Before I tell you my top 7 rules to losing weight, I want you to remember this paradigm-shifting discovery: Obesity is a hormonal problem, not a caloric problem. Insulin and cortisol are the two hormones most involved. Knowing what causes something helps you know how to solve or prevent it.
Top 7 Rules for Losing Weight & Keeping it off
Here are my top 7 rules for losing weight. Notice that they are based on behavior change, not dieting. They are skills you can learn and make into a lifestyle that will serve you forever.
#1) Eat only when you’re hungry, and stop when satisfied (not full)
This one phrase answers two common questions: 1) When should I eat? and 2) How much should I eat?
To learn to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied, you need to:
1) Learn to tell the difference between hunger vs. thirst so that you don’t get fooled to eat when you are thirsty.
2) Learn to tell the difference between hunger vs. desiring to eat out of habit, boredom, or some other emotion. People eat for a lot of reasons. We may eat to satisfy an appetite or just because it tastes good. We may also eat to soothe emotions, celebrate victories, satisfy cultural expectations. If we want to lose weight, we should eat only when we are hungry.
2) Learn your hunger patterns. Most people are truly hungry 2 times a day. A good number of people are hungry only one time a day.
3) Don’t graze or eat snacks. When you are hungry, eat a meal. No snacks, no grazing.
Satisfied doesn’t mean 100% full. Many cultures have a rule that says you stop eating before you’re full. For example, the Japanese say hara hachi bu, eat until you’re 80% full. We shouldn’t eat until we are 100% full.
The goal of eating is not to be full, it is to satisfy hunger. When you are no longer hungry, you should stop eating.
When you wait until you are hungry before you eat & stop when satisfied, you will burn fat. If you eat before you are hungry, you will make fat. I think it’s important for people to know when they are burning fat and when they are making fat.
In a later discussion, I will talk about the things that happen during the fed state compared to the fasted state and the role of insulin. This will help you understand exactly why you burn fat when you wait until you are hungry and when you are fasting.
#2) Eat slowly & Chew, Chew, Chew.
Why eat slowly? Ensures that you feel satisfied without overeating. There is a time lag between ingesting food and feeling satiated. In other words, there is a time interval between the stimulus and response. If you eat too quickly, your body doesn’t have enough time to send signals to your brain to register that you’ve just eaten and are therefore no longer hungry. That’s why eating quickly almost guarantees that you will overeat.
Gut hormones and stretch receptors in the stomach send messages that take about 20 minutes to reach your brain. These messages let your brain know that you have eaten to relieve the hunger. Your brain has a satiety center in the hypothalamus that needs to receive neuronal and hormonal signals to know you’re full. All this takes about 20 minutes.
How do you eat slowly?
To help you eat slowly, do the following:
1) Chew, Chew, Chew. How many times?
2) Take 20 minutes to eat each meal.
3) Take breaks midway,
4) Put your utensils down after each bite, etc.
5) Eat mindfully.
Eat less without feeling hungry
Doing this will allow you to eat less without feeling hungry. To lose weight, you are going to have to eat less. The key is to eat less without feeling hungry because feeling hungry will sabotage your weight loss attempt. To help you get comfortable with eating less, think of your stomach size. Your stomach is only the size of a loosely held fist. If you eat slowly, it won’t take long to fill.
#3) Drink water
Whenever you are hungry, drink one or two 8 oz glasses of water. This will help you eat less food. Put a sticky on your fridge that says, “Drink a glass of water” to remind you to do that.
At the start of meals, drink one to three 8 oz glasses of water. Often, when we think we are hungry, we are actually thirsty. Start the meal with one or two large glasses of water. Another option is to drink a nice hot cup of broth before you actually eat your food.
Drinking water helps you eat less without feeling hungry. In addition, it boosts your metabolism so that you burn fat faster.
Increased hydration is associated with weight loss. I recommend at least 2-3 L of water per day or 70-100 oz.
#4) Eat Real Food
“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” Michael Pollan, Food Writer
Eat food, not edible food-like substances.
Avoid all refined sugars and processed foods. Eat real whole foods.
Eat fat to get thin
After sifting through years of research, I am convinced that eating a low carb high-fat diet is a great way to lose weight and keep it off. For years, the scientific community vilified fats as bad for you. This was done without any solid evidence. In fact, the cause of obesity is insulin and that is raised by eating refined carbohydrates. Eating a low carb high fat diet keeps insulin low and helps people lose weight and keep it off.
#5) Do psychological first aid
Get a good night’s sleep. Reduce stress. Have good relationships, etc.
Obesity is a hormonal, not calorie disease. Insulin and cortisol cause obesity. If you don’t have a good night’s sleep or have a significant stress response, your body makes cortisol, the stress hormone which will make you gain weight. To keep cortisol down, you need to rest, get a good night’s sleep and reduce stress in your life.
#6) Create an environment that sets you up for success
Make your environment work for you. I advise my patients to create an environment that supports their lifestyle goals. Instead of just relying on your willpower to resist the temptation to overeat (which doesn’t work so well), design your environment to support your choices. Get slim by design.
This includes things like:
- Never shopping when you are hungry
- Using small plate sizes
- Not keeping unhealthy food at home; Keeping all snacks out of site.
- Start with what you love the most. Start your meals with water, then eat your favorite foods first. Some people advise you to start with salads or other low-calorie foods so that you will get full and not eat the tasty high-calorie foods you crave. That’s a mistake because we don’t only eat to fill ourselves up. We also eat to satisfy particular desires for tastes. Until your desires change, start with what you desire to eat first and the other eating techniques will control your portion sizes.
#7) Don’t eat. Fast
If you don’t eat, you are guaranteed to lose weight. And you won’t die. Fasting is not starving. Fasting is the most potent way to lose weight. There are different types of fasts that we will talk about later. It’s far easier and better than most people think.
Fasting speeds up the fat-burning process. In fact, if you do it right, fasting turns you into a fat burning machine. All you need to do when you get hungry is drink some water, ignore the hunger and get into the fasting mode, you will burn even more fat.
If you have weight loss that is recalcitrant. You do everything right and it doesn’t fall off, fasting will do it. It’s the big gun that will cause you to start losing weight.
BONUS
Reset your weight set point
To keep weight off, you need to reset your weight point.
What is weight set point?
How do you rest your weight set point? By:
1) Keeping insulin down. How?
Eat less sugar and refined grains
Eat moderate protein
Eat high natural fats (Low carb, high fat)
Don’t eat all the time (brief mealtime window or intermittent fasting). Stop snacking.
Eat real food that is unprocessed foods
2) Practicing the slim fit lifestyle habits above and keep the weight off for six months.
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