Loss of appetite after reintroducing legumes

[Tarrantrl]

I just finished my third whole30 and have started a highly structured but extended reintroduction. One day 31, I reintroduced legumes (excluding peanuts and soy, which will each get their own day). I had homemade hummus with breakfast and we made some bean salad with cannellini beans, olive oil, and various spices as a side for lunch and dinner (so good with fresh rosemary and sautéed onion!). I had a little bloating but otherwise felt fine. Since then, however, my appetite has been terrible. Day 32, I had no interest in the frittata I had prepped, but I ate it anyway. By lunch, I only wanted carbs and didn't want the vegetable curry and chicken I had made. Instead, I got a compliant fruit smoothie (one of the Naked brand), a single serving bag of potato chips cooked in avocado oil and with only salt as the other ingredient, and a packet of almond butter (not the best choices, but it's what I did). For dinner I still wasn't hungry, so I had two meatballs (definitely not a whole serving for me, and no veg or added fat although they are made with almond flour). Day 33, repeat. I wasn't hungry in the morning but ate the frittata I had made (and I like how these taste, so I don't think it's burnout), at lunch I ate the veg curry but couldn't bring myself to eat the chicken, and at dinner I had 2.5 meatballs again with nothing else. I also had a little vegan 70% salted chocolate after dinner (date night!) because I'm not avoiding all added sugar so much now that I'm done with the 30 days, and I experienced this as almost a savory thing rather than a sweet or craving thing (who knew the flavor of cocoa was so complex under all that sugar I usually have with it?). 

What is going on? I have been consistently eating 3 eggs and at least one cup of veg with fat at breakfast for 4+ months, and I have been hungry every for breakfast morning since I finished my whole30 round 2 in mid July. I did really well on this round I just finished always getting 1-3 C veg, 1-2 palm sizes of protein, and 1-2 added fats of appropriate size at every meal, doing 3 meals a day, not needing any snacks between meals, eating within an hour of waking up, not overeating nuts (in fact, I hardly ever eat them), getting 0.5oz water for each lb of body weight, salting food, etc. I did notice an uptick in my dried fruit consumption during the last week of round 3 (leading up to my period might be the reason). I don't have a lot of weight to lose or craving issues, so I wasn't super worried about it at the time (and I still lost 8 more lbs on this round, so I felt fine with it). Could this loss of appetite have anything to do with reintroducing legumes or with the dried fruit? I don't have any other issues so I moved on to peanut butter today, but after eating an apple with 2-3 T peanut butter I'm not interested in eating anything else even though I brought my favorite soup for lunch. This is weirding me out! Sorry for the long explanation.

[ladyshanny]

So from an outside perspective, it looks like the legumes (heavy on carbs) on the heels of increased dried fruit consumption (carbs/sugar) during your period, a time during which women tend to need more carbs anyway - has caused increased carb cravings.

The fact that you are only really interested in eating carbs (apple and AB, chocolate, potato chips, smoothie etc) is very likely a symptom of having had too much sugar from the dried fruits added to the legumes which are high in natural sugars.

I would push through as much as you can with eating those template meals. Eat the protein and fat (non-sweet fat choices - ie, not almond butter) first and then the veggies etc. I suspect it's just a bit of latent sugar dragonning. I think you'll get back on track fairly quickly if you can start to prioritize the protein and fats.