My hunger curve keeps ignoring my spreadsheet forecast

Hunger isn't a decay curve, it's a lagging indicator of weekly deficit — I'd stop trying to fit it and start asking what's different about day 5–6. For me it was never chemical, it was cumulative: three short-sleep nights plus a heavy squat day and appetite shows up on schedule like rent. Two things that cleaned up my sheet: log hunger fasted before breakfast only (way less noise than all-day ratings), and add a column for yesterday's training load. Does day 6 land on your rest day or your highest-volume day? If it's the rest day, that's often under-stimulation and boredom-snacking reading as "hunger," which is a different fix than an actual deficit signal.

your day 6 might not be a day 6 problem. Mine was a schedule problem.

I work nights too. When I logged hunger by shift instead of by calendar day, the “random” spike landed right when I flipped back to days off. Same food, same protein, but my body was awake during its old dinner window and acted feral.

Try adding a column for shift type and time of the spike. Not just daily score. Also note what you ate 3–4 hours before.

Question: does your pantry day line up with your first night off or a short-sleep day? If it’s tied to the rotation, the spreadsheet is fine. The variable name is wrong.

Your spreadsheet sounds like my cafe prep list—beautiful until day six hits and the lemon bars start calling. For me, that cliff was almost always my long inventory shift: no proper sit-down food before the 11am rush, then tasting spoons and pastry edges all afternoon. I started pre-packing a real mini-meal (half sandwich + fruit) and eating it at 10:30 in the back, then logging every taste bite as its own line. It didn’t make hunger a smooth curve, but it stopped the nosedive. Does your day 6 line up with a specific shift, or with a shorter-sleep night? That’s the column I’d peek at first.

I’m 58, kids gone, and my hunger chart looked identical until I added two columns: “dinner planned by 3pm?” and “evening walk y/n.” The pantry days were almost always no/no. Not magic, but it gave me something to tweak besides the scale. What’s your day 6 actually look like—longer workday, fewer steps, later dinner, or just the fridge staring back? I started cooking a big pot of something on day 5 so day 6 has a default, and that took some of the coin-flip out of it for me.

Love that the trend is down 10.8 — that’s the real scoreboard. My hunger log got way more useful when I stopped only scoring 1–10 and added two columns: when the first hungry feeling hit, and whether it felt physical (stomach growling, low energy) or more head/habit (evening boredom, stress). Day 6 for me was almost always under-eating lunch then grazing after dinner. I started front-loading protein at lunch and keeping a crunchy backup, and it smoothed out. Does your day 6 spike hit at a specific time — afternoon, after dinner, or late night?

Your hunger is probably lagging your inputs. In my sheet, same-day protein had almost no correlation with hunger, but a 3-day rolling protein/kg plus sleep debt pushed r² to ~0.48. My pantry days usually showed up after 2–3 days of low fat/fiber or >2h sleep debt, not on a fixed calendar day. I’d add 3-day avg protein, 3-day avg sleep, fiber, and steps, then plot hunger against those instead of the daily column. Sharp follow-up: does your day 6 line up with your worst 48h protein/sleep window, or is it purely a weekend/schedule thing? Also check whether your weekly weight trend is hiding a sodium/carb whoosh.

Solid win on the 10.8. My hunger sheet got way more useful when I added two columns: hunger type (empty / stressed / mouth-bored) and hours since last protein. My day-6 pantry negotiation was almost never a smooth-curve issue — it was a 7-hour protein gap plus two bad-sleep nights catching up. A 4pm anchor snack (Greek yogurt or turkey roll-ups) killed about 70% of that cliff. Sharp question: is your day-7 coin flip more physical hunger or “I’ve been good all week” brain? That distinction changed what I did next.

yo i had the same jagged line until i split my hunger score into “daytime” and “after 10pm gaming” because they were two different beasts. day 6/7 spike for me was almost always low sleep + soda swap backfire: diet soda kept the sweet craving loop alive, so i went to plain selter + a pinch of salt/lime and the 10pm pantry negotiations got quieter. also tracked whether i was actually hungry or just bored between matches. quick q: does your day 6 line up with later nights / fewer hours, or with a specific soda swap? might be worth adding a late-night column before you blame the whole curve.

