Hunger free weight loss solutions....

Today's Post: Monday, 10-24-2011

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:

1. Slow and steady wins the race! Why?

Most of us are descended from people who survived not one but multiple famines. So, if we cut back too much or too fast, our body’s failsafe famine response gets triggered.

We get too hungry to ignore. We get hungriest for sugary and fatty foods. We burn fewer calories and have less energy and our metabolism. Usually all the fat you lost comes back faster than you lost it!

So, the core principle of permanent and effective fat loss, is to cut net calories in ways that do NOT trigger this destructive response.

So it’s been found that it works far better to use lifestyle upgrades to lose your fat over several months to a couple of years depending on how much you have to lose.

It’s silly for most people to try to lose the same amount of fat in a few weeks instead. Unfortunately, over 99 % of the time that fat comes right back just a short period of time after the famine response kicks in which it almost always does.

2. Your body is far more likely to trigger your famine response if you cut protein too much than just cutting calories.

(For your health, we now know it’s important to focus on health OK protein foods such as beans and lentils; nuts if you aren’t allergic; wild caught fish;
100 % grass fed beef, and some superlean and fat trimmed skinless poultry or meat from grain fed animals but not too much.) (Never eat farmed fish or meat processed with nitrites if you can possibly help it. Eat very little fat from animals fed grain.)

You do not have to stuff on protein. But eat the same or slightly more. If you want to achieve permanent fat loss, do NOT cut back on protein.

Protein foods turn off hunger best and longest. So that helps too!

By eating enough protein, you’ll be less hungry and your body will forgive you cutting calories in OTHER areas and won’t be so quick to hit the panic button and trigger your famine response.

3. Cutting back too much on even health OK fats and oils harms your health and makes you hungry and tired of not having any!

Fat does help satisfy hunger. In addition, health OK oils keep you healthy in several ways.

People who lose fat permanently all keep eating some of these healthy oils. By actual test, they succeed far more than people who cut ALL fat.

Fats taste good; they carry flavors; and they buffer harsher spices enough you can enjoy eating those spices when you can’t with no oil at all.

So, no fat diets tend to fail and cause hunger. Eating LOTS of fat does gain fat too. The secret is to eat some every day but in controlled amounts.

(Extra virgin olive oil, raw nuts and avocados if you aren’t allergic, and oils from fish high in omega 3 oils are the health OK oils. Small amounts of dairy fat from animals 100 % grass fed are OK. Some nonfat and lowfat dairy from animals fed grain is OK but in moderation only.)

4. For most people, exercise alone won’t produce fat loss. But you likely won’t get permanent fat loss or the health benefits you could have had if you leave it out.

It’s simple really. If you want to cut a certain amount of net calories each week, if you do enough exercise to do half the job, you only need to cut the calories you eat by half as much!

And, that more than triples your ability to achieve mostly hunger free fat loss that is permanent.

But there’s more. Exercise can directly give you some of the benefits you lose fat to achieve. Better health; more energy; more self esteem; often a better sex life; and better appearance all get better with exercise. That happens even before all your fat comes off! It makes the combination of your upgraded lifestyle MUCH easier to sustain.

And, here again, it makes your body far less likely to trigger your famine response.

5. To some extent, did you know there is an appetite suppressant that works effortlessly and automatically, has close to zero calories, makes you healthier, and has few side effects?

Yes indeed there is. And, within reasonable limits, the more you eat, the easier hunger free fat loss gets.

Raw and lightly cooked nonstarchy vegetables on their own or eaten with other foods do exactly that.

Dr Dean Ornish even featured them in a book, “Eat more; weigh less!”

Recently I posted that I calculated I’d lose a small amount of weight by adding a couple of nonstarchy vegetables each day. I did. But because of this exact effect, I found I’d lost three times as much weight!

The only two caveats are to add vegetables gradually.

Add just one or two at first. If you add 5 servings from none, your body will freak out. And, the experience is no fun. But adding one a week or every other week until your body gets used to 5 slowly can work just fine.

Focus on vegetables that you feel good about eating because of their health benefits or you like their taste or crunch when you eat them. Or eat them with spices you really like. The idea is to find vegetables that you will be OK eating enough you will keep doing it! When you also enjoy most of them, or KNOW your health is better protected, it’s a LOT easier to keep doing it!

So far, we’ve covered what to keep eating or even eat more of.

6. What do you eat less of then?

Simple. Stop ingesting the ones that harm your health or make you hungry instead of less hungry!

We’ll cover that tomorrow.