Yep, hunger is psychological and based on unconscious predictive analytics rather than current state.
Which is why eating slowly and preferring things that digest slowly is so immediately effective at reducing calorie intake (and thereby reducing weight). (As a bonus, it also reduces sugar high/crash minor mood swings.)
...wait, what?
.
I've noticed at least three kinds of being hungry. One is the "sugar crash" variety, one is the "oh, I forgot to eat this morning. That's what's wrong with me" kind, and one is the "not eating for a weekend actually kind of sucks and I am never doing this experiment again" type.
.
(Also, I experimented with calorie counting for a while. Write everything down immediately in advance -- the same principle I discovered in order to avoid "wait, what did I do this week" for my timesheets at work -- and it works fine.)
I probably just have something wrong with me, but I generally feel pretty alert and happy if I go 8-10 hours without eating. As long as I stay hydrated.
This is mentioned in the article: "If you skip a meal, at first you feel acutely hungry, but then you actually begin to feel less hungry again as that accustomed mealtime passes by."
This was a good read as the author approaches the problem from a unique direction, but the outcome is hardly surprising: a very obese man who eats large amounts of carbs starts eating a moderate amount instead, and loses a lot of weight. Nothing new there.
What I got from it was that adherence to a dietary rule IS a matter of state of mind and for most people it's easier to adhere to a more moderate dieting regime.
All rings true to me and a moderate shift in diet can have a big impact for the very obese. If you are only a little bit fat and your diet is already reasonably clean though, then I'm not sure how well this works. The thinner you get the more sacrifices you need to make to lose the next pound.
I must say this is one of the best articles I have seen on obesity. This clearly lays out how psychology plays more important roles in obesity than merely focusing on diet/exercise. I had come to the same conclusion after trying different diets but the author lays out a very scientific explanation of how it works. One thing very important pointed out by the author is this: more you try to lose weight by controlling diet and/or exercise, more it activates your hunger drive. Instead just have some middle of the road guidelines(not too much carb, not too little fat, no calorie counting) and use this guideline to eat till you feel satiated(more you control yourself thru willpower, more it activates your hunger drive). As more and more people get confused by the contradictory recommendations, flip-flops in results of different type of diets, eventually the psychological aspect, as laid out by the author, will get more attention. Hopefully.
Maybe. But the author of the article at least does make it fairly clear what he's arguing for. Not that his diet is the perfect one, but that we need far more research into the hunger drive, not the chemistry of food and sustenance.
While many scientists would scoff at him making this argument outside of the scholarly journal orbit, it's actually a pretty good place to do it. Many scientists I know read broadly, and many decision makers at funding organizations are looking for ideas and perspectives wherever they find them, not just in journals. Especially as, in most journals, this would have gotten promptly rejected as the "study" wasn't scientific. But the point is made and shouldn't be ignored (IMHO).
It also doesn't help that our culture treats hunger like it's a disease to be cured. Hungry? Quick - grab a snack before it gets worse and you start wasting away! We work hard to "stave off" hunger when in fact it's really no big deal and can be ignored for quite a while until it's convenient to eat.
I seem to suffer from the opposite problem. For me hunger is a muted signal that I need to force myself to not ignore, lest I go without food for (easily) a day and end up woozy and so hungry that I eat whatever is nearby, or in the worst case that I wake up at night feeling hunger cramps.
I agree. Just making attitude adjustment helps a lot. Experience the feel of hunger and you realize that it's not that bad. The worst goes off in 10-20 minutes if you stop to rest. I find it nice to fast 24 hours once a week even without being overweight.
On the other hand eating can be form of self medication. If there is low level of depression or something else unsatisfying in life, food triggers the release of serotonin. In my experience there may be experiences of "losing meaning" if you fast or are in a low calorie diet. If somebody suffers from depression, the willpower to avoid snacking may not be there.
it's very simple - this approach drives sales. It would be surprising if the food companies did not tap into our very natural feeling of not liking hunger
Never eat _any_ snacks, as it's no time (do not eat between lunch) for it. If you skip a meal, you WILL be hungry, and it's fine, you won't die, next time, do not skip meal. Drink water, drink wine at table, it's never time for sodas, so don't. Now, without tv in front of you (focus on cooking and eating) , eat meat, bread, butter, whatever, and you'll be just fine
Good article. I take it a step furter and tie the hunger system to the satiated feeling one gets from appreciating and savoring the food.
Much has been written about the French Paradox[1] but my belief is that it's not so much about the individual ingredients' metabolic properties as it is about the art of not only crafting but appreciating meals. Savor each bite. Chew and eat slowly. Think about the food you are eating instead of trying to ignore it.
An Italian friend had once remarqued to me about his traditional family dinners where, not only was there an amazing spread of food, people would spend almost all the meal talking about the food. I have to confess doing the same in many cases.
