Check out the links below!
Hungry?
I know to lose weight and be healthy I’m going to have to get used to feeling hungry often. Does this sound like you?
This is a myth. Hunger does not have to accompany weight loss nor health.
Yes, cutting calories over a long period of time is proven to extend lifespan (in rats, monkeys and humans), but most people do NOT have to go through life hungry just to lose weight or keep it off.
Dieting usually involves
- a. cutting calories,
- b. trying the latest fad diet that everyone in town is on (a.k.a cabbage soup diet), or
- c. cutting out a food or food group.
Let’s examine each of these in relation to hunger.
While simply cutting calories may work for some people initially, it usually fails in the long run. This follows the widely-accepted calories in = calories out philosophy that does not hold up to testing.
In reality, your body adjusts its energy expenditure (e.g. calories you use in a day) to the amount food eaten. In other words, if you eat less you do less. If you eat more you do more.
Therefore, if you eat less and do more you feel hungry throughout the day, you are irritable, sluggish and tired. You do not have to live like this just to lose weight!
People are satisfied with losing a measly five pounds in four to eight weeks! A drop in the bucket compared to what most need to lose.
Another scenario, the latest fad diet, usually begins with some celebrity whose picture graces the front of “Woman’s World” or “Prevention” with the great success they experienced while eating only potatoes or cabbage soup for three weeks!
Of course, the weight lost is water in that period of time and the diet is so difficult that most binge when they finish and end worse off than they started.
This, too, is related to the first in that it usually cuts calories, something we now does not work anyway! Otherwise, you are allowed unlimited amounts of leafy green vegetables or similar high fiber food.
It doesn’t work that way either.
If your body does not get what it requires each day, you will feel hungry until you satisfy it, no matter the quantity of food you have eaten.
A third option is to cut out a food or food group. This could go in any of several directions – vegetarianism/veganism, low-fat, or low-carb.
With vegetarianism and veganism, people do not eat meat and/or anything made from animals for varying reasons. With low-fat diets, people are scared to eat fats of any kind, especially the extra-scary saturated fat!
Most vegetarian/vegan diets and all low-fat diets are low in fat and very high in carbohydrates.
Remember that carbohydrate = sugar… unless it is non-digestible fiber. Otherwise, no matter the kind, simple or complex, carbohydrate = sugar. Always.
What most people do not realize is that plants contain fat too. The fat in plants appears to be much less than in animals, yet it is also the highly inflammatory omega-6 fats, especially in the grains that are staples of such diets. This includes all products made from grains, like vegetables oils (e.g. soybean oil) and margarine.
Isn’t it funny that although the government recommends low-fat diets for heart health there is not a decrease in the incidence of heart attacks or cardiovascular disease among vegetarians, vegans, or low-fat eaters? Paradox? No.
Diets high in carbohydrates are known to increase production of triglycerides and LDL. Plus, some of the inflammatory effects (i.e. immune response) of high omega-6 diets include blood clotting and cell proliferation (a.k.a. blocked arteries). Heart attack, anyone? Check out Dr.Weil’s thoughts on omega-6!
Let us now return to carbohydrates=sugar. All carbohydrates cause a release of insulin from your pancreas, which removes the sugar from your blood.
If your diet is high in carbohydrates (including “whole grains”, rice, quinoa, etc.) and insulin quickly clears out all the sugars from the blood, your blood sugar drops (of course) and your body wants more, more, more sugar. Now you feel faint, perhaps dizzy, and you must eat quickly or suffer the gnawing hunger. Wow, it’s only been two hours since your last meal! I wager you eat all the time.
The other option is to cut back on carbohydrates. Although the best-known example, the Atkin’s Diet, was discredited in its day it was and is very effective.
Insulin not only clears sugar (carbohydrates) from your blood but suppresses fat-burning and promotes fat-storage! How will you ever lose weight on a high-carbohydrate diet? You won’t… unless you cut calories, which we know causes hunger, among other effects (see above).
Cutting carbohydrates in various methods has been an effective long-term treatment for obesity for hundreds of years. This normalizes hormone levels in the blood and forces the body to run efficiently of the fat of the land, your fat tummy or tush!
Simply removing carbohydrates from your life does not solve all your problems, though, because you must replace those calories with something else or, see above, you will feel hungry, faint, and generally do less than before.
Most are scared of fat because it provides 9 Cal/g compared to the 4 Cal/g that protein and carbohydrates provide. This does not mean that eating fat makes you fat!
Fat, unlike carbohydrates and protein, does not cause a release of insulin. Fat metabolizes through a completely different mechanism and high-fat diets cause your body to run off of its preferred fuel source, fatty acids.
Guess what the fat stored in your body is? Fatty acids! Even your sugar-loving-brain can run off of fatty acids!
Eating high fat, adequate protein, and a few carbohydrates burns fat AND normalizes the ups and downs of insulin spikes and drops to prevent the gnawing hunger characteristic of high-carbohydrate, low-calorie diets. All without buying expensive diet plans and diet foods.
If this were true, you may be thinking, why hasn’t anyone (i.e. the medical community or the government) told me this before?
This may be a shocker to you, but lots of money is made off of you buying diet plans, diet products, and low-fat processed foods! You’ll always come back for more because you never achieve your desired results.
Or… if you do get the results you want and stop eating that particular packaged food/protein shake, you gain the weight back and need that medical professional or packaged food to help you yet again. Perhaps if you try harder this time… it will work.
Do you detect the vicious cycle?
For more info on the truth about fat, go here:
- What if it’s All been a Big Fat Lie?
- www.garytaubes.com
- WholeHealthSource
- Drs. Michael & Mary Dan Eades – longtime practitioners of bariatric patients plus several books
- Hyperlipid
For more info on how to up the fat in your diet and general health stuff, go here:
RECIPES! GO HERE:
- Marks Daily Apple – Here’s the picture of the Fat Guac Devils from his recipe!
- GirlGonePrimal
- Elana’s Pantry
What do you think? Leave a comment below!