My friends and I were talking over lunch last weekend, and the topic of weight loss came up… as it often does before most of us take vacation, knowing we may have to brave a beach or pool and expose much more skin than we have all year.
Two of my friends barely ate their salads and talked about plans to eat even less over the next couple of weeks leading up to beach time.
I shared two points important with my friends: Firstly, be more concerned about your weight from a health perspective… not how you’re going to look in a swimsuit a couple of times a year.
We all come in different shapes and sizes — and that’s alright. More women should strive to feel good in their own skin and maintain a healthy weight — not a skinny supermodel weight.
Secondly, I explained to them that restricting meals simply does not work. And at this, they both just stared at me in disbelief as if I had told them the truth about Santa Clause.
But it’s the truth. Your body just doesn’t like to function that way — in fact it even works against it. And research proves it…
So if you’re still giving in to old-fashioned dieting protocols that call for nothing more than restricting what and when you eat, counting calories and other such nonsense, it’s time to break out of the same old, ineffective routine.
Because it turns out, as researchers at University of Southern California (USC) have discovered, your ‘hunger hormone’ kicks in when you try to change the way your body wants to eat — sabotaging all your best efforts and causing you to eat more.
In a study involving rats, USC scientists found that once rats learned they had limited access to food, they were able to increase their food intake until it doubled!
Over several days, meal times were restricted to a daily four-hour window, followed by 20 hours with no food. The hormone ghrelin — the hunger hormone — allowed the rats to reduce their feeling of fullness, so they gradually were able to eat more and more.
Makes sense doesn’t it? This is why dieters who strictly adhere to three stark meals a day with absolutely no snacks in between can fall victim to binging.
Your body needs to compensate and convinces you to take in more and more food — when all along a sensible diet plan that included whole food, plus healthy snacks in between meals, would have served your goals much better.
Instead research shows that when your body gets that hungry, and temptation is stronger, the more likely you are to binge on bad foods.
According to a study referenced in The Part-time Health Nut, by Dr. Michael Cutler, researchers found that temptations to go off diets led to binges about 50 percent of the time. (If you are following the Part-Time Health Nut Program, you’re allowed to indulge in ‘unhealthy’ eating about 20 percent of the time.)
But the researchers found an even more concerning fact about your hunger hormone…
Ghrelin has also been found to increase the rate at which nutrients pass through the body, something that is best to happen slowly in order to feel fuller for longer. So not only are over a third of Americans obese, those that are trying to restrict food by partaking in restrictive diets, may be cheating themselves of important nutrients.
To avoid falling into the trap that starvation/binge diets cause, eat real whole foods and ditch the ultra-processed and fast foods and sugary sodas. And accept the fact that snacking can be a beneficial part of your diet — done right.
To make eating more work for you, just follow this simple tip from the Part-Time Health Nut plan: Remove most of the really unhealthy foods and snacks from your house — and consider replacing them with satisfying choices like:
- Dark chocolate: Dark chocolate, according to the scientists, contains beneficial cocoa chemicals called oligomeric procyanidins (PCs). In lab tests, these compounds, also called flavanols, kept animals’ weight down and helped their bodies resist diabetes.
- Protein: According to research at the University of Illinois, eating more protein from meats and fish can help you lose fat instead of muscle. It also helps you cut your risk of diabetes and heart disease and avoid binge eating.
- Healthy fats: According to nutritionist and weight-loss coach Alan Argon, “The combination of protein and fat in regular, full-fat cheese is very satiating. As a result, eating full-fat cheese holds your appetite at bay for hours…”
Would you have ever thought you could eat cheese and chocolate on a diet? Of course not. Because nutritionist have endorsed a wrong-headed way of thinking for decades when it comes to weight loss — and Americans have paid the price. It’s time to change your mind, change your food and change your life.
