Go NUTS!! (They’ll Help You Stop Overeating)
Some people are little patronizing the way they say, “Losing weight is easy! Just stop overeating!”
“Calories in, calories out. If you consume less calories, there’s physically no way you gain weight. It’s science!”
And I mean, they’re CORRECT, yeah. If you count calories and make sure it’s under your total daily energy expenditure, you’ll lose weight. A calorie calculator will spit out the amount of calories you’d need to eat to lose weight, based on your gender/activity level.
But I’m not going to link to a calorie counter, darn it!! Because I think that simply eating from the M.A.D.E. Diet until you’re full is enough to make you shed the pounds. Intermittent fasting is the way to go, instead of depriving yourself of plentiful AMOUNTS of food.
So “calories in, calories out” makes sense scientifically but in my mind, that’s no way to live when you can get the same results on a high-fat, low-carb diet. And/or, with intermittent fasting, which produces tons of Human Growth Hormone, and improves your immune system, and lowers your risk of every disease ever!
Anyway, back to this whole idea of “Just count calories!” being said to overweight people…it ignores how food has become a physical and psychological addiction.
And I don’t mean to say that people who can’t lose weight are all food addicts…just that of course your body craves carbs and refined sugars, because they’re quick-burning energy! So your body burns it and then you CRASH and are hungry for more.
Also, when you’ve been on the SAD (Standard American Diet) your whole life, the ratio of bad bacteria to good bacteria in the stomach is very high, and those bad bacteria crave more sugar. (Learn more about gut bacteria and how to fix your gut with my article on kombucha and the gut microbiome…)
So for some people, they can’t stop overeating because they’ve taught their bodies some terrible things and created an ADDICTION. The food you eat, when you really break it down, is just a set of INSTRUCTIONS that tell your cells what to do…And a bad diet tells them wrong.
What’s the solution, then? If somebody is super hungry all the time because of their poor diet and their food dependence, then HOW are you supposed to start eating healthy, cutting back a little, and starting timed-eating like intermittent fasting?
Basically, HOW are you supposed to stop overeating when you’re still hungry? Is the solution just to starve yourself? Of course not!!
That would be…nuts!
(Okay, that was a pretty cheap transition. Sorry!)
One REALLY AWESOME trick you can try, that worked wonders for me when I was so hungry I felt like I was going to inhale 3 or 4 plates of food…
Instead, I ate one handful of high fat, nutrition- and calorie-dense nuts before I started the meal.
And you want to know what happened? 10 minutes after eating the (heaping) handful of nuts, I was genuinely much less hungry, and able to eat a SMALLER amount SLOWER. (And the slower part meant I ate less before I started feeling full, too.)
So it seems like a weird trick. (Here, eat these full-fat, high-calorie things before your meal! It’ll help you lose weight!) But trust me, it really works to trick your brain into satiety when you’re feeling ravenous and about to go nuts on your food…Go “nuts” instead!!
Then wait about 15 – 20 minutes and you won’t feel so starved anymore!