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Weight Loss Forum / Low Carb / January 2004What's a craving, really?
In another thread, Doug Freyburger wrote: > Atkins doesn't give guidance on amounts, either. He tells us to count only > carbs. He makes the assumption that few folks are actually overeaters or > undereaters if they are handed a diet that does not trigger cravings. It > is true that many overeaters stop overeating when the cravings are turned > off. This got me thinking again about something I've wanted to see discussed here. Let me start by saying I am an overeater; that's how I got fat. Left to my own devices, I just eat massive portions of whatever is in front of me. This is true of "healthy" or balanced foods I prepare myself, as well as junk. I wouldn't describe the feelings I have regarding food as cravings. I rarely crave any particular thing - I just want something that tastes good. I enjoy the experience of eating. Eating has never had any correlation with hunger for me. People have talked about low-carb killing their cravings. I do not experience this. I still love eating and want to do it all the time. I'm not saying low-carb isn't working for me - I think it's working well, by cutting off a universe of caloric food that I used to eat in large quantities. I still require constant vigilance and effort to keep the calories down, though. What I mean by that is when I stop eating ricotta (for example) after a 1/2 c serving, it's not because I'm "satisfied" or because I no longer "crave" ricotta or am not hungry. It's because if I don't stop, I'll have eaten too many calories for the day. It's an exercise of will, not a cured craving.(*) So what I'm wondering is: what do each of you mean when you use the word "craving?" What is your personal experience of a craving? And do you believe that low-carb has killed them? Or would you say that low-carb has provided you with a way of focusing your food-attention away from them? Do you only crave carbs? Do you crave low-carb things? I'm looking to open a general discussion on cravings - what they feel like, what low-carb does to them, and how you handle them. carla 237/219/165? (*) I recently said on another thread that I sometimes struggle a bit to get up to 8 times my body weight in calories each day. In case that sounds like a contradiction compared to what I've said here, I want to clarify - I don't struggle because I'm not hungry or don't want to eat; I struggle a bit rather because once I've eaten all the protein and carbs I think I should be eating in a day, I don't always know where to find the calories. This isn't a real serious problem for me right now, so it's not really the main topic of my post. :-) Carla, For me cravings are a real, physiological hunger that kicks in and makes me feel like I have to eat or I'll starve. I never had problems with my weight or diet until I started developing severe cravings in my 40s. It correlated with my blood sugar getting into diabetic ranges. Before that I loved food, but if the weight started to creep up, I could just rationally say, "Time to eat a lot less for a while", do it, and get back to my usual weight. Once the cravings kicked in, though, I couldn't think of anything but food, and it was a really unpleasant sensation. It was a huge relief for me when I started low carbing and discovered that when I brought my blood sugar back to normal levels, that insane hunger thing went away. It only comes back now if I boost the carbs, and then usually the cravings kick in after I go back to the low carb regimen and last about a day. Even on low carb, I still get the "I've got nothing to do, so what can I eat, now" aimless boredom eating thing that kicks in, but it isn't the problem that cravings are. -- Jenny - Low Carbing for 4 years. At goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes, hba1c 5.2. Cut the carbs to respond to my email address! Low carb facts and figures, my weight-loss photos, tips, recipes, strategies for dealing with diabetes and more at http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/ Looking for help controlling your blood sugar? Visit http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/Newly%20Diagnosed.htm > In another thread, Doug Freyburger wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] > a real serious problem for me right now, so it's not really the main topic > of my post. :-) >In another thread, Doug Freyburger wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 45 lines] >a real serious problem for me right now, so it's not really the main topic >of my post. :-) Very good, Carla. Is hunger the same as craving for some? I think it is very close for me. But hunger is not necessary for me wanting to eat sweets. I love sweets and would like to eat them until I puke. I'll have to think a little more on this one. I know how you feel about cravings. If feel two different ways about Atkins and Craving. Before starting The Atkins Diet I was a real Sweet eater. I really thought I would have withdrawl from sugar when I started the diet. I'm not really sure if I did or not. The only thing that I know for sure is, Before I started Atkins I would eat a meal and an hour later I would be so hungry again like I had not eaten anything in hours. I truely could not understand this until I went off the Sugar and Starches. Not more than a week later I never had that terrible starving feeling in such a short time after I had eaten again. I think that is what they mean by getting rid of cravings. I guess all of those times that I got so hungry an hour after I had eaten a big meal was not hunger at all. It was cravings for all those carbs. That is the biggest thing for me. I have been on Atkins for approx. 