Effective weight management isn’t just about not feeling hungry
I heard a radio advertisement for a new weight loss product the other day and it got my mind to thinking about the whole concept of hunger control and the role it allegedly plays for people wanting to lose weight. The commercial prominently promoted the ability of the product to “control your hunger, so you feel satisfied” in your diet. In essence, they were putting forth the theory that simply keeping the hungry bug from hitting you will make you satisfied and lead to weight loss.
But I disagree.
Whenever I hear this subject of hunger control come up in a weight loss marketing ad, it just makes me wanna scream. So, you take a pill or some gimmick food that makes you not wanna eat so you can get through your day without being hungry, but that leads to the million dollar question–WHEN DO YOU EAT?! And once you do eat, WHAT do you get to eat? Interestingly, these questions are hardly ever answered by the manufacturers of these weight loss products.
My contention is that hunger control should simply be a byproduct of healthy eating and that what you should really strive for in your weight management plan is satisfaction with the foods you consume. This is what makes the low-carb lifestyle so appealing to the millions of us who have tried it for ourselves to lose weight and get healthy. There is an intense satisfaction in our diet that hunger control by itself could never accomplish.
One of the major selling points the low-fat diet advocates play up about their particular way of eating is the hunger control that comes from consuming lots of fiber-rich foods. In fact, high-fiber foods are the latest trend in food marketing as you’ll see this prominently displayed on the front packaging of products like “low-fat” and “fat-free” used to be so heavily touted as if it meant something.
For example, Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts has a new Toaster Pastries product that brags about how it contains 20 percent of your RDA of fiber. Of course, it is sold in flavors like Brown Sugar Cinnamon and Frosted Chocolate Fudge and contain 16 grams of whole grains per serving. Well, yippy skippy for them! Is that fiber supposed to supersede the gobs of sugar they put in this “healthy” product? Puh-leez! Kellogg’s also has something called Fiber Plus Antioxidants Chewy Bars providing 35% of the RDA for fiber. Again, what about all the freakin’ carbohydrates they load into these bars?
Then we have Quaker Fiber & Omega-3 Chewy Oat Granola Bars coming in flavors such as Dark Chocolate Chunk and Peanut Butter Chocolate that contain both fiber and omega-3 essential fatty acids from the flax seeds they put in them. And Kraft’s South Beach Living brand has also gotten on the fiber bandwagon adding two new products–Fiber Fit Cookies and Fiber Fit Granola bars–to their line-up!
In fact, fiber is showing up in all sorts of products now. There’s a new whole grain-based Pepperidge Farm Light Style Wheat Bread that contains “extra” fiber to boast 16 percent more of the RDA of fiber than white breads. Snyder’s of Hanover’s has a new MultiGrain All Natural Tortilla Chips with a higher fiber content than regular tortilla chips. And with yogurt, Dannon has also added a With Fiber product to its Activia Low-Fat Yogurts as well.
We’ve gone completely fiber-zerk in the United States–but to what end?
There’s no denying you can control hunger with the use of fiber in your diet. That’s what the low-fat advocates want people to believe when they start on that diet plan. Eat enough high-fiber foods and you’ll not get so hungry that you actually think those low-fat or fat-free foods taste good. In the end, it’s the reduction in calories that actually leads to weight loss more than anything else.
But let’s switch gears and take a look at livin’ la vida low-carb. What does it provide you? Yes, you get plenty of hunger control through both the dietary fat that you consume as well as the protein in your diet which leads to weight loss. But I think eating a low-carb diet takes it one step further. Not only are you NOT hungry, you’re actually SATISFIED with the food selection you get to enjoy on this way of eating without obsessing over your calories which are naturally kept in check by your body.
Think about it–what other “diet” lets you enjoy such decadent foods like steak, full-fat cheeses, cream, butter, nuts, and all the other delicious choices at your disposal on the low-carb lifestyle? There isn’t another one like low-carb living. And these high-fat selections are indeed HEALTHY foods for you to consume when you are restricting your carbohydrate intake. When the low-fatties tell you to unnaturally remove all the fat from your diet, guess what they replace the fat with? That’s right, it’s carbs which drive you to be hungrier and hungrier because your insulin levels get all out of whack!
When I heard famous low-fat diet guru Dr. Dean Ornish tell me in my interview with him about his book The Spectrum last year that adding fiber to refined carbohydrates makes them healthier, I just about wanted to shake him into reality. How absurd is it to tell people that simply adding fiber to any high-carb food somehow makes it better? Why don’t we just encourage everyone to carry around a big bottle of Metamucil and sprinkle it on top of everything they eat regardless of the carb content? Does that make our food more likely to control hunger and keep us satisfied in the process? I think not.
In the end, food satisfaction plays a much bigger role in whether you are able to successfully remain on a permanent and healthy lifestyle change. That’s what everyone who wants to effectively manage their weight for good needs to do to any diet that they decide to go on. Find a plan that will give you that satisfaction with the way you eat so you can enjoy the foods that are making you healthy, follow that plan exactly as prescribed by the author, and then keep doing it forever. For me, that has been the amazingly healthy and delicious low-carb lifestyle and I’ll never be the same again because of it.
Fiber may fill you up, but it’s fat and protein that truly satisfies you more than anything else you could put into your mouth. Hunger control and food satisfaction are not the same–not even close!