I believe this is the biggest problem with American diets: we try to abstract away the taste and focus on a feature list (anti oxydants, low-carb, high-this, low-that) and all the while rely on poor shortcuts for actual taste. Those poor shortcuts are of course sugar, salt and fat. My French background earns me a perception that I'm a food snob. Perhaps that's true. But things don't need to have fancy preparations to be appreciated, in fact less processing is usually more. I can appreciate the favor of unseasoned steamed rice at a Japanese restaurant, or fresh tomatoes from the garden with no seasoning.
And yes, over time, you will start craving higher-quality ingredients, for the simple reason you can taste the difference. But again, it's a matter of being appreciative, whether it's an elaborate preparation or a simple unseasoned ingredient.
I wish I could upvote your comment more. My first revelation that our (dutch) appreciation of food was deteriorating was when I met my Slovenian wife and got properly introduced to balkan and Mediterranean cuisines. Perhaps food industrialisation distanced us from truly identifying with our food culture.
This is a global problem but extreme in the Netherlands... Albert Heyn, for example, really sells questionable quality of meat (a chicken becomes half its size when cooked), adds loads and loads of sugar to simple products like mustard and bread and even salads. It is really a race to the bottom. In Germany, Belgium and France, if you're willing to spend a bit more it's easy to find quality ingredients...
I count every calorie I eat and maintain an extremely strict diet while spending only 2hr on prep/week. I heat my meal up in 30s, scoop it in, and I'm done with it, it's just fuel to me now.
I did this to enforce discipline and consistency, but now that I'm there I'd like to start introducing some more advanced cooking techniques and flavours. Where do I start? I'd love to be able to make some advanced platters for guests in the future.
I've essentially completely squeezed out all fun from food and broke down the entire process.
I have a couple of cookbooks that are now very well worn. I think the best of them is probably Appetite by Nigel Slater. It's a little unique in that he treats his recipes more as suggestions rather than rules. He encourages lots of experimentation --- after all, everyone's taste is different, so you should make something you like instead of something the author likes. Each recipe comes with a handful of variations so you can see how you can start to build new dishes out of ones you already know. There's a great section at the beginning that goes through lots of herbs and spices and suggests combinations of ingredients that generally work well together. But maybe the best thing about the book is just the writing. It's hard not to read it and not start to appreciate food.
If you're strictly interested in techniques, I like Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. If you're brave, you can read through his magnum opus, On Food and Cooking, which goes through all the science. Keys to Good Cooking is sort of the cliffs notes version and just tells you what you need to know. But there are no recipes in either.
Then there's Joy of Cooking. It's an old standby and it's hard to go wrong with it. There's tons of information in there.
Lastly, look into anything by America's Test Kitchen. It's sort of the polar opposite of Nigel Slater's approach. They test every recipe, sometimes ~100 variations, to try to find the precise recipe that they think works best. If you want a recipe that you know will just work, it's probably the best place to start.
After dieting for about a week, I became accustomed to it and no longer feel hungry. I actually feel a little sick if I eat anywhere near as much as I used to. Lost 20 pounds in the last 2 months, which honestly might be a bit too fast, but it's hard to complain.
I like to cook and eat a pretty wide variety of food which helps. Dal Bhat (lentils with curry spice eaten by Tibetan mountainers) has become one of my staples. Strength training is also important, but I don't expect to get stronger; just maintain. I still drink a fair amount of beer 1-3 days a week and occasionally eat poorly with friends (maybe every other week), but it hasn't seemed to be a big problem.
If you tried anything for 2 months please don't talk about results. Talk about results in 2 years. Most people don't make it over 6 or 12 months. Also look for having experienced at least one life shaking event and still be on it a month or two later. That kind of event would having your dog die, losing your job, being for some reason required (and unwilling) to move to another town/country, having a wife/gf break up with you, etc.
Without sufficient time investment and having been through situations where you simply don't have discipline for a few months, anything you do has no value and no proof. Because if you fail in these two terms you will end up with more weight than before your attempt.
However; it doesn't really feel like discipline -- it's just how I eat at this point. I can report back in a few months, I imagine I'll have to start working my way back to eating enough to gain strength again around then. I experienced an event to the scale of my dog dying last month, but I imagine a divorce could be somewhat more taxing.
I don't think your challenge will be discipline, willpower or handling stress but simply overcoming the body's hormonal response to dieting.
