Ways to permanent fat loss without hunger....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 7-5-2012

Most people who try to lose weight or lose fat get too hungry to continue.  So they don’t continue and they gain the fat back.

And, unless they do it in a way that avoids getting too hungry next time, trying again doesn’t work.  You may have already found that out.

Why do that?

Did you know that there are several ways to lose fat without excess hunger?

There are.  In fact, there are at least 8 ways.  Of course it helps if you gradually add all 8!  But even starting with one or two will help.

To eat for fat loss and to keep it off without hunger do these eight things:

1 & 2 "Get enough lean protein and fiber. 

1.  A study of 22 men who changed the amount of protein in their diets for 18-day periods showed that those who ate the least protein were the most likely to report being hungry. "Protein is the number one thing to help you feel full," says Emily Banes, RD, clinical dietitian at Houston Northwest Medical Center. " 

Foods high in carbs, carbohydrates, turn off your hunger initially if you eat them and don’t even do that if you drink them.  Then they cause EXTRA hunger from rebound hunger later.  Protein foods cause ZERO rebound hunger.

Several studies now show also show that you also drop the calories burned by less eating a high protein low sugary and high glycemic diet than you do on low protein diets.

More of the weight you lose on the scale will be fat and less will be muscle when you eat enough protein.

All this means you lose more fat over time and feel less hungry and more likely to keep off the fat you lose when you eat enough protein.

The second thing is fiber." 

2.  Eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables. Researchers tracked the weight-loss success of 71 obese women between 20 and 60 years of age on a low-fat diet.

Half of the women were also told to increase their fruit and vegetable intake. At the end of one year, both groups of women had lost weight, but the women who ate the most fruits and veggies reported the greatest weight loss and were less likely to say they felt hungry on any given day.

In fact, when the researchers crunched the data, they found that whether the women reported feeling hungry frequently predicted their ability to lose weight.   <<<<<

Other studies have shown that changing your eating habits to focus on these water- and fiber-rich foods will help you maintain weight loss for up to six years."   

Nonstarchy vegetables and lower glycemic and higher fiber fruit work best to keep you feeling full and most have superb nutrition with very few calories.  They all add fiber and keep you full after you eat them.

(In moderation, eat some nuts if you are not allergic, and some beans, lentils, and black-eyed peas.  These foods are also high to very high in fiber.)

Feeling full from having enough fiber in your stomach is NOT the only way to avoid being hungry while losing fat.  But it does avoid that empty tummy feeling.  And best of all, when you are full you eat less of everything else without any extra effort.  Plus you quite literally eat MORE food in volume.  It’s a lot easier to eat fewer calories without hunger when you eat MORE food too!

3.  Stop ALL high fructose corn syrup and refined grains; cut way back on how often you eat sugar and go easy on how much each time; eat far less of even 100 % whole grains: and eat white potatoes very seldom.  

These foods all produce MORE hunger after an initial bit of decrease if you eat them.  (High fructose causes faster and stronger rebound hunger than regular sugar.  Always read labels and never ingest the stuff if you want hunger free and permanent fat loss.)

If, as in soft drinks, you drink them, that does the REVERSE of what you want.  You take in calories without any drop off in hunger and then you get rebound hunger!

4.  Stop eating or drinking anything with artificial sweeteners and consider doing the same with natural no sugar sweeteners.  Why ingest a hunger increasing drug!? 

If you eat them with food, the food makes you less hungry but you get a boost in rebound hunger later.   Even worse, these make you hungry for sugary foods and because they then taste less sweet, you often wind up eating more real sugars.  And, in soft drinks, again you get the rebound hunger later but no initial decrease in hunger.

5.  Get some health OK fats and oils.  Studies show that people who lose fat and include those feel better, are in far better health and more likely to keep off any fat they lose.  Many foods taste far better with some oil or fat to blend with the flavors.  And, some kinds of vegetables deliver nutrition about 10 times better when eaten with oils or fat. In addition, omega 3 oils have inflammation reducing and brain and mood boosting effects you can't get if you never eat any.

