When people are losing weight they often have a sense of discomfort known as hunger. Hunger isn’t always a pleasant feeling but it can be more pleasant when we consider what it means. It means we are losing weight. Let it serve as a constant reminder that you are cheerfully accomplishing your goal. We can almost be sure that if we aren’t hungry we aren’t losing weight. We can embrace hunger as a welcome sign that we are losing weight.
If we want to keep losing weight, then all we have to do is to stay hungry. We can learn to embrace the hunger. When we eat, we may not want to eat so much that we completely relieve the hunger, we may want to stay a little hungry. Especially, it would be counter-productive to be hungry all day and then erasing all progress by gorging at dinner. It may also be counter-productive to let ourselves stay so hungry that we trigger a slowing of our metabolisms.
The body has built-in mechanisms to fight against starvation. When the body gets the message that food is scarce the metabolism will start slowing down in order to conserve energy.
The body can compensate, in this way, to famine. It can also over-compensate. In other words, the metabolism can slow down MORE than the food intake dropped. Many patients have told me that they’ve reduced their intake and have gained weight, and I know that’s possible. On more than one occasion patients have been hospitalized by their doctors to “prove” that they were cheating on their diets. In one case, everything the person ate was monitored and controlled and the person gained weight on 600 calories per day. It can happen.
Have you ever been on a diet and noticed that you’re not very hungry anymore? Could that be an indicator that your metabolism has slowed down that that you aren’t losing very much weight?
We can stay hungry by not eating enough to satisfy our hunger but not so little as to slow down our metabolism. We can think of continuing to eat a little as stoking a fire so that it continues to burn.
When food is scarce the body is signaled to conserve energy. When food is readily available the body is signaled to burn energy in order to be as productive and successful as possible. Overeating signals the body to store fat.
Sweet tastes increase insulin levels. Insulin causes sugar and fat to be stored and made instead of burned and used. So eating something that tastes sweet (even if it’s zero-calorie sweetener) is like sending a signal to the body, “Make sure to stop burning fat, and make sure to store as much as possible of what I just ate.”
Similarly, fat has a lot of calories and can really satisfy hunger. People that want to lose weight may want to avoid eating much fat, even if it’s unsaturated oils.
Where does that leave us? Complex carbohydrates and protein. Beans (legumes) are high in protein and have complex carbohydrates, and no fat. Vegetables are also complex carbohydrates. Brown rice and beans complement each other nicely as far as amino acid profiles. If you are not a vegetarian, meat is another good option for protein.
The main idea is to have these foods readily and conveniently available. If you are not eating any fat or sugar and you are burning along on protein and carbohydrates you can begin to experience hunger very abruptly. If you let it go very far you are likely to start thinking about binging on foods with fat, like pizza, or other things. If you binge on fatty foods, you will stop losing weight. Plus, if you let yourself experience big-time hunger for too long, your body might get triggered to slow down.
So the idea is to have fat free, complex carbohydrate / protein foods handy so that when the hunger gets very strong, you can have a mouthful or two of these foods, just to take the edge off the hunger, a little. That way, you continue to burn fat, without slowing down your metabolism, while taking your mind off binging. It’s like sending a signal to the body, “It’s ok to keep burning because there is food around.” Just think, if you succeed at this, you will be losing a little weight constantly. It may not happen over night, but over time, you will reach your goal.
One thing I find very handy to do is to cook and then dehydrate lentils. First, go buy some lentils. Then soak them until they swell up (usually 3-4 hours). Then POUR OFF the water they soaked in (that will help get rid of some of the gas-inducing effects of these little legumes). Boil them for a few hours until they get soft. Then, you can eat these lentils at your convenience all the time (you can put a little soup over them, or cover them with milk and eat them like cereal). But, I like them a little more convenient than that so I like to take the cooked lentils and dehydrate them in a dehydrator. This turns them into great little “human fuel pellets” as easy to chew as tortilla chips. This way, you can keep a clean little container on your person at all times in case of “emergency” hunger pangs. If it’s not convenient enough, you will not stop what you’re doing, and you will get pangs with thoughts of binging and/or your metabolism will slow down. Convenience is everything here.
Remember, you will be eating just like our ancestors did. They walked around hungry, looked for food, and found a little here and there as they went along (hunter/gatherers).
So keep eating right and stay hungry and I think you’ll be amazed at your results (though it may still be difficult to lose if your body temperature stays low).
Best always,
Denis Wilson, MD
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