I have frequently cut bf for sports using a range of diets (keto, low fat, IF). I actually enjoy dieting - the precision, the discipline, the visible progress, going to bed every night "a winner" etc. When dieting I don't crave junk and the hunger pains quickly go away... however, after 16 weeks on a strict diet when my bf approaches 10%, that is when I get ambushed by a terrible appetite for junk. I will wake up at 02:00 with a knawing craving for donuts or other foods that I don't even enjoy. I won't be able to sleep and have to lie there for hours fantasising about them. I can brute force my way through it for a couple of miserable months but the appetite stays until I have regained bf at which point I lose interest in junk food again.
You are on the easy bit for now but the consequence of fat loss is that at some point, your body will flip the ghrelin switch and you will become an unstoppable eating machine until you have yoyo'd back to or beyond your starting position. In my experience, the rebound is related to time and bf rather than the actual dieting method. Its probably genetic, i.e. some people won't experience this but I think most do which is why most attempts at fat loss don't stick.
I wish I could up vote your comment more!
have been on off diets for many years and I recognize this pattern. though I do not need to reach bf 10% in order to get the appetite :(
Maintaining sub 10% bodyfat sounds like quite a task. I'm sure some athletes can do it. I'm probably just below 20% and hadn't exercised until roughly 2 months before starting a diet (started strength training), so I have some wiggle room. Even so, people like myself seem to have difficulty maintaining the loss after the fact, which concerns me.
My suspicion is that
There's so much conflicting information on weight loss that I'm not sure if it will work, but my plan is to start tapering off the diet 50-100 calories a week as I approach that point to determine my new maintainence intake and maybe speed metabolism back up.
However; after a little research, I think my current diet may be succeeding (in short-term) largely from a large increase in resting metabolism from strength training (and no longer eating a surplus to build that muscle).
I'd like to reflect a bit on your notice how stress relates to weight gain. In my personal case I noticed a while ago that "usual" day-to-day stress in the office or at home indeed increases my willingness to eat more. But! The extreme stress, like falling in love or really deep shit at work make my feeling of hunger disappear. Last two month I have one of these situations and I lost almost 30 pounds (I'm obese person, my "normal" weight is 230 pounds). My food preference have changed - instead of high-carb I switched to carbs only at breakfast, low fat at lunch and dinner food, almost unconciosly. Though as my life gets back to normal now, I feel that the hunger creeps back and maybe adding some fat to my meals would help to keep from the spiralling downward into usual high-carb diet.
You are right, extreme stress makes you lose weight as long as it occurs. But it also makes you drop a bunch of your daily routines. Or at least that's what it does for me. The most successful run at weight loss for me was completely destroyed when I went to another country for a year of exchange studying. In that time other things were more important and after that I never picked up my habbits from before again, sadly.
A big life event can be used to great effect (and for giving up smoking). Once you get through it (and it's never quite as hard as you fear), you demonstrate to yourself that nothing can stop you.
> For six days, one group ate low-carb, the other low-fat. Both were strictly forced to eat the same number of calories. The result? The low-carb group did not lose more weight.
They can't be serious. Six days? A really 'representative' timeframe right there...
This article is a deception. The author is clearly taking his psychologist background on, and that's why one very obvious scientific fact is being forgotten here: when losing weight rapidly, the body adapts and slows metabolism to burning less calories. The outcome is that in a few years, no doubt our great psychologist is going back to its 20 extra pounds, maybe with a little 2 pounds premium for attempting to mislead his body. No matter the psychology of every aspect of hunger, your body will win back its lost calories! The biggest loser might be the one losing weight, the biggest winner will be your metabolism.
Actually the "biggest loser" wonderfully proves that point, and was described in that well-written New York Times article that is worth a million times more reading than the "hunger mood":
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weigh...
this is a very defeatist attitude. It is not like lose weight once, and you are set for life. You have to maintain the same eating habits that make you lose weight.
Exactly! You have to change your eating habits to a healthier standard. Fast-paced diets are doomed to failure because of your body response that I explained. Losing weight is all about finding an healthy diet that you won't give up after having lost weight.
Indeed, changing habits in general seems to be a better approach than any 'fast' tricks.
That said, Could there be at least some benefit to the fast diet in that you get to experience what it's like to have lost (significant) weight?
It seems to be a common experience with addictions of various kinds that merely having had the (recent) experience of 'being clean' can be a great motivator to do it again or try and maintain it, because part of the problem is not remembering what things were like pre-addiction. It's not a magical solution, but it helps.
From my own experiences with bouts of depression, simply experiencing joy again, even briefly, would make me remember what it was like pre-depression, and would often be a first step towards 'recovery'.
yeah.. that's the part that's tough for me. I'm not fat or anything but a few times I've lost 15-20 pounds and been in excellent shape... every time I eventually lose that drive and gain it back.
For a start, cut the sugar. Especially from sugary drinks: a non-diet soda can has ~40g of sugar (10 teaspoons), which is really awful. There's a reason for why there's no sugar daily recommended value, and is because that value is 0.