I've read that fats and oils don't turn down hunger.  I've found that totally false!  

It likely is better for you to eat nonfat yogurt and cottage cheese.  (Most of the fat in the full fat or two percent lowfat versions is from grain fed cows.)  And, the nonfat versions have all the protein and fewer calories.  But I find the versions with fat more filling and enjoyable to eat.

It IS true that fats and oils may deliver a lot of calories in proportion to how much they turn down hunger.  So avoid overdoing it and do eat some protein foods that are nonfat or low fat. (I still buy and eat nonfat Greek yogurt and cottage cheese.)  

But you will be happier and less hungry and more likely to keep eating in a way that will keep you healthy and free of excess fat, if you do eat some of the health OK fats and oils.

Some recipes taste dramatically better with some oil to soften and blend the spices.  And it was tested.  People who included health OK oils and the foods that contain them were far more likely to stay on their reduced calorie and health upgraded eating plan than the people who overdid cutting out almost all fats and oils.  Worse, many people on lowfat diets overdo high glycemic carbs instead which are MUCH more fattening.

(Monosaturated oils such as extra virgin olive oil and nuts for those not allergic and avocados

-- and guacamole – are good for you in moderation.  

They are MUCH better for you than fats from animals fed grains and cheap oils high in omega 6 oils such as corn and soy oil.  Hydrogenated oils are directly harmful.  By all means cut out close to ALL of those and the calories in them!)

6.  Always eat breakfast.

People who always eat breakfast burn more calories each week than people who don’t.  And people who always eat breakfast are LESS fat than people who eat fewer calories.

This is true for everyone but tests as doubly important for women. 

Your body apparently burns carbs better and with less rebound hunger at breakfast.  So, breakfast is an ideal time to eat fruit or occasionally eat whole grain foods.

When you eat breakfast, your body tends to burn more calories beginning just after breakfast than it tends to do if you stay unfed at that time.

And, for many people not having breakfast tends to set them up to eat fattening treat foods as a mid-morning snack and to overeat at lunch and dinner.  That’s because by then they are a lot hungrier with no breakfast.

7.  Be sure to add exercise if you’ve not already done it.

It’s critical of course to not add more calories in treats than you burn while exercising.  And, it’s critical to mostly or always avoid treats made of fattening and harmful ingredients even if you exercise

While exercise by itself is NOT enough to lose fat, regular exercise IS critical to fat loss in dozens of ways. For starters, it’s critical for fat loss without too much hunger!

The short sessions of strength training or interval cardio burn calories for up to four hours after you do them.  Even 3 or 4 10 or 15 minute sessions a week will help.  Although as you can see, 6 or 7 such sessions a week means more 4 hour session of extra calorie burning.

It also will really help, if you can fit in the over 2800 calories week of direct calorie burned while exercising that people who have lost over 30 pounds and kept if off average.  That means you can eat 200 or 300 more calories a day more food and still lose fat or keep it off.  (Adding 1,000 or more calories of moderate exercise a week to the vigorous kind is a great way to do that.)

Another way this works is that strength training and interval cardio add muscle.  Muscle burns something like 3 times as many calories per pound than fat.  Best of all, if you eat enough protein and do these exercises most days of every week, the weight you lose tends to be all fat.

Every one of those factors means you can eat more and be less fat too.  It’s simple.  If you do this, you can eat more and not be fat.  And, since you can eat more, you are less hungry.  Best of all that means, you keep eating right.  That way you tend to lose fat until you lose most of your excess fat.  And, you keep off the fat you lose since you keep eating right and exercising.

8. Avoid triggering your famine response!

It makes you VERY hungry and slams shut the door to fat loss. 

First, don’t cut back calories a lot EVERY day for weeks at a time.  Second avoid cutting back total calories too much each week at all.

It couldn’t be simpler. Except for some people from Japan and handful of other places, everyone on earth is descended from ancestors who survived multiple famines successfully.

