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Comment by uberduper | Hacker News Reader

In my experience and observations, calorie restricted diets are pretty easy to adhere to until sometime between dinner and bed time. This is where people typically go off the rails and eat far in excess of satiation, negating any success of the day.

Intermittent fasting typically has people shift their eating times towards the end of the day which should significantly reduce the chances of falling into a pre-bedtime eating habit. Especially if you also shift your sleep window earlier. So if you stop eating at 8PM and make sure you're asleep by 10PM, you're less likely to get hunger pangs.

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I once heard a great tip to prevent those pre-bedtime snacks. After dinner, brush your teeth as if you’re going to bed. Your brain already associates that with “no more food” and so programmatically dissuades you from eating. It’s always worked for me.

In addition to cues of habit, the lingering taste of most toothpaste reduces the tastiness/desirability of any anticipated meal.

I lost a lot of weight on a calorie restricted diet, from 215lb to 165lb over the course of a few years. But I gave it up because counting calories is soul sucking. I much prefer things like intermittent fasting or keto, I can think about what I am eating less and it's really raised my quality of life.

> But I gave it up because counting calories is soul sucking.

In the beginning it certainly is. But once I did it for a while, I found that I had developed a mental understanding for what various foods represented in terms of calories and could navigate it with much less effort. I started with spreadsheets and apps.

IMO much of the value in calorie counting stems from those early weeks where you suddenly realize how many calories each food represents - and relative to that how filling you find them.

It wasn't so bad for me when I started in college. Everything was prepared in the cafe and had calorie count on it. When I graduated and got married we started making all our own food and that was when it became depressing for me.

The trick to IF without hunger pangs is water. A glass of water will make them subside nearly instantly, and for hours.

I'm glad this works for you but this is far from a universal solution. It's true that thirst is often mistaken for hunger and in those cases this can work.

Personally when I wake up I quickly need a meal – I always drink a glass of water in the morning and it does very little, but if I have a black coffee the caffeine gets rid of my hunger for a few hours.

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