Then, make sure to consume enough soluble and insoluble dietary fiber. To stay healthy you need not only to assimilate nutrients, but also your body needs to get rid of byproducts. Fiber facilitates that process.
Then, instead of eating less, you can also replace ingredients and eat more frequently. There's an energy cost to eating, and eating more frequently makes you spend more energy. By replacing ingredients I mean cutting butter and cheese and replace it with tofu, full eggs by egg whites, for instance.
Then, drink water with your meals. Filling yourself with water can help you trick your brain into believing you are full.
Then, there's the bacteria in your gut and that affects what is going on when you eat. I think it's a very important aspect that needs to be considered but I have no idea how to take action around this specific part. Probiotics might help.
Finally, starving yourself not necessarily works. Some people might end their diet and go back to overeating. Then, starving yourself might have negative side effects.
> Then, there's the bacteria in your gut and that affects what is going on when you eat. I think it's a very important aspect that needs to be considered but I have no idea how to take action around this specific part
Your suggestions to reduce sugar and increase dietary fibre will help a lot with gut flora.
Dead on! According to his own description, he was eating "salmon, peanut butter, pork chops, apples, tomatoes, chicken with the skin, tofu, eggs", which looks to me like a regular low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diet as described, for example, here: http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb
By the way, high-fat doesn't mean you have to "snack on entire sticks of butter" as the author suggests. Just eating the naturally-occurring fat in foods such as meat and dairy will usually do, and that's what most experts recommend.
I'm 34 and have been slowly getting fatter over the past couple of years despite regular attempts to "get back in shape".
I tried a low carb diet a few months ago and it has worked for me.
I dont eat any sugar, bread, potatoes, rice, pasta etc. But I can still treat myself to fatty stuff like greek yogurt, hummus, sausages, cheeseburgers (with no bun) etc.
ps. Its great to see a psychologist talking about the brain! Psychology seems to be growing up.
Just because one is considered "optimal", the other needn't be "impossible".
Bodyfat is tissue and so carries a certain cost to maintain. Why do so when all of a sudden a massive abundance of fatty acids is ingested on the daily. Plus: when you first near-eliminate carbs after decades of eating them, no amount of safe gluconeogenesis can keep up with the initially-still-high glucose demands of all tissues and mitochondria (until over time they "adapt" themselves to burn mostly/near-only fatty acids and/or ketones). This takes quite a while to complete to perfection, and the still-much-needed glucose can in the meantime be furnished by breaking down body-fat into triglycerides (no harm in doing that since so much fat is coming in already), turning two glycerin backbones into one glucose molecule, and keep the free fatty acids circulating or discard them.
I've lost weight and kept it off for years by using a similar method. Sometimes the weight just seemed to melt off, though I've had to tweak a few times to get to my current weight. I was nearly obese at one time, and am now no where near overweight. With each of these changes came some weight loss and habit changes. Basically, all I found was to learn what works with your body and build healthier food habits.
First, I started eating less meat. This was mostly due to having gall bladder surgery: Afterwards digestion of those fats was more difficult. Though this improved, the habit stuck.
I started eating more vegetables. I didn't cut fat or carbs or anything, just added in vegetables. A few formerly disliked vegetables are now in my pallet. I figured out I could like a lot of foods simply by repeated exposure.
I eventually went mostly vegetarian. I eat fish once or twice a week and meat substitutes. I don't suggest this unless it fits with you, but I feel better and enjoy foods more. I did similar things with other foods - eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juice, whole grain pasta and better breads. I still dislike milk.
I cut out soda. I didn't really plan to for weight loss, but after a while it tasted syrupy. I now only occasionally (every 1-2 months) drink it. I eventually cut out sugar from coffee, more for simplicity in ordering.
I started cooking daily, and if I want a certain food, I just plan to make it or buy it. I eat candy regularly, for example. I eat until I am very full every night. Most meals are simple, but I do make my own bread. This is more habit building than anything, but I found I enjoy food more and nearly always feel satisfied. It helped moving to a country with less ready-made foods.
I paid attention to when I am the most hungry. For me, no matter how much I eat during the day, I want a good deal of food in the evening meal, and generally want a nightly snack. I figured it was silly to eat lots during the day, and the my snacking habits just kept me going. Breakfast is usually black coffee. I might eat a piece of bread with a slice of cheese a few hours after waking, but otherwise I just eat a handful of chips, nuts, fruit, or something similar. The snacking habit really started from laziness and simplicity, but it works.
As far as exercise is concerned, I don't like it. But my main form of transportation is walking, and I gained slightly when I stopped having places to go, so I might have to actually make an effort to do this more often.
