We’ve all been there. You step inside a restaurant saying you’re not going to eat much and leave feeling like you’re about to give birth to twins. What is it exactly that causes us to eat and keep eating, even way past our full point? And from there, get to the point that we become addicted?
Basically, our bodies crave three certain things: salt, fat, and sugar. Our brains are wired to love these tastes and to drive us to get as much as we can, as these things would be hard to find in nature. Industries know this, which is why so many of the foods we love are just filled with fat, sugar, and salt. Take Cinnabon for example. With the cream, its fat, on sugar, on more sugar, on salt, on fat and sugar again. And it’s delicious, but one roll is also 730 calories. Or our favorite Chinese food (probably general tso’s, right?); its fat on sugar on salt on more fat and salt, all around a chicken center. But this goes with many other foods, from fast food to many of the so called “healthy foods.”
There is a “bliss point” as Dr. Kessler talks about in his book “The End of Overeating” that is found when making these foods, which is to find the best combination of salt, fat, and sugar to keep people coming back for more. We all know super salty foods or really sweet foods are just unappetizing, so producers want to find the three way point that makes the food taste best. Combining this with a great aftertaste causes its customers to keep eating, and constantly wanting to come back.
This is one of the main reasons for the obesity problem nowadays. People keep eating without even noticing, completely overriding the brain signals that is trying to tell them they’re full, and then afterwards underestimating how much they actually ate. And many times, these people getting addicted to these foods and tastes, and lose control of themselves.
To stop this from happening, we have to be more conscious of what we’re eating:
- Control portion size: Take the smaller plate out if you want to lose weight. We’re stuck on the “Finish your plate” mindset, even though our plate sizes have doubled in the past 50 years.
- Increase the amount of fiber and veggies in your diet: Fiber makes you feel fuller. Make your diet plant based, with the meat and carbs as sides rather than the main part.
- Read calorie amounts of foods: Foods spiked with fat and sugar will have a lot more calories than we’d expect, and naturally we end up eating more without realizing we had our daily calorie needs in one meal alone.
- Don’t be fooled by health halos: A food might be marketed as “Fat Free!” or some other crap, but then when you look at the nutrition facts, it still has a ton of sugar and calories, which will still make you gain weight if you eat a ton of it.
- Don’t go on a diet: Make slow, gradual, reasonable and permanent changes to your eating habits. Starving yourself for 2 weeks will only make it worse, putting you into a binging eating pattern, and you’ll just get back to where you started before the diet. Slowly reduce the amount of food you eat and change up what you eat in a maintainable way.
And of course, keep working out. It’ll help you lose weight by burning calories and building muscle, but you’ll also begin to become more conscious of health hazards around you as it becomes a part of your lifestyle. Follow the workouts I put up, and pick ones that are right for you. If you want to lose weight and have true fitness, circuits would probably be your best bet.