin production. Processed food specifically is designed to not satiate, to encourage continual hunger. Doritos are famous for engineering the perfect constant craving, through food science.
If you’re always having elevated insulin levels, your body is always trying to be in an anabolic state, it’s hard to burn fat. Your body only stores fat, all of your energy reserves are in fat. With a few exceptions in the muscles and a tiny amount of glycation in the liver. Since your body cannot meaningfully store sugar, or carbs, only the amount in the bloodstream remains, so you’re always hungry because you’re running out of energy… I believe only 5 g of sugar can be in the bloodstream at any one time. You burn through that pretty quickly, in a hour or two, and hungry again.
In short, this is the food addiction cycle.
If you want to lose 1 lb in a month, or gain 1 lb, you need to consume or burn 3,500 calories. Or 116 calories a day. Or 38 calories per meal… Easy right? … In the US, calorie estimates are allowed to be off by as much as 25%, and that’s just packaged food, forget any restaurant or line cook being exactly precise with portions… So for 2,500 average daily diet, over three meals, the margin of error is 208 calories. Your target is 38 calories. You’re trying to do something within the margin of error of all of your estimates. Calorie counting is a very difficult game to do! The deck is stacked against you. This is why it’s important to allow the homeostasis machinery in your body to handle all of this through satiation. It’s going to do the right thing if you let it
Try and see. Everything’s contextual, subjective, and personal. For example you can feel more energetic and focused and not particularly hungry.
After the hunger fades you just feel sorta empty/light but eventually that fades too and you stop noticing it. Atleast in my experience
