Eating the amount of calories I need to lose weight but I feel as if I'm starving?

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FewMoreKG

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Hey I'm 19, male, 5ft6, 63kg and trying to get down to about 56kg (want to be 10% body fat). For the past two weeks I had been eating 1700 calories a day and burning 200 calories five days a week through 20 minutes of LISS but lost hardly any weight. I was then told by a coach on this website that my TDEE (assuming I was sedentary) was actually around 1700 calories a day rather than 2000 so for the last few days I've been eating 1400-1500 calories a day and continuing to burn 200 calories five days a week through 20 minutes of LISS. However, since doing this I've become incredibly hungry every day and can't stop thinking about when I'm next going to eat (I even find myself watching videos on food when I get like this).

I'm not trying to be dramatic and I understand that in a deficit I'm going to be a little bit hungry but is it really meant to be this bad? If it's not meant to be this bad then what am I doing wrong, should I be eating more? If it is meant to be this bad then is there any way to stop myself feeling so hungry? I even cut my carbs down from around 130g a day to under 60g a day to stop hunger but that's just made me crave carb-heavy foods like white bread and pasta. Is cutting my carbs what's making me so hungry?

Please help! I've been trying to get to 10% body fat for so long but every time I try it seems like everything's just going against me!
 
up until i hit a BMI of 25 i was having no problem losing 2-2½ lbs/ week, but since then i have really slowed down and for the past 6 weeks my pace is less than one lb/ week. i've come to realize that every pound i lose now is a smaller percentage of my total body weight and on top of that, my body is likely telling me at this point to slow down. my metabolism doesn't know food is plentiful... i believe it is telling me that i'm closing in on the last of my reserves. ... and yes, i AM trying to be dramatic... :)

but you are currently at a lower BMI and you are trying to top that... down to a BMI of 20... which i actually think is a bit dangerous. in the past calorie restriction dieting has always made me hungry and never worked that well. i find it interesting that i hardly ever feel hungry even eating less, but also changing my whole method (timing) of eating...through intermittent fasting. i'm certainly not saying this would work the same way for everyone, but it does with me. if you''ve never tried it, perhaps it might be worth a shot.
 
FewMoreKG said:
However, since doing this I've become incredibly hungry every day and can't stop thinking about when I'm next going to eat (I even find myself watching videos on food when I get like this).
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Watching videos on food will certainly make cravings worse. Do you have any hobbies ? keeping your body and mind active play an important role in avoiding cravings. How much water are you drinking ? many people fail to identify thirst signals treating them as hunger instead, it does help to have a glass of water when you first start to feel hungry. A 2009 study by Australian scientists reported that subjects who included more high-sugar foods in their diet exhibited weaker thirst sensitivity than did those who ate fewer of these foods.

overlandflyer said:
currently at a lower BMI and you are trying to top that... down to a BMI of 20... which i actually think is a bit dangerous
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BMI is a nonsense number when it comes to individuals, It was devised in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. as a quick and easy statistical way to categorise people. Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

In the absence of other data BMI is often the only information to base advice on (often the case on the forum) but when there is better more accurate data available then why would you base health decisions on a statistical number that fails to take sooo much of human physiology into account.

as for bodyfat % essential fat levels for males is 3-5% and 10-13% females, below theses levels is when you will see health problems from lack of bodyfat.
 
overlandflyer said:
up until i hit a BMI of 25 i was having no problem losing 2-2½ lbs/ week, but since then i have really slowed down and for the past 6 weeks my pace is less than one lb/ week. i've come to realize that every pound i lose now is a smaller percentage of my total body weight and on top of that, my body is likely telling me at this point to slow down. my metabolism doesn't know food is plentiful... i believe it is telling me that i'm closing in on the last of my reserves. ... and yes, i AM trying to be dramatic... :)

but you are currently at a lower BMI and you are trying to top that... down to a BMI of 20... which i actually think is a bit dangerous. in the past calorie restriction dieting has always made me hungry and never worked that well. i find it interesting that i hardly ever feel hungry even eating less, but also changing my whole method (timing) of eating...through intermittent fasting. i'm certainly not saying this would work the same way for everyone, but it does with me. if you''ve never tried it, perhaps it might be worth a shot.
Click to expand...

I've been trying to avoid the whole intermittent fasting thing cuz I always felt that'd just add to my hunger pangs but I might have to throw in the towel a bit and give it a shot.
 
Trusylver said:
Watching videos on food will certainly make cravings worse. Do you have any hobbies ? keeping your body and mind active play an important role in avoiding cravings. How much water are you drinking ? many people fail to identify thirst signals treating them as hunger instead, it does help to have a glass of water when you first start to feel hungry. A 2009 study by Australian scientists reported that subjects who included more high-sugar foods in their diet exhibited weaker thirst sensitivity than did those who ate fewer of these foods.



BMI is a nonsense number when it comes to individuals, It was devised in the 1830s by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist. as a quick and easy statistical way to categorise people. Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.

In the absence of other data BMI is often the only information to base advice on (often the case on the forum) but when there is better more accurate data available then why would you base health decisions on a statistical number that fails to take sooo much of human physiology into account.

as for bodyfat % essential fat levels for males is 3-5% and 10-13% females, below theses levels is when you will see health problems from lack of bodyfat.
Click to expand...

Oh hey man it's you again! Art, playing games and watching vids are my typical hobbies I suppose, but the hunger REALLY pushes through those. I have to admit I haven't been drinking a ton of water and I have about 20g of sugar a day (20g of my carbs come from these two tiny chocolate bars - they're the only things that sort of satiate me) so maybe it's that but whenever I do drink water when I'm feeling hungry the hunger doesn't go away but then again maybe that's because I didn't drink enough water in that time?

It's super difficult keeping motivation as according to the scales this morning I've somehow gone up a pound so now I'm 63.5kg but I'll just assume it's water weight despite the fact I only have 60g of carbs a day. I can't seem to break 63kg - the lowest I've seen over the last 3 weeks is 62kg and that was at the beginning of week 2 and I'm yet to see my weight get close to that since. Either way it just feels as if I'm doing everything right but my body is desperately fighting against it.
 
FewMoreKG said:
Please help! I've been trying to get to 10% body fat for so long but every time I try it seems like everything's just going against me!
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10% body fat? Yikes! Are you a body builder or a runner? That's dangerously low, isn't it?
All I can say to you regarding feeling hungry is that maybe you should increase your vegetables. Fiber! Fiber! Fiber!
Also increase your water, often times when we feel like we are starving, we are actually dehydrated.
 
OK, you want to lose 10% body fat. So if you are taking like 1700 calories a day you need to burn as much and more depends on how much you want to lose. So let's say you burn like 1800-1900 calorie a day that should probably do it. And just for the record 20 min of LISS through 5 days a week is nothing. You need to step up your training at least an hour or two a day. And you need to drink enough water it would be best before each meal cause water helps you with digestion and you will lose weight much faster that way.
 
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