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/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Roussell
This is a great article on the effects of the weekend on your fat loss efforts. It is a bit of a “no duh” conclusion, but it is
interesting nonetheless.
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Weekends are dieter’s worst nightmare
Belleville News-Democrat, Ill.
Jul. 8–ST. LOUIS This probably won’t come as a big shock, but science now has proven that weekends can wreak havoc on your waistline.
That’s the conclusion of Washington University researchers, who found that even people on strict diet and exercise programs lose weight more slowly than expected because they eat more on weekends. The findings are in the advance online publication of the journal Obesity.
Past studies have shown that people tend to gain weight during holidays, particularly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. This is the first study to monitor daily body weight, calorie intake and calorie expenditure for several weeks throughout the year. The verdict: People don’t need a holiday to eat more; they tend to do it every weekend.
“We thought weekends would present a problem for some people attempting to lose weight, but the consistency of our findings before and during the interventions was surprising,” said Dr. Susan Racette, the study’s first author and an associate professor of physical therapy and medicine. “Subjects in the diet group lost weight during the week, but over the weekend, they stopped losing weight because they were eating more.”
The researchers followed 48 adults ages 50-60 who took part in the CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy) study. The study is designed to determine whether taking in fewer calories over an extended period can slow or reverse disease and aging.
“But rats don’t have weekends the way people do,” Racette said. “On weekends, human lifestyle patterns can be very different. People have social events, parties to attend, and if they have children who play sports, they might be at fields all day long, relying on concession stands for food.”
Those in the study were divided into three groups: One lowered daily calorie consumption by 20 percent, another increased physical activity by 20 percent and a third did not change lifestyle habits. Even though all three groups were tracked closely for a year, some didn’t realize they were eating significantly more on weekends.
“It was surprising how consistent the findings were,” she said. “We also were surprised by the dramatic way in which weekends continued to slow weight loss throughout the course of the study.”
Before the study started, researchers found that the participants consumed less than 35 percent of their calories from fat during the week but increased that to an average of more than 36 percent on Saturdays. Following such a dietary regimen would have led to an annual increase of 9 pounds on weekends alone.
When participants were asked either to cut calories or increase activity by 20 percent, the pattern remained the same. Those in the calorie restriction group ate more on Saturday while those who boosted their exercise ate more on Saturday and Sunday. As a result, the first group stopped losing weight on weekends while the second group actually showed weight gains.
“People on diets often don’t lose as much weight as we would expect, and this finding helps to explain why,” Racette said.
As the study moves into its second phase, researchers now recommend that participants weigh themselves daily to be more sensitive to their weight fluctuations, particularly on weekends. For everyone else, Racette recommends moderation and careful planning to avoid weekend pitfalls, including packing healthy food if you’re running errands, eating a little something before a party, and packing a light lunch to take to your kids’ games.
“Planning ahead can’t be emphasized enough,” she said. “In addition, paying closer attention to portion sizes can enable a person to enjoy the weekend without sabotaging weight-control efforts.”
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To lose weight even on the weekends, check out the diet plan I used to lose 80 pounds in 8 months here.
Ok, so I have to admit I watched a movie this weekend that I normally wouldn’t watch – Tyler Perry’s “Why Did I Get Married” I’m a big romantic comedy fan…no joke I’ve seen every Hugh Grant movie ever made 
But this movie seemed a little too deep/dramatic for me just from reading the description. But since my wife wanted to watch it, and there wasn’t much else worth watching on the 1500+ channels we have, I decided to make my way through it. All in all it was ok, but there was one plot line that caught my attention.
The story is about 4 couples (plus, as it turns out, one mistress) who make their way to Colorado for a yearly reunion. One of the couples was a threesome, a husband named Mike, his obese wife Sheila and Sheila’s “friend” (aka the mistress) Trina. As each couple made their way to a remote Colorado cabin the movie shifted to show their travel travails.
Mike, Sheila and Trina were planning on flying together…that is until Mike made his wife take the middle seat in the row in front of them. Sheila was subsequently removed from the flight because airline policy required someone of her size to purchase two seats, and the plane was oversold. So what did Mike do? He gives his wife cash to rent a car and drive up to meet them!
Long story short:
- Sheila survives the drive through a snowstorm thanks to the single, good-looking sheriff who sees her for who she is rather than how she looks
- Mike verbally and psychologically abuses his wife once she arrives due to her weight
- Mike reveals he is cheating and his desire for a divorce (and divulges the secrets of the other couples, too)
- Sheila stays behind to start her life over, falls in love with the sheriff and marries him, and loses weight
- Sheila and Troy (sheriff) run into Mike at another function, where Mike realizes the mistakes he has made, but Sheila has moved on
Take aways…
- Abuse does not serve as a motivator to an overweight person. In fact it often has the opposite effect.
- Even socially awkward situations, like discrimination on an airline, don’t always provide the necessary incentive for someone to lose weight.
- As strong a feeling as revenge can be (you know, the “I’ll show him what he missed out on” line of thinking), that still isn’t enough to get a person over the hurdles that they face.
- If a person really wants to lose weight and make a positive change on their life, the best thing to do is support them in every way possible. Troy offered to have Sheila come work out with him (after she was oggling his physique), he went on walks with her, and he made her feel special…and she ended up losing weight. If you truly love someone and you care about their well-being, you need to find a way to give them the support they need. And emotional support is frequently overlooked but is absolutely critical to weight loss success.
Ok, so watching this move wasn’t a complete waste of time
