In traditional approaches to dieting, one of the tools that seems to improve weight loss is food journaling, writing down everything you eat.  This method works because it helps control the mindless eating that people do — just popping something in your mouth even if you aren’t hungry.  In fact, one study found that food journaling every day led to twice as much weight loss among dieters.¹

While food journaling may help control mindless eating, as a dietitian I have observed that it doesn’t help people who are just flat out hungry.  Out of all the dieting side effects, I find there is nothing that will undo a diet faster than hunger!

At LMI, we incorporate three important hunger-busting components into our Metabolic Code Diet because eating healthy is much less of a struggle when the food choices and quantities can quiet a rumbling stomach. What good is a lower calorie diet if it only leaves you so hungry you eventually snap, food journal or not?

One of the biggest allies to any dieter is protein.  This macronutrient now has several studies showing that diets higher in protein reduce appetite.² As a bonus, people adhering to lower carbohydrate, high protein diets also experience a spontaneous reduction in their calorie intake.³

So, filling up on healthy organic protein sources such as eggs, poultry, grass-fed beef and wild-caught fish is a far superior calorie choice than any 100-calorie snack pack. Your body will reward protein with a feeling of satiety, but will usually rebel against the cheese do-dah’s (or whatever carb is in that snack pack) with a blood sugar drop and subsequent hunger pangs.

If protein is our diet hero, then the diet heroine is definitely non-starchy vegetables. Does beef tenderloin and buttery asparagus or Mahi Mahi with lemony sautéed spinach sound like a diet? Vegetables not only contribute variety, color, texture and a wide array of antioxidants and phytochemicals, but also stomach filling fiber. High fiber diets provide bulk, are more satiating and have been linked to lower body weight.⁴

One study exploring the effects of fiber compared an apple, apple sauce and apple juice with and without added fiber and found that overall, the whole apple increased satiety (feeling full) more than the apple sauce or juice.⁵ To me, this finding was particularly significant because they were studying a higher carbohydrate and simple sugar food.  But it tends to hold true even for vegetables.   Think of how long a big serving of Brussels sprouts or green beans would hold you compared to a vegetable juice. The fiber in the whole food is the key.

As an added bonus, it was recently discovered that non-starchy vegetables even improve insulin sensitivity by increasing the hormone adiponectin.⁶ So eating high amounts of protein and fibrous vegetables helps to keep you full and satisfied and improves weight loss.  And that’s why these foods are the mainstays of our Metabolic Code Diet.

There is one other nutrient that helps keep you full longer and more satisfied, and that’s fat.  It’s been known for quite some time that meals higher in fat stay in the stomach longer.  This gives the stretch receptors in the stomach time to send the signal to the brain that you are full, and thereby reduces appetite.

Of course there are some fats that end up sabotaging weight loss anyway, like trans fats; but healthy fats from nuts, seeds, coconut oil, olive oil, and even olive oil blended mayonnaises are good hunger-controlling additions to your diet.  Have you ever felt hungry after eating 5 oz of chicken salad made with a full fat mayonnaise served on a large bed of greens?  This is not a bland, unsatisfying diet!

In eating this way, there is one other important factor to keep you on the diet, and that is simply having a good variety of tasty recipes to prepare.  Our Metabolic Code Diet e-book furnishes tons of recipes to fulfill that need.

References

1. www.runnergirl.com.
2. McGonigal K.. A Yoga Sequence for Runners. IDEA Fitness Journal. Mar 2009. 74-76.
3. Hollis, JF et al. Am J Preventive Medicine. 35(2):118-126.
4. Jenkins T and Hershberger T. J of Nutr. 1975. Series no 4935: 124-136.
5. Brehm B et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 88 (4); 1617-1623.
6. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, Vol. 2, No. 3, 233-240 (2008).
7. Appetite. Volume 52, Issue 2, April 2009, Pages 416-422.
8. J. Nutr. First published December 23, 2008.

[Ed. Note: Laura B. LaValle, RD, LD is presently the director of dietetics nutrition at LaValle Metabolic Institute.   Laura and her husband, Jim LaValle, R.Ph, CCN, ND have developed the powerful and life-changing Metabolic Code Diet – containing step-by-step, easy to follow recommendations for harnessing optimal metabolic energy and turning your body’s chemical make up into a fat-burning furnace.  To learn more click here now.]

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