Yeah, I did walk quite a bit. I was pretty tired at first, but got very used to it. We didn't have a vehicle until a couple months ago and it isn't worth it to drive in town. Besides, I'm not legal to drive here yet. A single bus ride costs more than a latte here, and I didn't want to spend the money on a bus pass. Especially when it didn't really seem to save myself much time. So walking has been my main form of transportation for a few years.
My average commute for a long while was around 30 minutes one way, 5 days a week with a backpack, plus walking to the grocery store a few times a week (10-15 minutes) and the occasional walk to the town center - about 50 minutes one way.
I'm in mid-Norway, so the terrain is hilly to steep inclines. The city is big for norway - about 180-200k people. I do a lot of walking in the cold - I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not, but some things suggest it does make a difference.
For me personally this worked quite well for reducing bodyfat:
Intermitted fasting[1] and lifting weights 3 times a week[2] and being on a cutting regime[3] (cutting on the rest days with low carb and loading on the workout days wiht more carbs).
In the beginning IF was quite difficult but after a while the body get used to it and also I tend to have less cravings during the day. On the loading days/workout days I often have a hard time to get enoug calories because I feel full. I am using MyFitnessPal to track what I eat but it's more about the macros and not so much about the exact calories (but it's also good to get a feeling how much calories different kinds of food has)
Fasting has been a godsend for me. Not only is it great for losing weight if you can handle it (it gets much easier with time), but I feel noticeably sharper and more productive when I fast.
It's fascinating how ingrained the concept of constant eating is in Western civilization. You can lose 100 pounds and keep it off, but tell people you fast and it's "but what about starvation mode? You need to eat 6 times a day or you'll die." Tell others you skip breakfast and some people actually get offended.
I am trying intermitted fasting: fasting 14-15 hours daily and up to 22 hours occasionally.
Do not see any changes in my body at all.
What it did help with was curbing my occasional binge eating, reducing cravings, and helping to realise that I do not need all time and I won't die if I go without a food for a while :)
While these were great psychological consequences, nothing changed on the physical side :(
what am I doing wrong?
I also count calories but I have a cheat day every week.
I feel intermitted fastening is a bit overrated and not super useful without other pats like the ones you mentioned.
Yeah ultimately it depends on what you try to achieve.
If you wan to reduce weight/bodyfat (note that there is a difference between these two), it's mostly all about whether you are in caloric deficit or not. IF helps with that because it's much harder to overeat in the 8 hour than when you eat the entire day. IF is also quite easy to stick to (at least for me). I just skip breakfest and don't eaet after 8pm. But in order to see more physical change I would highly recommend to either lift weights or do some HIIT.
Check the leangains.com guides on IF and workout.
Edit: Also it takes a while until you see change on your body (was the same for me), so keep going.
Losing weight is not as impossible a mission as the author makes out. Plenty of people on /r/loseit who have lost significant weight. All reduced calories and almost all used myfitnesspal to track them.
do you know the long term success rate though? I've lost over 50 pounds and kept it off for a couple of years, but my body eventually went back to it's normal weight.
The main thesis of this article, as stated directly by the subtitle, is that "hunger isn’t in your stomach or your blood-sugar levels. It’s in your mind – and that’s where we need to shape up". Interestingly enough, the author then proceeds to tell us that he changed his diet to something that looks a lot like a regular low-carb diet, and lost a lot of weight, without having much hunger or cravings.
That low-carb diets reduce hunger and thus often bring people to eat less has been known for quite a while. Gary Taubes' NYT article from 2002, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" [1] describes this phenomenon in detail, and tells how it's been known to researchers for already quite some time. The explanation however, doesn't seem to be merely "psychological" but rather physiological: in Taubes' words "[Sugar, starches and floor] are known in the jargon as high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, which means they are absorbed quickly into the blood. As a result, they cause a spike of blood sugar and a surge of insulin within minutes. The resulting rush of insulin stores the blood sugar away and a few hours later, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate. As [David] Ludwig [a Harvard endocrinologist] explains, your body effectively thinks it has run out of fuel, but the insulin is still high enough to prevent you from burning your own fat. The result is hunger and a craving for more carbohydrates."
Personally, I moved to a low-carb style of nutrition about two years ago and, lost about 8kg over a period of several months and have managed to keep the low weight ever since, without suffering hunger or cravings. It may not sound like much, but I wasn't obese to start with but towards the high end of the normal BMI range, whereas now I'm right in the middle of the range with a weight I hadn't have since my early 20s (I'm 45 now). My nutrition style is like the one explained in this website [2] which, incidentally, looks pretty much like the diet described in the article.
My technique has been: eat only when you're hungry, instead of succumbing to imposed eating schedules (breakfast time, lunch time, dinner time). It has worked well for me.