7 weeks and have lost around 20 pounds and I plan to loss another 28. I'm absolutely thrilled with the results. I hope I continue to be successful. The second way that I feel about cravings is similar to what you are talking about. I have what I call now, Desires, Not Cravings for the yummy things that we are allowed to eat on Atkins. I don't always have the control to only eat a small serving of the nuts we are allowed and there are other things that I could just keep eating too. I'm sure you know what I mean. I was definately a binge eater before I started Atkins and even though I am not allowed to have many of the foods that I use to binge on before, I have found some good subsitutes for my favorites. These are low carb substitutes. But, Let me tell you, I know these low carb substitues have slowed my weight loss. I mean. Let me know if you can sit and eat just 2 Tables Spoons of Almonds. Yeah Right. And Chocolate. That's another story all together. I may not be having the so called technical cravings, But, No diet in the world is going to make me forget how wonderful a nice creamy sweet chocolate candy tastes and feels in my mounth. I would not doubt in a minute that half of the weight I have been trying to loss here is from Chocolate. Okey Dokey, That's my take on cravings. Mariann I'm starting Atkins tomorrow, so I'm hoping it will help to avoid cravings. My brother has been on it about 5 months and has dropped 40+ lbs. He says most of his hunger is satisfied, though he still complains about late night cravings for snack-type food. I have identified that carbs cause intense cravings(addiction) for me. If I eat a bagel, roll or donut in the morning, by 11 AM I am starving! My stomach will be grumbling loud enough for coworkers to hear. If I ate absolutely nothing for breakfast, I often coast till 2 PM before I get hunger pains. The age old breakfast is the most important meal has always rubbed me wrong because so much of the breakfasts would make me ravenous before lunch. I felt better off with nothing--and I never noticed decreased energy from not eating. Quite the opposite, I often get tired right after meals due to overeating. I definitely get cravings, but not always for something specific. Sweets, specifically Chocolate is a big one. But so are sweet foods. I love a lot of ethinic dishes and many have sweetened sauces. That is going to be a stumbling block for me... Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Italian are all favorites. Very often I just get hungry for anything. Like you I will eat a lot of whatever is there, sometimes in a very short time. Salty foods have no attraction for me. If they around I will eat them, but I rarely reach for them in the supermarket--mostly if I think someone will be over to have it for them. (maybe that is why my blood pressure is never bad despite being obese since childhood--I don't crave salt and don't salt my food) Drinks, sodas, iced tea, lemonade, juices--- this is another bad spot for me. The boredom of drinking water(carbonated or not) is very unappealing. I'm not a big coffee or hot tea person and I like mine with milk & sugar. I definitely see cravings for sugary drinks as an issue. Won't be able to say how well Atkins helps with cravings for several weeks. (345/345/200? - Some charts say I should be 180-200. Can't imagine being 200lbs, I probably weighed that little when I was 14) DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email) > In another thread, Doug Freyburger wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 25 lines] > don't stop, I'll have eaten too many calories for the day. It's an exercise > of will, not a cured craving.(*) This may change over time. I used to eat as long as there was food on my plate (or leftover in the kitchen if it was good). When I started lowcarbing, the only way for me to keep my portions under control was to eat to meet my fitday goals. But, after doing this for a while, I actually started to get that feeling of "now I've had enough, stop eating." I no longer picked at the leftovers as I was putting them away. That's not to say that I never overeat anymore. Sometimes, for one reason or another I'm just really hungry or the food is really appealing. But, overall, I have a sense of when I've had enough. The most amazing thing for me was when I measured out a serving of nuts, ate half and then put the rest back. That never would have happened with fig newtons. Martha  SignatureBegin where you are - but don't end there. > This may change over time. I used to eat as long as there was food on my > plate (or leftover in the kitchen if it was good). When I started [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > just really hungry or the food is really