Week 19 and my appetite trendline just flipped upward

2026-10-03 4409 views 11 posts

I track hunger 1–10 in my spreadsheet every night, mostly so I can argue with my own feelings. Weeks 1–14 sat around 3.5. Week 15 I averaged 4.1. This week? 7.2, with two 8s after 9 p.m. My protein slipped from 130g to 92g and my sleep went from 7.4 to 6.1 hours, so there are confounding variables.

Mildly annoying: my weight trend is still -0.7 lb/week over the last 28 days, and my jeans are a size down from January. I’m not calling it a med failure or a willpower thing yet. I’m giving it another 10 days before I change any habit. Anyone else’s hunger trendline spike before the scale even blinks?

Oh man, those 9 p.m. 8s are my tell too. I’m in a small town and our grocery closes early, so if I don’t get protein at lunch I’m scrounging carbs after supper. What helped me was a 4 p.m.

check-in: if I’m at 6+ then, I add a real snack like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese instead of white-knuckling until dinner. My sleep tracker shows the same thing—under 6.5 hours and my hunger number lies to me by 1–2 points.

Are your 8s actual stomach growling, or more head/mouth hunger once the kitchen’s closed? That distinction changed how I tracked mine.

The 9 p.m. 8s are the interesting bit to me. When my protein slides, I tend to eat dinner earlier/lighter and then the pre-bed window gets loud—so I’d overlay hunger with time since my last 30g+ protein meal, not just daily total.

Did those two 8s land on nights after <6h sleep, or after low-protein days? In the trials, sleep restriction tends to raise next-day hunger, but the effect size varies a lot.

Your weight trend still being negative makes me wonder if this is timing/intake creep rather than the appetite stuff fading. Worth plotting 9 p.m. hunger against bedtime and dinner protein.

I’d stop scoring same-day hunger against same-day inputs. In my sheet, low protein and short sleep show up as next-day/evening hunger, not instant.

Try a 24–36h lag column: yesterday’s protein + sleep vs today’s 9 p.m. score. Sharp question: are the 8s physical hunger, or “mouth wants entertainment”? I log those separately now; most

Cafe owner here, and the 9 p.m. 8s hit home. I can white-knuckle past croissants all day, but once the till’s done and I’m scraping the pastry case, hunger suddenly gets loud.

When my sleep drops, my hunger log gets messy because I’m logging “stomach empty” and “mouth tired/bored” as the same number. Two things helped: split hunger into stomach vs. head hunger, and move a bigger protein chunk to breakfast/lunch so I’m not arriving at close on fumes.

Question: are your 8s physical stomach hunger, or more the post-shift smell/taste-testing whiplash? If it’s the latter, maybe it’s a routine trigger, not a protein math problem.

ooh, the 9 p.m. 8s are my tell. I started logging protein by meal instead of just the daily total, and my evening hunger tracks lunch protein way more than dinner.

If lunch is under 30g, I’m at a 7–8 by 9 even with a big supper. A 10-minute walk after dinner knocks mine down about 1.5 points.

Does your spreadsheet have meal timing?

I’d bet those two 8s line up with the 6.1-hour sleep nights or a weird dinner clock. Also, our tiny pharmacy’s order schedule used to scramble my routine—did anything like that change recently?

late-night gamer here. did your soda swap change around wk 15? i had a similar appetite flip and it turned out my “harmless” diet soda + caffeine after 6pm was wrecking sleep and making me snacky around 10.

started logging last caffeine time and carbonation separately from food, and the late hunger scores finally made sense. not saying it’s your cause, but worth a column? also: were the 8s on ranked/gaming nights or random?

Tbh i’m in the empty-nester phase too, and my sheet now has a dumb little column called “stomach vs mouth.” When my sleep dips, my 9 p.m. 8s are almost always mouth/tired, not stomach.

What helped: I score hunger right before dinner and at 9, then jot one word—empty, bored, wired, or habit. The gap between those two numbers told me more than the nightly score alone.

Also, a 10-minute walk after dinner shifted my late score down a full point without changing food. Do your two 8s feel like actual stomach hunger, or more like the day finally going quiet?

Try logging hours since your last protein-forward meal. My night hunger tracked that gap harder than daily grams. Past ~6 hours, a 9 p.m.

spike was basically scheduled. Also split hunger into physical vs. fridge-boredom; my trendline looked scary until I did, then most of it was the second kind when sleep was short.

Is your 7.2 coming from actual stomach-empty hunger, or the after-dinner “I need a hobby” signal?

Those two 8s after 9 p.m. stand out more than the weekly average.

Quick question: did they land on days you skipped your walk, or days dinner ran later? I’m in the empty-nester restart too, and my evening hunger is way more tied to “did I get out for my after-dinner loop” than I expected.

I added a simple Y/N walk column and a “kitchen closed at” time to my log—not to be virtuous, just to see the pattern. My late hunger often looks like boredom plus being out of my usual routine.

With sleep down, I’d also glance at whether the 8s are on short-sleep nights or the day after.

I’ve been in maintenance a while, and the thing that saves me from spiral is splitting hunger into AM vs PM instead of one nightly score. Morning 7 after