So we all have a fail safe famine response.  If we feel too hungry or feel too hungry too often, our bodies make us hungrier or a LOT hungrier and cause us to burn fewer calories.  And to ensure we stay ahead of starvation, once these kick in, recent research shows these effects tend to last for several months once we trigger them.

So, if we cut back calories every day for weeks or cut back to a third of what we have been eating instead of 10 to 20 % less or if we don’t know to do the first 7 things and get too hungry too often, this fail safe effect turns on!

One way to do this is to not cut back calories every day or to cut very little most days. 

Multiple studies now show if you only cut back some while using these other 7 strategies on most days while cutting back more only two to four days a week, you keep going enough better you lose more fat to begin with!  And, since continuing to do this is doable, you also keep off that fat!

Jon Benson teaches this in his “Every other Day Diet” eBook. 

And one study even found that people who cut back extra and ate an almost ONLY protein and nonstarchy vegetables calorie reduced diet on just two days a week, lost MORE fat than people who tried to cut back extra 7 days week.

There is even an every other day FASTING plan that has worked for some people.

Specifically, this is far easier on you to do.  You don’t need to try extra and get hungrier than you’d like every day forever.  It’s just a few days a week.  And on those days, you can literally tell yourself.  “I need to not overdo tomorrow of course.   But tomorrow I don’t have to cut back this much.  And, I can do this.  I can last until tomorrow just like I did last week and week before that.”

The second way to trigger the famine response is simply to cut back too much every week for weeks.

If you are burning 1500 to 2,000 calories a day and eating 6,000 calories a day AND half or more of your bodyweight is excess fat you want to lose, gradually removing the extra 4,000 to 4500 calories a day until you eat just 1500 to calories a day on the average may be OK.  If you gradually add exercise and replace sugar and high glycemic carbs with protein and nonstarchy vegetables first, this may be quite doable with no boost to your famine response.

BUT, for EVERYONE, if you are burning 1500 to 2,000 calories a day and cut back to less than 1200 to 1400 calories a day to levels like 600 to 800 calories a day every day of the week, then after a couple weeks or so, WHAP!!

It’s just like springing a bear trap.  Suddenly you have no energy and hardly burn any calories and you get VERY hungry!

Oops!

It’s automatic and virtually guaranteed to happen.  It’s your failsafe famine response in action. It’s hardwired into you.

WHY do that to yourself?!   It’s unpleasant and prevents permanent fat loss.

How to avoid that?

Simple.  Besides not cutting back extra every day of the week, totally avoid cutting back that much on your weekly intake of food ever.  Doing it for even ONE week is not a great idea either.

Best of all, cutting back to just the calorie intake you need to weigh your goal weight instead of far lower than that every day and for the week does remove fat.  I found it removed fat more easily and even more effectively than the numbers predicted it would.

The first time I lost fat, I lost 30 pounds.  I looked at what I ate then which was mostly health OK food and decided to cut back on my wine and beer intake and to ADD eating broccoli for dinner each week.  I also kept eating the other health OK foods I was already eating and doing the regular exercise I was already doing.

The Weight Watchers point system then existing predicted I cut back enough to lose 10 pounds over a period of a few weeks.  I did.  I had no interest in gaining that back and since it was little strain to do and I had no extra hunger, I just kept doing it.

A few weeks later, I was startled to find I’d lost a second 10 pounds.  But I was pleased.

A few weeks after that I was astounded to find I’d lost a THIRD round of ten more pounds.

My money situation got worse at that point and I had to cut back on my exercise and drank more wine.  But even then, I only gained half of that back.

Since then, I re-lost that 15 pounds and have kept most of that off this time.  (This time I added the every other day approach to what I was doing before.)

Also, given how much I sit and how much I like food, I easily could have been 50 to 100 pounds fatter when I started had I not already been doing many of these things.

These methods do work. 

You lose fat without too much hunger and aren’t extra hungry most of the time. 

Since you can keep doing these things in part because you aren’t too hungry and in part because you avoid triggering your famine response, the fat stays off too!