I found that this is a battle that is largely won/lost in the supermarket. I eat whatever is available at home...so if I can keep my sht together for those 30 mins of shopping then it'll be fine. And realistically 30 mins...you can force that via pure power of will.
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[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 118 ms ] threadWhich is why eating slowly and preferring things that digest slowly is so immediately effective at reducing calorie intake (and thereby reducing weight). (As a bonus, it also reduces sugar high/crash minor mood swings.)
...wait, what?
.
I've noticed at least three kinds of being hungry. One is the "sugar crash" variety, one is the "oh, I forgot to eat this morning. That's what's wrong with me" kind, and one is the "not eating for a weekend actually kind of sucks and I am never doing this experiment again" type.
.
(Also, I experimented with calorie counting for a while. Write everything down immediately in advance -- the same principle I discovered in order to avoid "wait, what did I do this week" for my timesheets at work -- and it works fine.)
I've experienced this quite a bit, especially if I happen to be too busy to feel the passage of time or have no clocks within sight.
All rings true to me and a moderate shift in diet can have a big impact for the very obese. If you are only a little bit fat and your diet is already reasonably clean though, then I'm not sure how well this works. The thinner you get the more sacrifices you need to make to lose the next pound.
It's all wild speculation on his part wrapped up in speculative scientific language.
Maybe he is right, but your reaction is precisely what we need to stop doing.
While many scientists would scoff at him making this argument outside of the scholarly journal orbit, it's actually a pretty good place to do it. Many scientists I know read broadly, and many decision makers at funding organizations are looking for ideas and perspectives wherever they find them, not just in journals. Especially as, in most journals, this would have gotten promptly rejected as the "study" wasn't scientific. But the point is made and shouldn't be ignored (IMHO).
On the other hand eating can be form of self medication. If there is low level of depression or something else unsatisfying in life, food triggers the release of serotonin. In my experience there may be experiences of "losing meaning" if you fast or are in a low calorie diet. If somebody suffers from depression, the willpower to avoid snacking may not be there.
Much has been written about the French Paradox[1] but my belief is that it's not so much about the individual ingredients' metabolic properties as it is about the art of not only crafting but appreciating meals. Savor each bite. Chew and eat slowly. Think about the food you are eating instead of trying to ignore it.
An Italian friend had once remarqued to me about his traditional family dinners where, not only was there an amazing spread of food, people would spend almost all the meal talking about the food. I have to confess doing the same in many cases.
I believe this is the biggest problem with American diets: we try to abstract away the taste and focus on a feature list (anti oxydants, low-carb, high-this, low-that) and all the while rely on poor shortcuts for actual taste. Those poor shortcuts are of course sugar, salt and fat. My French background earns me a perception that I'm a food snob. Perhaps that's true. But things don't need to have fancy preparations to be appreciated, in fact less processing is usually more. I can appreciate the favor of unseasoned steamed rice at a Japanese restaurant, or fresh tomatoes from the garden with no seasoning.
And yes, over time, you will start craving higher-quality ingredients, for the simple reason you can taste the difference. But again, it's a matter of being appreciative, whether it's an elaborate preparation or a simple unseasoned ingredient.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
I did this to enforce discipline and consistency, but now that I'm there I'd like to start introducing some more advanced cooking techniques and flavours. Where do I start? I'd love to be able to make some advanced platters for guests in the future.
I've essentially completely squeezed out all fun from food and broke down the entire process.
If you're strictly interested in techniques, I like Keys to Good Cooking by Harold McGee. If you're brave, you can read through his magnum opus, On Food and Cooking, which goes through all the science. Keys to Good Cooking is sort of the cliffs notes version and just tells you what you need to know. But there are no recipes in either.
Then there's Joy of Cooking. It's an old standby and it's hard to go wrong with it. There's tons of information in there.
Lastly, look into anything by America's Test Kitchen. It's sort of the polar opposite of Nigel Slater's approach. They test every recipe, sometimes ~100 variations, to try to find the precise recipe that they think works best. If you want a recipe that you know will just work, it's probably the best place to start.
I like to cook and eat a pretty wide variety of food which helps. Dal Bhat (lentils with curry spice eaten by Tibetan mountainers) has become one of my staples. Strength training is also important, but I don't expect to get stronger; just maintain. I still drink a fair amount of beer 1-3 days a week and occasionally eat poorly with friends (maybe every other week), but it hasn't seemed to be a big problem.
Without sufficient time investment and having been through situations where you simply don't have discipline for a few months, anything you do has no value and no proof. Because if you fail in these two terms you will end up with more weight than before your attempt.
However; it doesn't really feel like discipline -- it's just how I eat at this point. I can report back in a few months, I imagine I'll have to start working my way back to eating enough to gain strength again around then. I experienced an event to the scale of my dog dying last month, but I imagine a divorce could be somewhat more taxing.