I added a column for “time between last solid protein and pantry negotiation” and it was stupidly predictive — my day 6 was always Thursday, when I’d skipped lunch protein because I blew my

Your hunger column is likely mixing two constructs: fasting hunger and postprandial satiety. I’d split it—score pre-breakfast and 2 hours after dinner separately. My day 6 pantry raids tracked with cumulative sleep debt plus lower fiber volume, not the trend weight. What’s your day 6 protein and sleep versus days 2–4? If protein is flat but sleep is down 1–2 hours, that’s your signal. Weight trend is the outcome; hunger is a state variable.

First, 10.8 lbs down is awesome — spreadsheet or not, that’s real. One thing I’d add to your columns: hunger timing, not just daily score. My day-6 pantry raids were almost always 4–7 p.m., and they lined up with my first meal being coffee + a tiny breakfast, not my weekly deficit. I started logging “hunger 7 at 5pm” and added a real protein-forward afternoon snack; the curve got less spiky. Do you track when hunger hits, or just the daily number? Also, do your day 6/7 spikes follow shorter sleep or more steps?

One thing that changed my own log: I added a 3-day rolling sleep-debt column instead of just nightly hours, plus a “protein before 2pm” column. My day-6 pantry raids almost always lined up with two short nights earlier in the week and carbs front-loaded/protein back-loaded. Daily hunger looked random until I shifted the window. Sharp follow-up: what do your day-4 and day-5 sleep numbers look like compared with day-6 hunger? If the earlier nights are the low ones, you’re not failing the spreadsheet—you’re measuring the wrong window. Old threads here called it a “recovery echo,” not a hunger curve. And if day 6 is your old weekend/schedule trigger, that’s a behavioral signal, not a math problem.

Does day 6 land on the same weekday every time? If it does, that's structure, not biology — my pantry days turned out to be the ones where I ate lunch early and then white-knuckled it until dinner.

Two things I'd try: lag your sleep and protein-per-kg by 24–48h before running correlations, because same-day hunger in my log tracks yesterday way better than today. And add a fiber/volume column. In the trials they report average appetite, not the day-6 bump, so nobody's really modeled it.

Mine dropped more from a huge volume, high-fiber lunch than from protein alone. Curious whether your coin-flip days are also your lowest-volume days.

I stopped trusting my single daily hunger number and split it into two: a fixed morning rating and an 8pm rating. The 8pm one tracked next-day intake much better — my daily average was hiding calm mornings and rough evenings. Also, my day-6 bump lined up more with a 3-night rolling sleep deficit than with last night’s hours. In the trials, appetite looks noisy and non-linear, so a smooth decay curve seems unrealistic. Does your day-6 spike correlate better with anything 48–72h earlier — sleep, stress, or activity — rather than same-day inputs?

Been keeping a similar sheet for about two years (there was a thread last spring — "hunger archaeology" — that went deep on this). One thing that shifted my read: my day 6 wasn't a deficit thing, it was sleep debt on a ~2-day lag. Bad sleep Tuesday showed up as pantry negotiation Friday almost every time. If your sleep column is clean, try shifting hunger back 48 hours and eyeballing the correlation. Also, log hunger at a fixed time — I use 8pm — instead of peak. The spike and the average are different animals, and it's the spike that makes the column look jagged when the week was actually fine.

yo i had the same jagged line. turned out my day 6 was always after a late-night gaming session, when i’d been sipping soda swaps and not eating a real snack. added a “last screen off” column and the 7/10 pantry days clustered after 1am. the hunger curve wasn’t random, it was a sleep/schedule curve in disguise. does your day 6 line up with raid night, later bedtime, or mre diet soda? if so track that instead of forcing the forecast.