How much eating is normal?

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Lately, I've been wondering whether my eating patterns are normal. First, I feel a little hungry pretty much all the time, but I try to suppress that feeling because I don't want to eat too much. If I don't eat for two hours, I get hungry. The maximum length of time I can last without food is three hours, at which point I am usually starving. Even after a big meal at a restaurant, I can still feel hungry. At home, I consume mostly fruits, vegetables, and meat, which disappear quickly from the fridge because they don't fill me up enough. I want to try the paleo diet because I have a (very painful) skin issue and it seems like this diet would be best for keeping my body clean, but I have trouble eliminating "hard" carbs like bread and grains completely from my diet. I think food is very much a stress relief for me and, if I could, I would eat all the time.

I have no clue why this is happening. When I was working in an office during the summer, I constantly craved snacks and always ate lunch extremely early. I never skip breakfast, either. Right now, I have a part-time job where I only work 2 hours, but it takes me 1 hour to get there so by the time I am finished with work, I am starving and often end up eating less healthy foods on the go because fruits/vegetables need to be washed and can be messy.

What do you think of this? Are these eating patterns normal? I spend way too much money on (healthy) food, which is the main problem here, really. I also watch my weight.

Well, it could be a lot of things. How are your sleeping habits? If you don't get enough sleep, your body compensates by demanding more food. Same if you're under stress, physical or mental. Or it could be a blood sugar issue, where your body is wanting a kind of food you're not giving it. If it's been a while since your last check up with a doctor, make an appointment and get checked out, then ask him/her.

Different people need different amounts of food. I need to eat every two hours to "function" properly. It sounds as if you need this too and I encourage it. The best thing I did was buy a thermos. I heat up left over dinners in the morning and pack it in my thermos for whenever I need it at work. Fruits and vegetables are always good. I don't see a problem in your eating habits at all! It's all good. If you're hungry all the time, maybe 3 hours is too long of a wait.

What do you eat in a day?

I get 8-10 hours of sleep, so that's likely not the problem. I am under a lot of stress, though. I am always on the run and push myself to my limits, which is probably the reason for this. If there was a quicker de-stressor than food, I would take it (any suggestions?).

I eat either skinny B cereal or this cereal with milk in the morning. In the afternoon, I usually eat out on campus (chicken curry and rice), bring a chicken caesar salad, or make a salad at home. I then snack on fruits, pistachios, this bread, or vegetables unless I'm out, which is when I often get less healthy snacks like chips (lowest-fat kind) or those peanut packages. For dinner, I eat lettuce mixed in with random things like sunflower seeds, olives, berries, with either chicken liver or salmon on the side. In the evening, I sometimes snack on popcorn or yogurt. On weekends, I sometimes eat seafood like calamari or shrimp for lunch or dinner.

This is pretty much all I eat, it's just a lot and ends up being quite expensive sometimes, mostly because of all the stuff I tend to get on the go while trying to eat healthy. My executive functioning is poor so I often prepare stuff to bring but leave it behind or simply don't bring enough to satisfy my hunger for the whole time I am out. Also, whenever I eat, I never have any leftovers as I devour pretty much anything that is put in front of me (as long as I can tolerate the food, of course). I once actually indulged in my appetite and ate two huge pad thai dishes for dinner and could not stop. I thought I would have something left over for later, but I was wrong. Preparing food and not eating it right away is very difficult, as it requires a lot of effort to stop myself from eating anything.

I'm glad this is not excessive eating. I have made some Google searches and some people consider every 3 hours to be "often". At home, I typically eat something about once every hour. The scary thing is, I can eat a lot more than this.

I have been on the Paleo diet for about a year, low carb version (some versions are high carb with a focus on potatoes). The very first thing that a low carb Paleo diet changes is the intense need to eat frequently. This took about 2-3 weeks for me.

Needing to eat frequently is a sign that you are burning primarily carbs for energy rather than fat. Carbs burn very quickly and your body is not able to store very much at one time. There is about a 2 day supply (in the form of glycogen) of carbs in your liver but your body will scream at you to eat when you tap into it after having burned what you ate at your last meal. If you eat a meal that is high in carbs but low on fat and protein, you will get an insulin spike that will lower your blood sugar about 1-2 hours after you eat and tour body will insist VERY STRONGLY that you eat immediately to get your blood sugar back to normal. Your meals sound more balanced than that so it's more likely just running out of carbs rather than a severe insulin spike. That's more common in people having the almost entirely carb meals such as a bagel with no cream cheese for breakfast.

The transition to low carb Paleo can be hard at first. As you burn your glycogen supply, your body will be SCREAMING at you to eat some carbs. Then it will switch to burning fat and that desperate need to eat every 3 hours will go away quite literally overnight. That feeling is a beautiful thing but you have to power through the unpleasant transition period. For me that transition period lasted 3 days and then everything was great. Some people have experienced it lasting longer, up to 2 or 3 weeks. That's what people are talking about when they say "low carb flu".

Some tips to make things go faster and more smoothly and less hungrily if you do decide to do this:

1) First transition to high carb paleo. Giving up grains and beans is considerably easier to do if you have potatoes to burn as carbs. Also squash and any other starchy vegetables. You will still be primarily a carb burner rather than a fat burner but switching to starchy vegetables in place of grains is the big psychological shift that pushes you into this new paradigm.

2)If you want to go longer between meals, low carb is the way to go. This is the part that is physically hard but it is easier of you have already made the transition to high carb paleo. It is also MUCH easier if you follow the paleo advice to consume fats (but never trans fats!). Embrace butter (not margarine), olive oil etc. and you will find yourself able to go 6+ hours without food very easily and quickly. I poured olive oil and butter over everything and I think that's why it only took me 3 days rather than the 3 weeks that some people report to make the transition.

The people who have the very hardest time moving to paleo are vegetarians. They have to make a giant metabolic shift that is more severe than what you would have to do, since you already eat meat and fish. So you are partway there anyway. Before I started low carb paleo I was worse off than you. I couldn't even go 3 hours unless I was asleep. I snacked on candy (the absolute worst for this) which of course spiked my blood sugar and had me eating again within an hour. I was a mess and worse off than you are now. But I followed the steps I gave above and also followed all the advice on www.marksdailyapple.com and now I can easily go from breakfast to dinner without even remembering lunch. I can also do 24-36 hour fasts (for health reasons, to treat rheumatoid arthritis in conjunction with meds) without all the awful symptoms that other people report when trying that. If you were to try a 24-36 hour fast right now you would be nauseous, dizzy, ravenous and spaced out all through it. If you transition (slowly) to low carb paleo, I promise this will be possible. Not that you want or need to, but you would probably enjoy being able to skip lunch without feeling horrible.


edited to add: you are probably confused because I said in one place the transition took 2-3 weeks but in other place I said 3 days. To clarify: first I transitioned to high carb paleo. That was the bulk of the 2-3 week transition (I can't remember exactly). Towards the end of that time I transitioned to low carb. That transition took 3 days before I felt good. I remember that with precision because it was a difixcult 3 days, but well worth it. So it was 2-3 weeks from previous diet to paleo diet and 3 days from high carb paleo to low carb paleo.

Janissy, thank you so much for your long and detailed response! You are describing exactly the issue I am struggling with. In fact, the first thing I crave when hungry is carbs, like fruit, bread, or rice. I will save what you have written above and will print it out to help guide me toward the transition.

You might also consider seeking some professional (ie, health care) advice; it's possible that you have a blood sugar issue. In general, the more you crave simple carbs, the worse they are for your body.