Do you drink coffee? I have never wanted to eat in the am and naturally gravitated to eating 3-4 hours after I woke up. With doing 18:6 I find if I drink coffee with heave cream (dirty fast) I can much more easily wait to eat until 1 or 2 pm. I also have a bit of salt in my coffee and drink lemon water.
It took me a couple of weeks. The hunger is mostly your body being used to eating at a certain time and sending out hormonal signals accordingly, not an actual need for fuel. It takes a week or two for your body to get into the habit of a new eating schedule and stop sending out hormonal hunger signals at the old mealtime. Drinking coffee, tea, and sparkling water is helpful during the adjustment period.
PS — I noticed that you said you’re less hungry when you don’t eat breakfast. I also find myself less hungry when I fast. For me it was reactive hypoglycemia (non-diabetic). My body overreacted to food and pumped out way too much insulin, causing my blood sugar to crash 4 hours after a meal. No matter what breakfast I ate at 6 AM, I’d be starving and hangry by 10 AM. Intermittent fasting has been the best thing for me — it totally stopped this blood-sugar rollercoaster I’d been on. No food in the morning = no insulin overreaction = no crash. And when I do eat, I don’t get the crashes anymore; my body seems to have chilled out on the insulin overreaction, probably because IF has made me less insulin resistant.
If you have a similar problem, hopefully IF will help you as much as it has helped me!
How is your sleep looking? If you wake up at 6am, are you rested or peeling yourself out of bed? Usually, being tired will increase your hunger, so that might apply. Maybe a protein shake/smoothie would be a bit easier for you if having a wrapped snack/piece of fruit doesn’t work? Trying to woolf something down between/being with patients isn’t ideal, but brain fog isn’t either. I assume your colleagues get smoke breaks if they need them, so why shouldn’t you be allowed to step out and have a snack every once in a while?
If you’re foggy, you might need to replenish your electrolytes.
Since you don’t want to eat in the morning, adjusting your feed window isn’t an option. So, on your last meal, make sure you’re eating a lot of protein, fat, and fiber to keep you satiated longer.
Since you’re looking to maintain, you can eat your maintenence tdee and you want most of it come from your later meal to help sustain you until the next day. So, if you’re tdee is 2000 calories, maybe eat a 25%/75% or 35%/65% caloric split. You basically want more calories in the evening and I would leave the bulk of the protein and fat intake for the evening as well. This should hold you over until lunch the next day.
I would try eating higher protein and lower carb to improve alertness and lower appetite. If I eat higher carb the night before. I am hungry even very hungry earlier. When you are hungry in am but working reach for a protein shake or bar
Partly it’s habit and practice, and partly what helped me was understanding that “feeling hungry” means that my ghrelin levels are temporarily high. It does not mean my body “needs” food to survive or thrive.
When I work out fasted, I intellectually know that I’m lowering blood sugar and reducing body fat, which then feels great.
Last but not least - eating lots of carbs (rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, ice cream) for dinner will spike your blood sugar and insulin and lead to hunger pangs the following morning.