Unlike most species, after food deprivation Siberian hamsters increase foraging and food hoarding, two appetitive ingestive behaviors, but not food intake, a consummatory ingestive behavior. We previously demonstrated that increases in food hoarding are triggered by directly decreasing body fat levels through partial surgical lipectomy; however, we did not test if lipectomy affected foraging nor if the magnitude of the lipid deficit affected food hoard size. Therefore, we tested whether varying the size of the lipectomy-induced lipid deficit and/or foraging effort affected foraging, food hoarding or food intake. This was accomplished by housing adult male Siberian hamsters in a foraging/hoarding system and removing both epididymal white adipose tissue (EWATx) pads, both inguinal (IWATx) pads or both EWAT and IWAT pads (EWATx + IWATx) and measuring foraging, food hoarding and food intake for 12 weeks. The lipectomy-induced lipid deficit triggered different patterns of WAT mass compensation that varied with foraging effort. Foraging for food (10 wheel revolutions/to earn a food pellet) abolished the EWATx-induced compensation in IWAT pad mass. The magnitude of the lipid deficit did not engender a proportional change in any of the appetitive or consummatory ingestive behaviors. EWATx caused the greatest increase in food hoarding compared with IWATx or EWATx + IWATx when animals were required to forage for their food. Collectively, it appears that the magnitude of a lipid deficit does not affect appetitive or consummatory behaviors; rather when energy (foraging) demands are increased loss of specific (gonadal) fat pads can preferentially stimulate increases in food hoarding.