I’ve been on T-Dawg 2.0 and making good, steady progress.
Currently I’m 183.4 pounds taking in about 2500 calories a day. Going by the rule (multiplying weight by 15), I’m only 200-300 under my maintenance levels. Here is my problem.
Progress is good, LBM is intact since I’m not losing strength (even gaining)… however, I feel hungry frequently. Can I use hunger as a guage to indicate that perhaps 2500 calories a day is too low? I AM making progress, and I’m NOT losing LBM, and I CAN deal with the hunger by sucking it up. But if it’s detrimental to my long term progress, should I up the caloric intake so that I never feel hungry?
I estimate that I am around 17-18% bodyfat and I am losing about 1.5 pounds a week on average.
I may be wrong, but I’ve heard, and experienced that gradual reduction in carbs to a low point can help IMMENSELY with the hunger problem. I think hunger is an inducation of low blood sugar, and if you’re used to carbs, then you need to eat more often.
I will say this, but people will flame me for it. I’m not recommending it, I just want to state some experience I had.
I decided to do a fast for various reasons, and to prepare for it, I started eating huge quantities of fat. 400+ grams a day and usually over 75% of calories (up to 86). Not only was I not hungry without eating for three days, I also had the best endurance when running that I have ever experienced. Normally I’m winded after jogging half a mile, but that week, my “warm up” consisted of about a 6 minute mile, then I went to sprinting. This is all without eating and no hunger!
Interpret that as you will, I just wanted to state some experience I had.
Iron Maiden: I’m pretty sure it’s not thirst. I drink tons of water a day and goto the bathroom every 45 mins or so as a result!
Here is what I eat.
9:30 - MRP
11:30 - Beef Jerky, Oatmeal
1:00 - Either 1) Beef and Vegetables or 2) Chicken and Vegetables
3:00 - Same as 1:00
6:00 - Omemet with Cheese
(workout)
9:30 - Surge
11:30 - Either 1) Salmon or 2) Cottage Cheese and Mixed nuts
This is my diet everyday. Total calories is about 2500… each meal is about 350-400 calories.
Usually I feel hungry after my 3:30PM meal and hunger persists for most of the remaining of the day except for the 30min-1hour after a meal. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night hungry too.
I would be fine with the hunger if I wasn’t paranoid about losing LBM. Currently I haven’t lost any (and have gained some) and have lost over 25 pounds of fat in the past 4 months or so. I was under the impression that as you got closer to your goals you should correspondingly decrease your caloric intake since your overall body weight is decreasing. Not only did I not do that, but I might have even slightly increased them… maintaining a deficit of about 250 calories. Yet I still feel hungry sometimes. Perhaps the multiplying weight by 15 formula is not correct for me? Or perhaps I should just ignore the hunger given that I am making good progress anyway?
BTW I train 5 days a week, 2 days of 20 mins post-workout cardio.
Yeah I guess it would depend on what your meals are. Are you getting enough good fats?
I’ve had a few periods of hunger on tdawg2.0, but honestly more often I have the deal where I’m not hungry but still eat because it’s time to eat.
Hunger for me is more related to what neil said, which is the type of carb I eat and thus my insulin/blood sugar. If I eat certain types of sugars I tend to feel hunger more than if I eat an equivalent amount of some other types.
Also depends on water. Drinking a lot of water tends to satiate me a bit.
I find that after a short while of dieting (1 or 2 weeks) my hunger gets suppressed. However, I do find that for myself, regardless of whether or not I’m dieting or bulking, if I’m hungry it indicates that I didn’t eat enough THE DAY BEFORE, or that I’ve waited longer than 2-2 1/2 hrs to eat.
You know, in high school my friends and I had a bet - whoever could eat a big jar of mayonaise in one hour would get $100 from everyone else. Over 3 years, no less than 9 people tried and puked. Neil, ever consider trying to do that?
400+ grams of fat… thats a lot of fat.
It could be raw mayo if you want to make it yourself…
“We could have settled for $20 worth of pudding, but uh-uh baby we wanted to go all the way… aww yeah… we got two hundred and thirty eight dollars… of chocolate pudding… aww yeah baby”
After the first week of T-dawg 2.0, you should drop an additional 500 calories. Then you should get real hungry. To answer your question, I always get hungrier when I drop carbs.
