by Michael Roussell
A major issue with dieting is dealing with feeling hungry. Losing weight has a large mental component to it and dealing with hunger is a major road block for many people. The inability to deal with hunger while dieting can be one of the biggest reasons why many people fail on their diets. They can’t deal with the hunger and thus end up snacking and eating foods not on their plan. This leads to consuming too many calories and no weight loss.
Fortunately there are several things that you can do to help harness your hunger pangs so that you can stay in a caloric deficit and continue to lose weight. How do we do this? Just trick your body into thinking that it is full and that it is eating more food/calories than it really is.
The first thing you can do it eat more green leafy (spinach, kale, lettuce) and/or fibrous vegetables (broccoli, asparagus, brussels sprouts, etc). These kinds of vegetables have a lot of ‘bulk’ to them but not a lot of calories. A lot of the bulk is actually just extra water within the vegetables. This means you can eat a lot more food without consuming extra calories. You actually trick your body in two different ways. The first is visually. There is a big difference from a psychological perspective when you sit down to eat a plate overflowing with food vs. a plate that just has a few pieces scattered on it.
The second trick occurs in your stomach. Your stomach has stretch receptors that signal the brain, letting it know your stomach is full and that you should stop eating. These receptors don’t sense calories, they sense volume. Eating lots of green leafy and fibrous vegetables will activate these stretch receptors and you’ll feel full even on fewer calories.
The next ‘eat less feel full’ strategy is to eat protein with every meal. Protein does a couple different things to make your body feel fuller. First, eating protein does not cause a blood sugar roller coaster as with eating carbohydrates. Eating lots of carbohydrates will cause your blood sugar to rise and then fall. The fall in blood sugar will signal your brain that you need to eat – this especially occurs when eating white processed carbs.
Protein also stimulates the release of a compound called CCK (Cholecystokinin). CCK is a satiety peptide hormone that when released can interact with your nervous system to signal your brain that you have had enough to eat.
As you can see these two simple strategies – eat more green leafy vegetables and consume protein at every meal are very simple but they have complex biological and biochemical repercussions which signal your body that you have had enough to eat. Controlling hunger is key and these dietary ‘hacks’ will help you maximize satiety while dieting, control hunger, and lose weight.
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Mike Roussell is an author and nutrition doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University. Mike writings can be found in Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness and Ironman Magazines in addition to the internet’s largest bodybuilding and fitness website – T-Nation.com. Learn more at http://www.warpspeedfatloss.com/
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Dieters who write down everything they eat each day lose twice as much weight as those who don’t, according to one of the largest weight-loss studies ever conducted.
Scientists at four clinical research centers recruited 1,685 overweight or obese adults who weighed an average 212 pounds.
The participants were offered 20 weekly group sessions led by nutritionists and behavior counselors and encouraged to try to lose
at least 9 pounds in six months. They were told to consume about 500 fewer calories a day, eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, do
about 180 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, and keep daily food and exercise records.
Dieters who kept their food diary six or more days a week lost an average of about 18 pounds in six months, compared with about 9 pounds for those who didn’t keep food diaries.
I encourage you to keep a log of exactly what you are eating on a daily basis for the first couple of weeks after starting a fat loss
program. It truly is eye opening for many people! However, it can become distracting after a while, especially when you are
on-the-go. Once you have a consistent menu mapped out, it is not as critical to continue to log everything. But if you find that it
makes you more accountable, then by all means, keep writing it down!
For a fat loss diet that includes an easy-to-use diary to track your food intake, check out my plan The Burrito Diet!
Before choking down a quick bite, have a seat. People who snack while sitting at a set table eat fewer calories in their next meal than people who are snacking on-the-go, according to a Canadian study. Researchers served identical portions of soup with crackers, a sandwich, yogurt and fruit to study participants, who either ate while standing at a counter or at a cloth-covered table. Those who were seated consumed a third less calories when returning for dinner. When you feel like you are eating a formal meal, it makes you feel like you are eating more than you actually are, increasing your satiety levels, according to the study’s author.
Eating soup as an appetizer will cut your calorie intake for that meal by 20 percent according to a study conducted at Penn State. After serving men pasta lunches for a month, the researchers found that the study participants ate an average of 135 fewer calories when they started their meal with 1 1/2 cups of a broth-based vegetable soup (approximately 150 calories of soup). Eating soup forces you to slow down, allowing your body to recognize that it is becoming full before moving on to the next course. The same held true in a University of Texas study of fatty soups like a clam chowder – men consumed 227 fewer calories when a pizza meal was preceded by soup.
So drink up a cup of homemade vegetable soup before your lunch and dinner as a sneaky way to get vegetables into your daily diet and to help you eat less overall calories.
Just because a box of cookies says “reduced fat” doesn’t mean you should eat it! But what do those frequently seen buzzwords actually mean? Below is a table with the claims and the related FDA guidelines:
| Claim | Requirements that must be met before using the claim in food labeling |
|---|---|
| Fat-Free | Less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving, with no added fat or oil |
| Low fat | 3 grams or less of fat per serving |
| Less fat | 25% or less fat than the comparison food |
| Saturated Fat Free | Less than 0.5 grams of saturated fat and 0.5 grams of trans-fatty acids per serving |
| Cholesterol-Free | Less than 2 mg cholesterol per serving, and 2 grams or less saturated fat per serving |
| Low Cholesterol | 20 mg or less cholesterol per serving and 2 grams or less saturated fat per serving |
| Reduced Calorie | At least 25% fewer calories per serving than the comparison food |
| Low Calorie | 40 calories or less per serving |
| Extra Lean | Less than 5 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol per (100 gram) serving of meat, poultry or seafood |
| Lean | Less than 10 grams of fat, 4.5 g of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol per (100 gram) serving of meat, poultry or seafood |
| Light (fat) | 50% or less of the fat than in the comparison food (ex: 50% less fat than our regular cheese) |
| Light (calories) | 1/3 fewer calories than the comparison food |
| High-Fiber | 5 grams or more fiber per serving |
| Sugar-Free | Less than 0.5 grams of sugar per serving |
| Sodium-Free or Salt-Free | Less than 5 mg of sodium per serving |
| Low Sodium | 140 mg or less per serving |
| Very Low Sodium | 35 mg or less per serving |
| Healthy | A food low in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium, and contains at least 10% of the Daily Values for vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, protein or fiber. |
| “High”, “Rich in” or “Excellent Source” | 20% or more of the Daily Value for a given nutrient per serving |
| “Less”, “Fewer” or “Reduced” |
At least 25% less of a given nutrient or calories than the comparison food |
| “Low”, “Little”, “Few”, or “Low Source of” | An amount that would allow frequent consumption of the food without exceeding the Daily Value for the nutrient – but can only make the claim as it applies to all similar foods |
| “Good Source Of”, “More”, or “Added” | The food provides 10% more of the Daily Value for a given nutrient than the comparison food |