appealing. But, overall, I have a > sense of when I've had enough. Thanks, Martha. I am sure there is more than six weeks' worth of adjustment to do. I am hoping that if I stay vigilant with my portion sizes and total calories now there may come a time when I experience what you describe. It would be so odd for me - to stop eating when not hungry. > The most amazing thing for me was when I measured out a serving of nuts, > ate half and then put the rest back. That never would have happened with > fig newtons. That is awesome! Elsewhere on the thread, someone said "I could eat sweets until I throw up." I know the feeling. I could eat my through a bag of candy or a box of certain cookies without stopping even when I started feeling nasty. It's hard to imagine doing that with hard boiled eggs. Nuts or peanut butter on the other hand .... carla 237/218/165? > Doug Freyburger wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > general discussion on cravings - what they feel like, what low-carb does to > them, and how you handle them. Here's my distinction between a craving caused by my body and a desire caused by old habits in my mind: If I attempt to distract myself and it works for at least 30 minutes before the feeling comes back, it is a desire caused by mental habits fighting to stay alive. So I distrct myself again to starve the habits. If I attempt to distract myself and it doesn't work for more than a couple of minutes before the feeling comes back, it is a craving caused by a physical process in my body. That's a puzzle to be solved not a habit to be killed. This is not a reliable testing method, but it works pretty good to distingiush mental desires from physical cravings. Cravings come in several types. Carb cravings are sharp, and mine went away after about a week just like the book said they would. Fat cravings are dull, and they never went away whenever I tried low fat. Protein cravings must happen, too. Water cravings are called thirst. There is also some sort of hunger or appetite other than cravings. I remained hungry for about a month into Atkins. I ate and ate and ate, stayed to my carb quota, and lost and lost and lost. Very bizzare. Then one day about a month in I guess I hit my cheese quota for all those years I'd avoided cheese or whatever, because the amount of food I wanted dropped. For years I'd naturally averaged around 1800 calories averaged across a week. In that first month I ate well over that level. Then I settled back to near 1800 agin. But with a different mix is calories I was in ketosis and losing. > Here's my distinction between a craving caused by my body and a desire > caused by old habits in my mind: Thanks for weighing in, Doug. (Groan, sorry.) > If I attempt to distract myself and it works for at least 30 minutes before > the feeling comes back, it is a desire caused by mental habits fighting to > stay alive. So I distrct myself again to starve the habits. This is the kind of discipline, for lack of a better word, that I am trying to develop. When the craving/hunger is a mental habit distracting me from a boring task at work, it's hard to focus back on the boring task. While I've never been one of those people who "got so into my work I forgot to eat" (they seem downright alien to me), when work is interesting time goes by much faster, and I don't think about snacking. > If I attempt to distract myself and it doesn't work for more than a couple > of minutes before the feeling comes back, it is a craving caused by a physical [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > dull, and they never went away whenever I tried low fat. Protein cravings > must happen, too. Water cravings are called thirst. I am always, always, always thirsty. I sometimes feel like the more I drink the more water I want. I am sure this is partly because it's winter and the air in my office is bone-dry. I have been trying to this as a way to ward off the snackmonster - when I "want something," I'll refill my water bottle and drink it. If I still want something after that, well, maybe it's time for a snack. <snip> carla 237/218/165? > > Here's my distinction between a craving caused by my body and a desire > > caused by old habits in my mind: [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > I am always, always, always thirsty. Welcome to ketosis. Extra thrist and dry mouth are standard symptoms. > I have been trying to this as a way to ward > off the snackmonster - when I "want something," I'll refill my water bottle > and drink it. If I still want something after that, well, maybe it's time > for a snack. Also welcome to being able to tell thirst apart from hunger. Hello: > > I am always, always, always thirsty. > > Welcome to ketosis. Extra thrist and dry mouth are standard symptoms. > > Also welcome to being able to tell thirst apart from hunger. This being always thirsty could also be a symptom of diabetes. Before I was diagnosed, I could drink 2 litres of liquid in one night, and still be thirsty. Real thirst, not hunger. Since dealing with the diabetes, the thirst is not a big issue, even with lc and ketosis. Just a thought. Carry on, Mary > Hello: > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > thirsty. Real thirst, not hunger. Since dealing