Belle124

Hi,

I'm on day 10 since giving up alcohol and I'm constantly hungry.

Some of it, is treating myself to tasty food to make up for not drinking but this is becoming a bit much.

I would really like to lose some weight and was hoping kicking the wine habit would aid this but eating so much this will be hard.

Did anyone else go through this also? Thanks :-)

matt4x4

Switching addictions is quite common. There are powdered supplements out there that will curve your appetite.

Jake1961

Same hunger issues here. Started making smoothies out of non-fat yogurt, a bit of milk, and some fruit slices. My coffee and tea intake has also gone up a bit.

matt4x4

Green tea is healthy.,

mfanch

Alcohol has a lot of calories (7kcal/g). Getting onto some healthy nutrition is definitely indicated. Also, staying hydrated will help with feeling satiated. We need to eat! I would also suggest a multivitamin/multimineral supplement.

matt4x4

Alcohol also has a lot of sugar in it. I cant really believe on the 7000 calories per gram.

Grateful11

I disagree that this means switching addictions. Belle, you only have 10 days sober so your body is still healing.

I am reading a fantastic book called "Under the Influence" by Milam and Ketcham and they talk about how malnourished our bodies are after drinking...no matter how much we ate. They also suggest a specific recovery eating plan.

I was also hungry often around days 7-14. It is better now on day 21. I allowed myself to eat when I was hungry. Tried to eat healthy 80% of the time but allowed myself treats and it helped. I was also craving food like peanut butter which is full of B vitamins.

Try not to worry about it now. Be aware if it goes on for too long but I think it is normal in the early days of recovery.

GreenColor

In our common parlance that just means 7 calories per gram. Calories in the US and some other countries are measured in thousands of calories.

In the sciences 1 kcal = 1 cal as we use the term on American nutrition labels.

DoubleBarrel

I also strongly feel that it is bad advice to worry about food after only ten days.

Ten days is SUPER EARLY. Eat what you crave.

Your body is healing and you desperately need calories nutrients and your metabolism has probably been running on sugar from drinking.

All this takes time.

I lost weight more than a year after quitting. A lot of weight.

But first things first.

No point if you starve yourself, have cravings, worry about sugar and carbs, and then relapse, right?

jutam

I ate everything that wasn't nailed down for a while. On the days I had been drinking I ate nothing and the day after was super hungry, so it took my body a while to regulate when I got sober, and even though overweight, I was malnourished. My body also really missed the sugar from drinking. After a while I had to realise my hunger had turned into an emotional one and was no longer physical. 10 days in is nothing. don't stress... yet!

4llison

I hope the hunger isn't as bad this time as it was when I quit a few months back for three months. I was in jail, so on top of three meals a day, I spent $60 a week on snacks! You can buy a lot of ramen noodles with that. On top of the 5 boxes of honey buns I bought a week. Nothing but junk.
I gained 30 lbs.
I was pretty sedentary though, lol. Lost perhaps 5 lbs since I've been out. I can't handle gaining much more back!

Soberwolf

Your body is coming back to life and is making up for lost time

How much was you eating when you was drinking ?

Food is important in my sobriety....and my life lol

Mountainmanbob

very common (especially in early sobriety)
when I went through 28 day treatment many years ago
90 % of us there put on some major weight

they fed us super good food including all the ice cream that we could eat
and most all of us bought candy at the hospital store (every day)

the major problem in early sobriety is relapse not food

MM

Soberwolf

Love this post

scintillady

When I first got sober I gave myself permission to eat anything and everything I wanted. I gorged on chinese all you can eat buffets, fast food, everything that wasn't good for me. I gained quite a bit of weight, which I didn't expect since now I was taking in about 3500 calories less in wine. At about 6 weeks I gave the junk food up and started eating a low carb diet and have lost at least 20 pounds. (I don't like to get weighed very often, but at my last Dr. visit 4 weeks ago I had lost 12) You can't do low carb and drink wine, since it's pretty much liquid sugar, so it has a double safeguard. It's been a little over 3 months now and I'm steadily losing. I really had to do the overeating thing at first, though, to get it out of my system, and it was better than drinking.

Belle124

Thanks for your replies and great advice!

I'm taking a vitamin and mineral supplement as suggested - I thought after all the abuse I've given my body it would be nice to give it a boost.

As for overeating, I guess I'm treating every day like a Friday movie night. I'm eating healthy food (lots of soups, organic meat and vegs, fish etc) all day, but snack on crisps, cheese, ice cream and chocolate after my main meal in the evening.

Like it's been said it's better than drinking and maybe I just need to not be so hard on myself. It must be quite a shock to the system to suddenly not have so many calories from the alcohol.

Thanks again for all your advice, I'll keep working on not drinking and give myself a break but also beware that should eventually pass and I will be back to normal three meals a day again. :-) x

matt4x4

Its a fact and been proved time and time again, that switching addictions is quite common. See alcohol has nothing to do with the disease. Its the way we think that is the problem. I have seen people with 25 years of "sobriety" hit the casino dropping their paychecks or disability checks on gambling.

iam2antsy

i don't think it's really hunger, but yeah - if i'm not drink'n i want to be eat'n. i'm always conscious of trying to eat healthy even when drinking, but it's too much...

wtf - w/ all the ice cream talk on this forum? 1 thing i can absolutely do w/o.