Hunger free weight loss solutions, part 4....

Today's Post: Monday, 10-31-2011

It may seem impossible since most people have to cut the amount of calories they eat to lose fat.

And, most people who eat less get hungrier.

The good news is that there are several basic strategies that work.

The even better news is that learning to do them and doing enough of them consistently works!

You do lose fat. You don’t get that much hungrier than you did before. And, since everything you do is sustainable, once you do them by habit and make them a part of your upgraded lifestyle, the best news is that your fat loss will be permanent.

The most powerful strategies are these:

(We posted 5 of them in Monday’s post. These are mostly what you should do to upgrade to a nonfattening lifestyle.

Tuesday’s post, part 2, covered what NOT to eat since many of those things make you hungrier AND fatter at the same time! It also helps to stop eating or drinking things that harm you. Even better, the fattening foods and the bad for you foods are often the same or are in the same stuff!)

Last time we covered these two things.:

7. Why it’s so critical to focus most on the things to do and eat and drink and what not to.

8. Why it’s critical to underuse cutting calories.

(Exercise helps do this by doing part of the job so you don’t need as much calorie cut back. As long as you don’t overdo eating MORE or at bad things exercise allows you to cut back less and still lose fat!)

Today we cover: 9. The solutions to the remaining kinds of hunger.

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This time, we’ll cover solutions to other kinds of hunger and ways to sneak in SOME extra calorie reduction.

Last time we covered how drinking soft drinks INCLUDING diet soft drinks and eating refined grains and packaged snacks and desserts made from them cause rebound or post sugar surge hunger.

The solution is easier for some than others.

But it is simple and it prevents that kind of rebound hunger. Do NOT any longer eat or drink that stuff. Or cut it back to once to three times a month! (Once to three times a day is what makes and keeps many people fat!)

Last time we also covered the new study that found how overdoing calorie cut back both increases your hunger and then makes you eat longer before you stop being hungry! (That’s why you can make a massive effort everywhere else; but keep your extra calorie cut backs very small if you want to have permanent fat loss without getting too hungry to continue!)

Here are today’s topics:

Addictive eating and stress driven eating feel like real hunger but are not. There are proven ways to turn them off.

And, once you do the basics, there are ways to do some extra calorie reduction that tend NOT to trigger your body’s famine response.

Addictive eating is when you are so used to eating or drinking things that create extra hunger and rebound hunger, that you are addicted to doing it.

There are three solutions.

a) The best one is to really understand and know that these things cause dreadful harm to you if you eat or drink them.

Any that you have in the house pour out or toss in the trash. If you hate wasting things and are tempted to give them away, remember how the people getting them will be harmed.

b) If you are tempted later to buy or order them at a restaurant, you’ll stay addicted if you thing of how you once liked them.

But even if that’s there, if you focus on the ingredients and how they harm your health or how they’ve made and kept you fat, it can be dramatically easy to take pass.


c) If you still want treat food, follow these guidelines.:

> Dramatically drop the frequency. Once or twice a month will keep you fat far less than two or three times a day.

The author of the book, Why French Women don’t get fat, found that this was one of the key reasons!

Cut the days a week in half that you have that kind of treat. Then cut the number of times a day or the amount in half. Then cut the days in a month you have that treat in half again. (I went from over three tablespoons of sugar every day to two tablespoons 7 times a month. I still eat sugar. But I went from 105 tablespoons a month to 7

>> Only eat real food sweetened with real sugar when you have treats.

Remember why omega 6 oils and fully and partially hydrogenated oils and refined grains and high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners make you fat and help cause type 2 diabetes and heart disease. If check the label on a treat or know it came from a place that uses that stuff. Take time to remember it and avoid those foods and drinks.

>>> Eat treats that contain health OK oils or almost OK oils instead of those that contain refined grains only. Candy bars with real sugar and real butter or ice cream with real sugar and real cream only not only are far less harmful than other kinds, the butter and cream cut back the blood sugar surge from the treat.

That makes them less fattening, less harmful, and less addictive. Just remember to not eat them too often or too much at a time.

(Or have a smaller treat with some real food with health OK oils. Some raw walnut halves with a small piece of dark chocolate can be quite nice. It’s more filling and will boost your blood sugar less than no walnuts and three times as much dark chololate.)

Also see the emotional eating and stress eating below. You can reward yourself and manage stress and get relief from stress without eating food treats too.

Stress driven or emotion driven eating is when you use food – often high in sugar or fat to reward or comfort yourself.

Here again there are multiple solutions.

The guidelines above for addictive eating and treats work better than eating lots of really fattening and bad for you foods – or drinking them.

But there are some more strategies.

There are long term strategies to be under less stress.

a) Learn to work well with people. They will cause you less stress and their support or actual help on occasion will slash your stress levels!

Know and like people for their strengths. Know and remember reasons you like particular people.

Make an effort to know what they want and are trying to do and find opportunies to encourage them or even help them get it.

