Losing weight is not easy, nor is it simple. The old school advice of eating less and moving more doesn’t work very well. In fact, it may actually move you farther away from your goal. How many times have you considered yourself a failure because you couldn’t lose weight even though you felt like you were eating less and moving more? How could you possibly screw up something so simple?
Don’t feel bad. You haven’t failed. The person who gave you that crappy advice failed. Imagine you’re a teacher and a student who has been struggling with math came up to you after class for help. What advice would you give him? Would you tell him to study more? Do you really think a generic piece of advice like that would make a difference in his grade? Absolutely not. In fact, the student would probably feel like a bigger failure because his one bit of hope (you, his mentor) failed to help him.
Generic advice stinks. What you need is specific, concrete, actionable steps (habits) that will lead you to your goal. Here are 2 such habits that have worked time and time again for weight loss.
- Don’t eat until you are full. Eat until you are satisfied.
Repeat after me. We are not in control. We may think we consciously make the majority of our decisions in a 24 hour period, but in reality, a lot of our decisions are influenced by our environment (often subconsciously) thereby flying under the radar of our consciousness.
Isn’t it amazing how food manufacturers know exactly how much we’ll eat? How many times have you only eaten half of a candy bar, bag of skittles, or small bag of chips? In my case, not many. Apparently the manufacturers know exactly how many chips I need to eat to get full. Amazing. Or…..
Do I eat not because I’m trying to satisfy my hunger, but because of the environment, which in this case is the size of the candy bar or bag of chips. And because I eat not based on internal cues like satiety but external cues like the size of the food container, do I eat more than I should, almost to the point I feel full and bloated? More times than not, I would say yes.
So, why the disconnect being satisfied and full? Our bodies weren’t designed to have cheap, fattening food thrown at us 24/7. When we eat, the hormones released by our stomach and small intestines to signal the brain we’ve eaten enough are delayed by 15-20 minutes. Because of that delay in satiety, we overeat until we can’t button our jeans. That’s one of the reasons you should never eat in a hurry (like in the car).
Actionable step: Eat slow, extending your meal time to at least 20 minutes so those hormones can reach your brain and turn on satiety. Also, to avoid the feeling of fullness, eat to the point that would allow you to take a brisk walk or slow jog immediately after a meal. Side note: You don’t actually have to take a walk or jog after your meal. It just gives you a point of reference to differentiate between eating until satisfied vs. eating until full.
2. Avoid Hunger.
If you think you make bad decisions when you’re drunk, you make even worse decisions when you’re hungry (Ok, they might not be worse, but they’re pretty bad. I was being a little over dramatic).
When you’re hungry, hormones are released that make you crave sugary, fatty foods. No matter how much you like kale, when you’re really hungry, you’ll bypass it every single time for a juicy bacon cheeseburger.
Actionable Step: Over the next 3 days, write down two things: 1) the exact time you eat a meal 2) the exact time you start getting hungry. After 3 days, you should notice a pattern, especially if you are a consistent eater. If you really analyze your results, you’ll probably see that the longer the delay between the time you start getting hungry and the following meal, the more unhealthy that meal is. So, once you have that information, you’ll pull a MacGyver by extinguishing your hunger before it even starts. Grab a healthy snack like almonds, whole grain crackers, celery with natural peanut butter, or a piece of fruit, and eat it 15-20 minutes before your “hunger times.” That little trick should keep you from making bad decisions at your next meal.
Put both of those pieces of advice together, and you, my friend, will become the MacGyver of nutrition and weight loss. Well done!