I have frequently cut bf for sports using a range of diets (keto, low fat, IF). I actually enjoy dieting - the precision, the discipline, the visible progress, going to bed every night "a winner" etc. When dieting I don't crave junk and the hunger pains quickly go away... however, after 16 weeks on a strict diet when my bf approaches 10%, that is when I get ambushed by a terrible appetite for junk. I will wake up at 02:00 with a knawing craving for donuts or other foods that I don't even enjoy. I won't be able to sleep and have to lie there for hours fantasising about them. I can brute force my way through it for a couple of miserable months but the appetite stays until I have regained bf at which point I lose interest in junk food again.
You are on the easy bit for now but the consequence of fat loss is that at some point, your body will flip the ghrelin switch and you will become an unstoppable eating machine until you have yoyo'd back to or beyond your starting position. In my experience, the rebound is related to time and bf rather than the actual dieting method. Its probably genetic, i.e. some people won't experience this but I think most do which is why most attempts at fat loss don't stick.
My suspicion is that There's so much conflicting information on weight loss that I'm not sure if it will work, but my plan is to start tapering off the diet 50-100 calories a week as I approach that point to determine my new maintainence intake and maybe speed metabolism back up.
However; after a little research, I think my current diet may be succeeding (in short-term) largely from a large increase in resting metabolism from strength training (and no longer eating a surplus to build that muscle).
They can't be serious. Six days? A really 'representative' timeframe right there...
It doesn't really speak to the long-term effects (I think the OP pushed that study too much in the article).
Actually the "biggest loser" wonderfully proves that point, and was described in that well-written New York Times article that is worth a million times more reading than the "hunger mood": http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weigh...
That said, Could there be at least some benefit to the fast diet in that you get to experience what it's like to have lost (significant) weight?
It seems to be a common experience with addictions of various kinds that merely having had the (recent) experience of 'being clean' can be a great motivator to do it again or try and maintain it, because part of the problem is not remembering what things were like pre-addiction. It's not a magical solution, but it helps.
From my own experiences with bouts of depression, simply experiencing joy again, even briefly, would make me remember what it was like pre-depression, and would often be a first step towards 'recovery'.
Isn't that exactly what the article is saying? Where is the deception?
He even takes a swipe at the "biggest loser" too
Then, make sure to consume enough soluble and insoluble dietary fiber. To stay healthy you need not only to assimilate nutrients, but also your body needs to get rid of byproducts. Fiber facilitates that process.
Then, instead of eating less, you can also replace ingredients and eat more frequently. There's an energy cost to eating, and eating more frequently makes you spend more energy. By replacing ingredients I mean cutting butter and cheese and replace it with tofu, full eggs by egg whites, for instance.
Then, drink water with your meals. Filling yourself with water can help you trick your brain into believing you are full.
Then, there's the bacteria in your gut and that affects what is going on when you eat. I think it's a very important aspect that needs to be considered but I have no idea how to take action around this specific part. Probiotics might help.
Finally, starving yourself not necessarily works. Some people might end their diet and go back to overeating. Then, starving yourself might have negative side effects.
Your suggestions to reduce sugar and increase dietary fibre will help a lot with gut flora.
By the way, high-fat doesn't mean you have to "snack on entire sticks of butter" as the author suggests. Just eating the naturally-occurring fat in foods such as meat and dairy will usually do, and that's what most experts recommend.
https://postimg.org/image/5qx79cmtn/
I dont eat any sugar, bread, potatoes, rice, pasta etc. But I can still treat myself to fatty stuff like greek yogurt, hummus, sausages, cheeseburgers (with no bun) etc.
ps. Its great to see a psychologist talking about the brain! Psychology seems to be growing up.
Bodyfat is tissue and so carries a certain cost to maintain. Why do so when all of a sudden a massive abundance of fatty acids is ingested on the daily. Plus: when you first near-eliminate carbs after decades of eating them, no amount of safe gluconeogenesis can keep up with the initially-still-high glucose demands of all tissues and mitochondria (until over time they "adapt" themselves to burn mostly/near-only fatty acids and/or ketones). This takes quite a while to complete to perfection, and the still-much-needed glucose can in the meantime be furnished by breaking down body-fat into triglycerides (no harm in doing that since so much fat is coming in already), turning two glycerin backbones into one glucose molecule, and keep the free fatty acids circulating or discard them.
First, I started eating less meat. This was mostly due to having gall bladder surgery: Afterwards digestion of those fats was more difficult. Though this improved, the habit stuck.
I started eating more vegetables. I didn't cut fat or carbs or anything, just added in vegetables. A few formerly disliked vegetables are now in my pallet. I figured out I could like a lot of foods simply by repeated exposure.