For most people, if they do bad things it’s because they are temporarily in a bind or in bad mood. People who know this and think of people as crabby or having a bad day instead of hateful, have dramatically less stress.

And, if you need them to stop doing something that annoys or harms you. Ask them to stop. Sometimes it helps to say how that action makes YOU feel. (But always avoid saying something that suggests they ALWAYS do this or are a bad person or calling them a name. Don’t think it to begin with. But even if you think it might be so, NEVER say it!

The effect is always like pouring gasoline on a fire. They may do something really hateful to you. Or, perhaps they may decide they really are that way. Oops! That can be even worse, because they might do MORE of that thing instead of less in the future!

If you really feel or think you MUST have them stop, give them a consequence you will do if they persist. But try asking nicely FIRST for them to stop.

b) Be prudent, well organized, and work hard when it counts.

People who do this live longer, have better health, and experience dramatically less stress.

Never text while driving. Never drive when really drunk and rarely drive when you’ve had more than a drink or two. Always wear your seat belt. Avoid following other cars so closely you haven’t time to stop or drive around them if it suddenly is important for you to do that.

The stress that these simple steps can save you is so huge it’s hard to measure. You’ll be less than half as likely to be in an accident. You’ll be way less than half as likely to be in accident that was legally your fault. And, if you ARE in an accident you are at least 3 times as likely to escape disability, death, and injury.

Always brushing and flossing your teeth at least once each day slashes your stress in your life from bad breath, toothaches, paying for false teeth and huge dental bills. It even may cut your chances of heart attack and stroke by as much as two to one!

These little seeming practices done right virtually every single time, slash some serious kinds of stress out of your life.

Then you won’t have stress eating from the stress you didn’t have to begin with!

And, you can apply the same skills of acting consistently to avoid bad consequences to your fat loss skill!

c) For some kinds of horrible stress, the best solution is to ESCAPE.

A job where it’s so stressful, you’re almost sick from the stress after you are there each day may be worth asking to be transferred to a different location or department. Or it may require spending 10 hours a week finding a better job before you quit. Some jobs, even unemployment in this economy is a better choice. But that has its own stresses, so use that one only after trying every other way to escape the problem.

A relationship where the other person is beating you up is another run for the exits situation.

Surprisingly, many people who lived to be 100 years old told of using this method at least once in their lives and credited it as a reason for their long life.

d) Almost everyone has more stress than they’d like. And there are things like earthquakes and tornados and the like that can cause very significant stress to anybody exposed to them.

If real disaster strikes, be glad it wasn’t worse; and think through what you can still do to make things better. Then systematically rise to the challenge of doing those things. Start right away and keep going. They call it resilience. But that’s what does it for you.

The other mercifully more common thing is to have ordinary stresses but have trouble turning off the fight or flight emotional response when you aren’t actually being stressed right then.

That one tends do cause emotional or stress driven eating. The best solution is to have a practice -- or several of them! – that allows you to turn off the fight or flight physical response that you do when this happens or do every day no matter what.

The information I’ve read suggests that regular practice of Tai Chi is the best way to do this. It was tested best for lowering high blood pressure. It has been found to have multiple other health benefits from stronger bones and better balance and more. And, best of all for people working to take fat off and keep it off, every minute you do Tai Chi burns as many calories as walking!

That said, some people have gotten similar results from yoga. And for people who have the time for it and get good at it spending more time each day than needed for yoga or Tai Chi meditating can help.

Much shorter meditations do less; but some people might find them enough to prevent stress driven eating.

Similarly many kinds of stress relief are enjoyable recreations. Take a hot bath. Read a favorite book for half an hour. Go shopping or window shopping if you like it and have the time.

Have ONE alcoholic drink when you get home from work on some days. (Alcoholic drinks have calories and drinking too much can cause things that INCREASE stress. But one drink can be far better than pigging out on 3 servings of a treat food. It’s less calories and it actually lowers stress faster, more reliably, and lowers stress more!

In addition, red wine has other health benefits. This is one reason why the Mediterranean diet has the health benefits that it does.

Reward or celebratory eating is another kind that many men find can be a problem.

Ideas to use.

Do it but make up for it 100 % later by covering ALL the extra calories with temporary eating less or extra exercise or both. Or simply go back to more disciplined eating but make sure to do it for at least a week with no other exceptions.

Better is to do half of what you feel like with food or drink and do something else to celebrate. Buy something. Treat a friend to something. Get some extra sleep or do one less chore this one time.

Best is to have same treat or drink that you would have normally had that day; but share it with someone you like or who will be pleased for you for what you are celebrating.

Some of these solutions are easy enough you can do them this week with no problem. Others like learning Tai Chi or getting a less stressful but decent job may take longer.

But the more of them you do, the less stress related eating you’ll do – or need to do.

Next time we’ll cover ways to do some extra calorie cutting but which do NOT cause your body to jump into famine response mode.