with the diabetes, the > thirst is not a big issue, even with lc and ketosis. Thanks. I was aware of the connection between thirst and diabetes - there's an interesting story there. My grandmother was a schoolteacher, and she learned she had diabetes after one of her fifth grade students told her to ask her doctor about it. My grandmother was constantly sending students out of the classroom to bring her a glass of water, and one of her students, who had a diabetic relative, recognized the symptom and alerted my grandmother about it. But the data I did not provide you in my earlier post was that I was not so terribly thirsty before I started the low-carb plan. Although it is possible, it is unlikely that I developed this particular symptom precisely when I started my new plan. I think it's more likely that the thirst is a result with the weather becoming quite cold and dry, the heaters at home and in my office blasting further dry air, and my upping my exercise level, since December 1, when I started low-carb. carla > > > I am always, always, always thirsty. > > Welcome to ketosis. Extra thrist and dry mouth are standard symptoms. Doug, I appreciate your posts and your evident grasp of the biochemistry that happens when one undertakes a low-carb way of eating. Please let me ask you a question that's been puzzling me, even though it means hijacking my own thread a bit. Folks often cite 100g carbs or some other number as a ketogenic threshold - eat fewer carbs than whatever the number is (taking into account that some protein will be metabolized into glucose as well), and your body has to turn to metabolizing fat in order to create the glucose it needs for the cellular energy cycle. Ketosis is what happens when you are metabolizing fat for energy. What I am wondering is, if you are eating at a caloric deficit, you are also burning your fat stores for energy, aren't you? So why doesn't any reduced calorie diet lead to ketosis, regardless of how many carbs go into those calories? I know I am missing a key point here and I'd appreciate your satisfying my curiosity by clearing it up. Thanks! carla Carla, As a matter of fact, any diet that results in the loss of fat will result in some level of ketosis. However, the real confusion here is that true "ketosis" refers to ketone levels in the blood, but what dieters measure is ketones in the urine. The ketones don't appear in the urine until they are quite high in the blood stream. It's just like glucose which doesn't show up in the urine until you get levels over 200 mg/dl, though blood sugar is considered high at a lower level. -- Jenny - Low Carbing for 4 years. At goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes, hba1c 5.2. Cut the carbs to respond to my email address! Low carb facts and figures, my weight-loss photos, tips, recipes, strategies for dealing with diabetes and more at http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/ Looking for help controlling your blood sugar? Visit http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/Newly%20Diagnosed.htm > > > > I am always, always, always thirsty. > > [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > > carla > Carla, > [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > get levels over 200 mg/dl, though blood sugar is considered high at a lower > level. Thanks Jenny. If I understand you, you are saying the following: any time you are burning fat, whether by eating low-carb or otherwise, you will have ketones in the blood. However, when a larger proportion of your caloric intake is fat, you are burning even more fat - your dietary fat plus whatever stored fat you are burning - so the ketone concentration in the blood is correspondingly higher, and only then may become high enough to show up in the urine. carla Before I starting Atkins I ate a bag of Lay's Potato chips every single day-Now, I don't even think about them and I haven't had a bag of chips since Sept. 2003. I would also eat a muffin every morning - same thing - I don't even think about muffins. I used to eat a different chocolate bar at least 3 times per week - same thing - I don't even think about them either. I would drink coffee and tea with 3 tsp. of sugar - now I don't use sugar at all. It's unbelievable! I don't think being hungry an hour after eating is necessarily having cravings. When my blood sugar is badly fubar'd, I am hungry all the time. To me, low blood sugar is what feels like "hunger." If my stomach is empty and growling, I don't *feel* hungry. But if my blood sugar is low, I am ravenous. And cravings are a different thing entirely. It's completly about *wanting* something. I really, really *wanted* breaded, deep-fried mushrooms the other day at the Farm Show and eating a bunch of the food I'd brought with me, then going home and overeating on "allowed" food... didn't take that want away at all. I *wasn't* hungry. I just *wanted* fried mushrooms. I have a feeling of "emptiness" that is not touched by eating low-carb and it's very annoying as it makes me aware of what I'm not eating rather constantly. I'm very much looking forward to it going away, but it's taking much longer than past times when i've done low-carb. |
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