180g Protein Kills Rest Appetite

Rest days are the same for me. 200g protein and I'm stuffed by 3pm unless I drop fat.

Are you eating the same ofod volume or just same protein? Fiber and water swing my hunger way more than training volume.

I tracked this for 12 weeks at 170 lb: 190g protein daily. Lifting days I averaged hunger 6/10 and ate 2,900 kcal. Rest days hunger dropped to 3/10 and I struggled past 2,100 kcal. Same protein, lower carb intake. What fixed it for me was moving more protein to breakfast and keeping lunch lighter.

Not saying that's universal, but your 3/10 on rest days matches mine almost exactly. Are you doing zero cardio on rest days? I also noticed my appetite came back on days I walked 10k+ steps, even if lifting was off.

Breakfast protein is the big lever for me too.

What's your weekly volume? I find suppression hits when I cut sets by half, not when protein goes up.

The breakfast crowd thing is real — 50g of protein at 7am and the appetite signal basically goes quiet until 1pm. Common surprise though: rest-day cardio can flip that on its head.

165 lb here too, and my log showed the opposite of what I expected — rest-day protein looked like it fell off a cliff until I weighed everything for a week and found I was under-logging by 20-30g, mostly the handfuls of nuts and cheese while I was cooking. Those "barely 140g" days were actually north of 165, so my appetite wasn't the variable, my logging was.

What actually lined up with 3/10 days was sleep: under 6.5 hours and I don't want food at any protein number, 7.5+ and I'm normal again. Before you chase the carb thing, weigh for a week and check your sleep — cheap experiment, and it changed what I thought I knew.

Rest days are when I drop to like 2,400 steps instead of 9-11k, and I'd bet that's doing more than the protein grams. Same 150-155g every day for me, but rest-day hunger was stuck at 3-4 and I couldn't finish dinner either — what actualy changed was food volume, not protein: no post-gym cooking meant I was eating maybe half the vegetables and no soup, just dense stuff.

Added a 40-minute walk after lunch plus a huge bowl of broth, cabbage and shredded chicken and rest-day hunger came back to 6-7 in about ten days with the protein untouched, waist still down 1.5 inches over 3 months. The 3/10 days weren't a win for me either, I'd just pick at the pantry at 9pm and feel gross.

What's your step count and total food volume on rest days versus lifting days?

My rest-day hunger log was almost identical to yours until I realized I was drinking like 40 oz of water on rest days vs 90+ on lifting days, and my sodium tanked with it. On lifting days I’m sweating and salting everything, appetite comes roaring back by noon; on rest days I’d have coffee, plain water, a late breakfast, then feel weirdly full/nauseated at 6pm and stall at 130-140g protein.

Started doing one 16-20 oz water with a bouillon cube or a pickle around 10am plus actually eating breakfast at 8 instead of 11, and rest-day hunger went from 3/10 to 5-6/10, protein back to 165-175g without forcing it. Scale also dropped 1.5 lb overnight after that first salty drink day, which was obviously water, so I stopped reading anything into rest-day weight dips.

Not just you. My rest-day hunger is way more routine-dependent than training-dependent. If I sleep in and skip my usual 7am breakfast, I don’t get a real hunger cue until mid-afternoon, and then 140g feels like a chore. Keeping a boring anchor breakfast (Greek yogurt + berries + a scoop) and

Tbh Not just you, but I’d separate protein from total intake. When I dropped training volume, my rest-day calories fell ~400 kcal because I wasn’t adding pre/post workout carbs.

Hunger log looked like protein was the culprit, but it was really the lower carb/fat load. Do you have rest vs lift day calories and macros side by side?

Specifically, same protein but fewer carbs/fats? If so, try matching energy density/volume (soup, veg, fruit) rather than forcing more protein.

Also, what’s your protein timing—3 meals vs 5 snacks? That changed my 1–10 hunger way more than the daily gram total.

Curious what your rest-day food volume looks like, not just grams. I hit 170g easily on lifting days because I’m eating giant bowls of roasted veg + rice; on rest days I was eating the same protein in fewer, denser meals and it felt like a chore by meal 3.

Adding a huge low-cal salad or soup and splitting protein into 3 smaller hits instead of 2 bricks got me from 3/10 to 6/10 hunger without changing total protein. Are you eating fewer total bites on rest days?

Tbh Not just you, but my rest-day hunger tracks steps, not lifting. If I drop from 11k to 4k steps, I can hit 180g and still feel gross-full by 6pm. Same food on a high-step rest day? Ravenous.

The other variable for me is caffeine: lifting days I have coffee later and actually get hungrier; rest days I sip it all morning and it stacks with the protein. Are your rest days also lower steps/caffeine? If so, maybe it’s not the protein alone.

I run a cafe, so rest days are weird: I’m around food constantly but it’s mostly nibbles—spoon of ganache, crust ends, three flat whites. By dinner I’m at a 3/10 and 160g protein feels like a part-time job.

What helped was separating hunger from appetite: I have a savory protein plate even when I don’t feel like it, because waiting for hunger means I never get there. Do you notice it’s worse on higher-coffee rest days? Caffeine kills my interest in chicken, but somehow not in pastry.

Honestly, Three-year vet here. What changed my rest-day protein slog was tracking steps, not grams. When my rest days were truly couch days (<4k), 160g felt impossible and hunger stayed 3/10.

Adding a 30–40 min walk plus errands bumped me to ~8k and I could finish 170g without forcing it. Also, are you counting protein from veggies/oats? Those add up more than people think and can change the 140g math. Not saying it's the whole answer, but the NEAT angle rarely gets mentioned in these threads.

airports are my tell. On lifting days I’m doing concourse cardio—easily 12k steps—and a protein-heavy hotel breakfast disappears by 10 a.m.

On rest days I’m parked in a lounge chair, same breakfast, still full at 2 p.m. My hunger log tracks way closer to step count than training volume. Rest days under ~6k steps are almost always a 3/10. What’s your step count looking like on rest vs lifting days? Might explain why the protein feels heavier when you

One thing I noticed in maintenance: my rest-day appetite tracks steps/NEAT way more than protein. On low-step days I can hit 150g and feel stuffed by 6pm; on 8–10k days I’m actually hungry. Front-loading protein also makes rest days worse for me—I save more for dinner and

I tracked protein per sitting instead of daily total. Same 180g, different distribution: 60g before 10am on a rest day and hunger flatlines at 2/10 until dinner. Split into 3–4 smaller feedings, noon hunger comes back.

Rest-day steps matter too; when I drop under 5k, protein sits like concrete. Bumping to 8k usually gets me back to 5/10. Try logging protein timing + step count for a week, not just grams.

same—rest days I’m staring at my last chicken bites like it’s a chore.