# eating only when hungry



## mike456 (Sep 12, 2011)

trying something new and only eating when I feel hungry. Is this a stupid thing to do?

My goal is to lose fat most importantly, and retain/gain muscle.

When I eat the meal will be healthy, around 50 grams of protein, 25 grams fat, 50 carbs.

I am 200lbs, 6foot 3... Never measured bf but I think I would be solid at 170


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## Night_Wolf (Sep 13, 2011)

Yeah is extremely stupid.

Why are you making new theories up? Just eat every 2-3 hours and thats it. Geezus


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## Schez (Sep 14, 2011)

Don't do it, you'll GAIN fat and LOSE muscle most likely. You know that eat regularly helps to stimulate metabolism and build muscle so why mess about?


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## sassy69 (Sep 14, 2011)

I think its a worthwhile exercise to be aware of "when you are hungry". Some things to note are if you're eating because your body is telling you it is depleted, or if its your brain telling you it is bored or has a taste for something. 

One of my big challenges is not fixating on food while I'm in contest prep - I suppose because attention to diet can make it just that much more of a fixation when you're supposed to stick to your diet and you can't (or aren't supposed to) eat at random. I've used Hoodia very successfully, not so much to "control appetite" as much as simply just to remove my "taste" for things. After running it for a while (note - it doesn't just produce these results the minute you start using it - I have to run it for a while first, and  anecdotally I'd say maybe half the people I"ve talked to about it actually experience this - may be they don't run it long enough or have the wrong expectations of it), eating because somethign that I do because I can feel my body being depleted (e.g. get light-headed or start to feel a mood coming on) before I ever experience my stomach growling or anythign like that. I've forgotten to eat before because the 'taste' aspect of eating is sort of gone.

Also I have been following the 'eat every 2-3 hrs' w/ smaller portion sizes for years, so my body is basically tuned to expect to be refed on that schedule - so the result is that you can manipulate yourself to a particular schedule as well. 

Another aspect of listening to your body is to see how it feels to eat until you're not hungry (i.e .what is sufficient) vs overeating just because you started out hungry.

I think these are good things to pay attention to in an unstructured diet framework in order to determine what your body currently perceives as "normal". And then use this as the basis for building a consistent diet, and further adjusting it to the goals you have for it. If you want to build, you might find you need to eat more than you normally eat, and there you're fueling for your goal - has very little to do w/ you wanting to eat or not. Same w/ cutting - you want to be aware of your diet being sufficient for your body's needs if you're one of those people who can easily forget to eat, or also to illustrate that an aggressively restricted diet is probably too much and you're really just starving your body and it will ultimately stall out and potentially go catabolic.


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## troubador (Sep 15, 2011)

mike456 said:


> trying something new and only eating when I feel hungry. Is this a stupid thing to do?
> 
> My goal is to lose fat most importantly, and retain/gain muscle.
> 
> ...



I'm sure you'd lose weight as long as the food is clean but 6'3" at 170lbs is super skinny. 200 lbs isn't even heavy.


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## Digitalash (Sep 15, 2011)

good luck losing fat while gaining muscle, unless you're totally new to lifting or are on a pretty strong cycle

also at least for me if I eat only when I'm hungry I lose weight too quick and end up dropping a good amount of muscle. It could work but you'll have to count your calories and make sure you're not too far under maintenance


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## gearin up (Sep 15, 2011)

I wouldnt do it


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## FitnessFreek (Sep 15, 2011)

Schez said:


> Don't do it, you'll GAIN fat and LOSE muscle most likely. You know that eat regularly helps to stimulate metabolism and build muscle so why mess about?



This^


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## MJ288 (Sep 26, 2011)

Night_Wolf said:


> Yeah is extremely stupid.
> 
> Why are you making new theories up? Just eat every 2-3 hours and thats it. Geezus


The best way!


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## newkid (Sep 26, 2011)

troubador said:


> I'm sure you'd lose weight as long as the food is clean but 6'3" at 170lbs is super skinny. 200 lbs isn't even heavy.


 
x2 try gaining some weight


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## bigrnmedic (Sep 26, 2011)

Yeah...I'm glad someone else said it. I'm 5'9" and 170 would be skinny for me. I'm thinking you'd be seeing ribs at that weight before you see any pecs or abs.


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