BT Forum

Welcome to BT first of all.

You need to find some foods that are more filling than others and their nutritional value sticks around longer.  Look for stuff high on the GI scale like sweet potatoes and natural foods.

Another key is eating so that you have enough energy still left to train but not so much that your intake amount is exceeding your output total.  That is a tough thing to figure out when you first are starting because your body is going to crave the calories.  You have to determine what is needed and what is excess and draw the line there.

It takes some work but there are a lot of success stories on BT!

Good luck

1. Use a food journal.  This way you know what you're eating and where you could be going wrong.  Figure out your goal cals for a normal day and aim to hit it.  On long run/ride days bump it up. 

2. What do your meals look like?  Sites like www.cookinglight.com and www.skinnytaste.com are your best friends.  Where as Paula Dean is the enemy.  LOL.  Make enough for 1 serving for dinner plus say a salad or steamed veggies.  Brown rice and sweet potatoes are good calls too for sides.  Any leftovers are lunch.

3. Failure to plan is planning to fail.  Map out all your meals from one grocery store trip to the next.  Buy only what you need and keep the junk out of your house so you won't be tempted to just snack on it. 

Foods that will keep you fuller longer are generally high in protein. The more you exersize the higher the amount of protein you will need. Foods that are predominantly carbs will make you hungry faster, because your blood sugar will fluxuate more. You can still eat good carbs, just try to up your protein intake.

I find soups, stews, & chili's to keep me satisfied the longest (great in winter). Lentils, beans, chicken, & turkey are my primary protein sources. Eggs, pork, ham, fish etc on occasion mostly because I have fewer recipies that use them. Greek yogurt, fritata, banana or protein shake for breakfast.  Nuts & fruit for snacks. I like www.eatingwell.com. Their recipies and books have all the gram information on what you are eating. I've managed to lose 40 lbs in the last year, and run/bike/swim better than I have in my life and usually I don't feel ravenous unless its a very hard workout day and my calorie deficit is simply too large & I skipped breakfast. High intensity days I might eat as much as 80-100g of protein, according to MyFitnessPal. Also most of my recipies have lots of fiber from veggies; spinach, carrots, onion, cabbage, fennel etc. It helps make you physically full from bulk because it feels like you are eating alot. The beans help in this way too.

 Good luck!

I feel your pain!  I'm in the same boat.  I've been training for my first 1/2 Iron and I feel like I'm starving all the time.  I know I'm not, one look at me and I clearly still have a good 10 pounds that can find a new home somewhere else.  I haven't really lost any weight during this process, though my endurance and strength have improved exponentially!! 

I even hired a nutritionist last summer to help me out with this and even she couldn't manage the hunger.  I've come to the conclusion that I need to just eat as balanced as I can (I'm 5' 10", 157lbs) and take in anywhere from 100-120 grams of protein a day.  I try to eat all my starchy carbs early in the day (oatmeal with breakfast, sweet potatoes or brown rice with lunch) and then only fiberous carbs with dinner.  I can have 4-5 cups of salad with a lean protein for dinner and most nights I still go to bed hungry.  Starchy carbs at dinner tend to keep me awake at night and give me heartburn, thus the reason I avoid them at that meal. 

Wish I had the answer, but I think being hungry is part of weight loss.  I really, really, wish it wasn't, but I think that's the reality for me anyway.  :-(

I agree with this. Just because we're hungry doesn't mean we need to eat. Hunger is the body's way of saying "you need to eat sometime soon" not "eat right now". Before we had access to food all the time (not that long ago) people were hungry before meals. I don't know when we as a society decided that we should never feel hungry. Probably around the same time we decided we should never feel sad, anxious, lonely etc. I think that hunger is not only a necessary part of weightless but it's also part of a healthy weight maintenance. Accept the feeling without trying to change it. Eat when it's meal time. Eat healthy choices. You'll be a healthy weight.

Hi Brian

I would like to know what foods you are eating, and snacking on. There is some good advice from others like eating a higher amount of protein. One thing that has worked for me is eating high fats and high protein in the day time and eating carbohydrates in the evening. The types of fat are from fish, olive oil, avacdo, nuts, eggs (with yoke) which are all good fats. It works well I can tell you. Check this link out and if you or anyone else has any questions feel free to contact me (its long but well worht reading

http://www.reactivetrainingsystems.com/articles/nutrition/10480-the-biorhythm-diet

As a formerly obese person, it took a long time to dofferentiate between

Bloated

Stuffed

Full

Satiated

A little Hungry

Hungry

and HUNGRY!

Food Shakes

You can see that i have found  any gradients of hunger and fullness.  Maybe what you need to do is explore that hungry feeling and see how your eating affects the varous levels.

Food shakes is a special level of hungry, where I usually have done some big workoutand then jumed into some work project and then mowed the lawn, forgetting to eat.  Not a good thing.

I try to leave the table a little hungry and then enjoy snacks in the periods in between meals.

I can't eat to get bloated anymore.  It's like marathon running, you can't get there without lots of practice.  I don't go there anymore.

I am rarely full, mostly aim for satiated.

Anyway just another perspective.

gotta run

Bloated can be achieved at a big restaurant meal

Here is a great Link to an article about nutrition and what to do before, during, and after workouts.  

Now, I personally don't eat anything unless my workout goes over 2 hours.  This is such a grey area of personal choice, it is hard to say one way is better than the other, there is a lot of contradicting information out there, so be careful.  Listen to your body.  No one way has been proven to be better than the other. 

Just note that if you are trying for weight loss, go easy on the energy supplements.  They have extra calories in them that you probably don't need.   

I have personally lost 50+ lbs and now kept it off for 4 1/2 months.

I really like the book Why we get fat by Gary Taubes.

He talks about the  fact that if we work out hard we will want to eat more food.

If we reduce our calorie intake we will be less active, its out body trying to self regulate.

Unless we have super human will working out and/or reducing calories will not create a significant weight change.

You must  change the set point of where  your body wants to be. 

I found the book fascinating and 100% correct in my case. Changing what I ate made the weight just fall off almost effortlessly.  It also gave me lots of energy and basically changed my life.

You can see my before and after pictures here (Lots of other stuff in that post, but the before and after pictures speak volumes):

http://unreasonablerocket.blogspot.com/2012/03/qucik-update.html

Paul