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Breakfast ended her crashes
The fear of stopping
The fasting had given her results when she first started it, and she was terrified that stopping would bring the weight back. When her coach asked for a full breakfast with protein and carbohydrates, it made no sense to her: she already skipped breakfast and still struggled to lose weight, so more calories seemed sure to backfire.
Six weeks later
It took a few weeks of explaining to settle her panic. She made the change anyway, and by week six the energy crashes and cravings were gone. Her sleep improved, and she stopped binging and snacking after dinner.
What coaches look for
She had never connected any of it to the fasting. Her body had been short on energy and nutrients, and the crashes, cravings, and evening snacking followed from that. Coaches in her program call a client coachable when she will run the experiment while terrified, before deciding it won't work.
Why does eating too little cause cravings?
In the Minnesota Starvation Experiment of 1944 and 1945, physiologist Ancel Keys put healthy volunteers on about half their usual food for six months. The men became preoccupied with food, collected recipes, and talked about meals constantly. Some also reported dizziness, fatigue, and trouble concentrating. Keys published the results in his 1950 book The Biology of Human Starvation.
Why do people fear dropping a habit that worked?
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described loss aversion in their 1979 paper on prospect theory. In their experiments, a loss weighed roughly twice as heavily as a gain of the same size. That imbalance makes giving up something familiar feel riskier than the possible reward of changing it. The same pattern has since turned up in many studies of everyday decisions.
Why do cravings peak in the evening?
In a 2013 study in the journal Obesity, Frank Scheer and colleagues at Harvard measured hunger across the day in people living under controlled conditions. Hunger and appetite were lowest in the morning and highest in the evening, even when food intake and activity were held constant. The researchers attributed the rhythm to the body's internal circadian clock. The evening peak was strongest for appetite for sweet, salty, and starchy foods.
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