I eventually went mostly vegetarian. I eat fish once or twice a week and meat substitutes. I don't suggest this unless it fits with you, but I feel better and enjoy foods more. I did similar things with other foods - eat fruit instead of drinking fruit juice, whole grain pasta and better breads. I still dislike milk.
I cut out soda. I didn't really plan to for weight loss, but after a while it tasted syrupy. I now only occasionally (every 1-2 months) drink it. I eventually cut out sugar from coffee, more for simplicity in ordering.
I started cooking daily, and if I want a certain food, I just plan to make it or buy it. I eat candy regularly, for example. I eat until I am very full every night. Most meals are simple, but I do make my own bread. This is more habit building than anything, but I found I enjoy food more and nearly always feel satisfied. It helped moving to a country with less ready-made foods.
I paid attention to when I am the most hungry. For me, no matter how much I eat during the day, I want a good deal of food in the evening meal, and generally want a nightly snack. I figured it was silly to eat lots during the day, and the my snacking habits just kept me going. Breakfast is usually black coffee. I might eat a piece of bread with a slice of cheese a few hours after waking, but otherwise I just eat a handful of chips, nuts, fruit, or something similar. The snacking habit really started from laziness and simplicity, but it works.
As far as exercise is concerned, I don't like it. But my main form of transportation is walking, and I gained slightly when I stopped having places to go, so I might have to actually make an effort to do this more often.
My average commute for a long while was around 30 minutes one way, 5 days a week with a backpack, plus walking to the grocery store a few times a week (10-15 minutes) and the occasional walk to the town center - about 50 minutes one way.
I'm in mid-Norway, so the terrain is hilly to steep inclines. The city is big for norway - about 180-200k people. I do a lot of walking in the cold - I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not, but some things suggest it does make a difference.
Intermitted fasting[1] and lifting weights 3 times a week[2] and being on a cutting regime[3] (cutting on the rest days with low carb and loading on the workout days wiht more carbs).
In the beginning IF was quite difficult but after a while the body get used to it and also I tend to have less cravings during the day. On the loading days/workout days I often have a hard time to get enoug calories because I feel full. I am using MyFitnessPal to track what I eat but it's more about the macros and not so much about the exact calories (but it's also good to get a feeling how much calories different kinds of food has)
[1] http://www.leangains.com/2011/03/intermittent-fasting-for-we... [2] http://stronglifts.com/ [3] http://www.lgmacros.com/standard-leangains-macro-calculator/
It's fascinating how ingrained the concept of constant eating is in Western civilization. You can lose 100 pounds and keep it off, but tell people you fast and it's "but what about starvation mode? You need to eat 6 times a day or you'll die." Tell others you skip breakfast and some people actually get offended.
in my case (see my other comment in this thread) I do not feel it gives me any benefits in terms of body, only psychological ones.
What it did help with was curbing my occasional binge eating, reducing cravings, and helping to realise that I do not need all time and I won't die if I go without a food for a while :) While these were great psychological consequences, nothing changed on the physical side :(
what am I doing wrong?
I also count calories but I have a cheat day every week. I feel intermitted fastening is a bit overrated and not super useful without other pats like the ones you mentioned.
Edit: Also it takes a while until you see change on your body (was the same for me), so keep going.
how long did it take you to see changes with IF? I have been doing it maybe about 6 months already...
meanwhile, will go and read leangains.com :)
Also, calling your overweight self normal weight is probably a bad mentality for long term weight loss goals.
That low-carb diets reduce hunger and thus often bring people to eat less has been known for quite a while. Gary Taubes' NYT article from 2002, "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" [1] describes this phenomenon in detail, and tells how it's been known to researchers for already quite some time. The explanation however, doesn't seem to be merely "psychological" but rather physiological: in Taubes' words "[Sugar, starches and floor] are known in the jargon as high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, which means they are absorbed quickly into the blood. As a result, they cause a spike of blood sugar and a surge of insulin within minutes. The resulting rush of insulin stores the blood sugar away and a few hours later, your blood sugar is lower than it was before you ate. As [David] Ludwig [a Harvard endocrinologist] explains, your body effectively thinks it has run out of fuel, but the insulin is still high enough to prevent you from burning your own fat. The result is hunger and a craving for more carbohydrates."
Personally, I moved to a low-carb style of nutrition about two years ago and, lost about 8kg over a period of several months and have managed to keep the low weight ever since, without suffering hunger or cravings. It may not sound like much, but I wasn't obese to start with but towards the high end of the normal BMI range, whereas now I'm right in the middle of the range with a weight I hadn't have since my early 20s (I'm 45 now). My nutrition style is like the one explained in this website [2] which, incidentally, looks pretty much like the diet described in the article.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-... [2] http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb