Low fat and low sugar does not aid weight loss

One of the most frustrating things I regularly see is overweight people eating low fat, no fat and low / no sugar foods. Especially so called 'healthy' versions of junk foods. Think 'low fat' ice cream or chips and no sugar chocolate bars and you are on the right track.

Let me say this clearly so there is no doubt: 'EATING LOW FAT / SUGAR VERSIONS OF JUNK FOODS WILL NOT HELP YOU LOSE WEIGHT'.

But there is more; 'IF YOU ADOPT AN INTUITIVE APPROACH TO EATING, THEN NOR IS IT NECESSARY.' You can eat the full fat, full sugar unadulterated version and still look and feel your best.

I have never actually seen a very good explanation for why the above is so true and so important on your journey to optimum health, so let me explain.

Although the primary reason people buy low fat / low sugar versions of foods, is to consume less calories (and therefore to lose weight), the reality is that almost everyone ends up simply eating MORE of the product - significantly more. I am talking 2, 3, 4 times more (if you have ever sat down with a tub of 'low fat' ice cream and ended up eating a liter, then you know what I am talking about). The reality is, that low fat / low sugar versions of junk foods generally don't have that much less calories than the original version. So you actually end up having more calories. And, as I'm sure most people understand, it's ultimately your consumption of kilojoules - or energy - that determines whether you put on or lose weight.

Further, even where the low fat / sugar version does have significantly less kilojoules, the reality is that most people end up eating an amount of kilojoules AT LEAST EQUAL- if not more- than the full fat / sugar version. Or if not immediately,then you make it up by eating something additional later in the day or the following day. It is like our head does a calculation of how much we would ORDINARILY eat (in kilojoules) and then matches it by eating more of the lighter version.

There are 4 problems with this approach. Firstly, the very reason you brought the 'light' food was to try to eat less kilojoules but your overall tally is equal to or exceeds what you set out to achieve. Secondly, because you have been eating a 'light' food, you don't actually acknowledge that you have been eating junk food. You actually think you have been healthy / good today - leaving you anticipating your 'unhealthy / junk reward' when in reality you should be cutting back in the days to come. Thirdly, and most significantly, you are UNSATISFIED and left craving the real thing. Finally, you have actually accustomed your brain (and your stomach) to eating larger quantities of food than it would otherwise consider normal. What this means, is that when you do eventually cave in an eat the 'forbidden' junk food you eat A LOT - completely blowing your weight loss objectives. The guilt kicks in, and so beings the vicious cycle once again.

Oats for breakfast

If you want to begin your journey towards intuitive eating, resulting health benefits and weight loss then there is a very simple way to start.

Commence each day with a bowl of oats. As much as you want. Cook it or have it raw. Add milk, yoghurt, fruit, honey, nuts, whatever you want. Most of your bowl should always be the oats though.

Have it every morning without fail. If you wake up in the morning and you are not hungry, it means you ate too much last night. Stick to your bowl of oats, but maybe have a smaller bowl or add a few less bits and pieces to it.

What is the point of this? Eating oats is a wonderful nutritious way to reconnect with your true hunger. You probably won't overeat it (but don't even think about how much you are having - your body will work out what is right over time). And you will be astonished how after just a few days, you will feel even tempered, experience even energy throughout the morning, have regular easy bowel movements AND not crave junk food all morning after a good breakfast of oats. A true wonder food.

If you do get hungry before lunch. No problem! Have a healthy snack..or an unhealthy one if you wish to. The point of this approach to eating is not to get quick results or to deprive yourself or strarve yourself. The point is rather to teach you a relationship with food which will leave you in perfect shape and will last for the rest of your life and which still lets you eat for pleasure.

The lesson of indulgence

Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that eating 'junk food' with awareness or until satisfied on a regular basis will help you lose weight or achieve optimum health.

The key and critical message is for you to start to reconnect with your body in an honest way. You may be surprised to learn that when you do so, you will reach a point when you are conscious of the fact that you are no longer really enjoying the food you are eating, and then it is easy to stop. You are not stopping because you feel guilty. You are not stopping because some diet or book is telling you to do so. You are stopping simply because you have had enough.

You may be even more surprised to discover that the more you do this, and the more conscious you become about how your body feels, the less you will crave junk food for periods of time after you have eaten it. This is because your body intuitively knows what is good for it and what it needs. I have experienced this myself and see it constantly in animals.

For example, if I eat really badly for a couple of days, I start to feel less light and streamlined as I put away a bit of extra fat, bad tempered, my urine becomes odorous, my sleep becomes less deep and refreshing and most of all, I notice that the skin on my face loses its usual shine and smoothness. After just a couple of days, I reach a point where the idea of eating another chocolate or chip completely loses its appeal. In fact it becomes repulsive as my body rejects this food. This reaction is not to be confused with guilt. It is literally just my body saying no and my awareness of my body.

Unfortunately, as humans we often override the cues and signals our bodies give us. If you have been overriding what your body is telling you for a long time, it will take some time to reconnect with it. But there is SUCH a simple and flawless way to do it. Simply start introducing more healthy foods and activities into your life. You will start to FEEL and EXPERIENCE how good this feels. The more you do this, automatically you will FEEL the contrast when you overeat or eat too many junk foods...

Donuts for dinner repeated

You can actually repeat the donuts for dinner experiment. And depending on how far removed you are from your "intuitive eater", you may need to repeat it many times.

However, if you genuinely and honestly follow the rules set out in the previous blog entry (eat with awareness, for genuine pleasure and without a shadow of guilt) you will discover 2 interesting things either immediately or over time with more repetitions of the experiment:

The first is that you reach a stage in your eating of the delights when you are no longer genuinely hungry and then your enjoyment of what you are eating drops significantly (it is still enjoyable but not divine bliss anymore).

The second interesting pattern you will notice is that there is always a junk food hangover. It might be a headache, bad digestion, trouble sleeping, mood swings or bad skin, but I 100% guarantee that as you start developing awareness you will find this to be true.

Just like booze, getting a junk food hangover doesn't mean you should stop eating junk food. It is simply a factor to bear in mind when making the decision about what to eat and how much. In the same way that I bear a hangover in mind when deciding both what to drink at a given event and how much of a particular alcohol to drink. It means that most of the time I might have 1 or 2 glasses of wine. I still relish the occasional special event when I drink with reckless abandon and have a wonderful drunken time. The next day of course I pay for it and the pain of then hangover is usually enough to put me off a drinking splurge for another month or two!

The above 2 principles can and will become your most important weapons in finding your perfect weight for life. They are also completely different guiding principles to anything you ever tried before in your weight loss efforts which all centred around guilt, restriction and ridicuolous fads.

Day 1: Donuts for dinner

This is the first day of your lifelong journey towards optimum health, well being, peace and happiness.

And I want you to begin by eating donuts, as many as you want. Or chocolate. And fish and chips or pizza. And drink coke. Anything you really love. You can have your cake and eat it too!

Here are the rules:

1. Choose one meal and make it your junk meal. But don't graze on these foods during the day.

2. Wait until you are genuinely hungry before you begin. Don't try to eat a healthy meal first - make this the meal.

3. I want you to really, really enjoy and relish what you are eating. That means no driving, working, dishes, TV, video games, etc, while eating. Just sit back, relax and eat.

4. You can eat as much as you want. Don't try to stop yourself for any reason. Just eat your favourite foods until you are completely satisfied.

5. The most important rule of all is to feel no guilt. Just pure, unbridled pleasure and indulgence.

If you are going to do this then please do it right - I want you to religiously follow the rules above. Sounds easy? You bet it is - Do it!

Before you begin, there is just one last rule:

6. Throughout the process, the day before your meal, during your meal and after your meal, I want you to really, really feel how your body is feeling - your teeth, skin, hair, stomach, eyes, legs, whatever. How are your energy levels? Do you have a clear head? How is your breathing, your digestion and your mood? This is not about judging yourself or feeling guilty- I want you to analyse yourself like a good scientist - objectively and curiously, with no agenda or baggage.

And, be absolutely honest.

Although you may not realise it, you have just taken your first step towards becoming an intuitive eater.

My approach to Intuitive Eating

I agree 100% about the concept of "eating when hungry", stopping when full and not denying yourself the odd treat. However, there are a couple of differences in my approach and philosophy.

Firstly, Intuitive Eating is not just about listening to your body to tell you when to eat and how much. It is also about letting your body tell you what to eat- what it needs or feels like now. This is not the same as eating what your mind tells you it feels like. I will explain in further detail soon.

For some of you who are either very overweight or who have had a dysfunctional relationship with food for a long time (whether due to constant diets, binging, anorexia, etc) with , you may be so out of touch with your "intuition" about eating, that it will take a lot of attention and awareness to get back to the state where it becomes natural and second nature.

However, there are several wonderful things about this process. The first thing is that just by trying you will get some benefit- there is no such thing as failing. Because even if you only get one tiny thing out of this it will still be one tiny thing better than what was there before. The second wonderful thing is that everyone has an intuitive eater inside of them. I promise you that is true. Please ignore all of the junk that has crowded your head over the years: that its genetics, that there is something biologically wrong with your head or your body or that you are plain greedy or bad. How can I be so sure? Its simple, because the intuitive eater is you.

Rather than explain all of this to you in words, I'm going to simply show you how to get there, prove to you why it works, and explain what I need to along the way. Let's begin.

A case example

Here is an inspiring story about a man who used intuitive eating to lose 50 pounds (about 22 kg):

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/01/11/profile.hawks/

Common sense approach to eating

Professor says intuitive diet helped him shed 50 pounds

By Katrina Woznicki
MedPage Today Staff Writer

Friday, January 13, 2006 Posted: 1527 GMT (2327 HKT)

PROVO, Utah (MedPage Today) -- Steven Hawks, a professor of health science at Brigham Young University here, says phooey to dieting.

Eat what you want, when you want, says Hawks. Just use common sense.

For most of us it sounds like a formula for obesity. Not so for Hawks. He was on the borderline of obesity when he gave up dieting. Now, living with his new credo, Hawks is 50 pounds lighter.

His secret, he claims, is "intuitive eating."

Clearly out of the mainstream in the conservative world of nutrition, Hawks proselytizes what he calls a common-sense, hunger-based approach to eating. Nothing in intuitive eating, he says, is taboo.

While intuitive eating doesn't involve measuring cups or calculators, it does entail a high degree of self-awareness. The individual must be constantly in sync with the body's satiety signals.

This doesn't mean that when the stomach starts grumbling, Hawks reaches for a candy bar.

"I'm not advocating nutritional ignorance," he said. "If a fruit or vegetable will solve that hunger instead of something from Cinnabon, then I'm going to be intelligent about it and choose the fruit or vegetable."

Nothing in Hawks' background, except 20 years of teaching and research, would seem to qualify him as a scientific guru in nutrition. His has an education doctorate in community health, an MBA in international business, a master's in international studies, and a bachelor's in East Asian studies, all from BYU.

But he teaches, among other courses, body image, self-esteem, and weight control.

And the 46-year-old Hawks practices what he preaches. He keeps a three-foot-tall refrigerator in his office stocked with everything from fruit to ice cream.

Intuitive eating isn't a license to eat badly, he says. Instead, it's a holistic approach that involves being highly attuned to hunger signals, sensible eating, and not denying the body treats like ice cream.

Now a lean 165 pounds at 5-foot-9, Hawks' intuitive eating style is getting increasing attention, most recently a prominent mention in a feature on the failure of dieting in U.S. News and World Report.

Chubby childhood

Hawks says he used to feel like a hypocrite, teaching nutrition while struggling with his own weight, a battle that had followed him since childhood.

"Third grade kids called me 'fatty,' " he said. This pivotal point was followed by years of dieting, short-lived weight loss, regained weight, and a constant undercurrent of failure, Hawks said.

Even though Hawks had jogged regularly since high school, the weight problems never went away. Junk food was banned from the house much to his six kids' dismay. He tried multiple diets, but nothing worked.

"Before I started intuitive eating, I would skip breakfast and then I would have a light lunch, like a tuna sandwich or an apple and a handful of carrot sticks."

By the time he left work at dinner time, Hawks was ravenous. He would lose control "and binge on whatever I could find, so that it was a constant struggle of restrict, restrain, feel hunger."

Epiphany in Thailand

Hawks' moment on the mountaintop came during a seven-week, work-related trip to Chiang Mei, Thailand, in the summer of 2001. He was working with his students at leper colonies and in poverty programs. During his almost two months in Thailand, he observed how the Thai people didn't obsess about their bodies or what they ate. They just simply enjoyed their food.

"Being in Thailand opened my eyes to seeing how people relate differently to food," Hawks said. The locals didn't have the kinds of anxieties about food that Americans experienced, he said.

He had an epiphany when he patronized a McDonald's in Thailand. "The portion size was about a third to what you get in the United States," he said. "My first reaction was 'What a rip off,' but then I started to see, 'Well, that was enough to be satisfied.' "

That got Hawks thinking. Perhaps the key wasn't so much about what he ate and when, but how he felt about what he was eating, he said.

By the time Hawks flew halfway around the world to return home, he was a changed man. He decided to change his relationship with food for good. His wife, who also wanted to lose weight, joined him in his quest. Within one year they each lost between 40 and 50 pounds following "intuitive eating." Five years later, they're still the same weight.

Intuitive eating not for wimps

Eating intuitively sounds misleadingly easy, but it's probably far more challenging than most fad diets. It involves round-the-clock conscientiousness about what you eat and why.

Hawks said there are three main types of unhealthy consumption intuitive eaters need to be hyper-aware of: environmental eating, such as snacking on chips in front of the TV; emotional eating, like nose-diving into Ben & Jerry's after an argument; and social eating, dipping the fingers into the plate of cookies a co-worker brought to the office. All three are unconscious ways of eating that quickly pack on pounds.

However, restriction just leads to lowered self-esteem and sets people up for binging, Hawks said, so he doesn't deny himself any food, including shrimp, his favorite, whether it's fried shrimp or a shrimp taco.

In his quest to lose weight, Hawks not only dramatically changed his eating habits, he also ate more food. While this may sound counter-intuitive to weight loss, Hawks said variety is critical to maintaining any sort of lifestyle change.

No eating solution would work without exercise, Hawks said. He jogs an average of 25 to 30 miles per week. Exercise enhances intuitive eating, he explained, because it strengthens the connection between mind and body.

Science supports intuition

Hawks published a small study a few months ago in the American Journal of Health Education on intuitive eating's potential. Carried out with more than two dozen female BYU students, it showed that intuitive eating reduced body mass index, lowered triglyceride levels, increased high-density lipoprotein levels, and also improved the students 'overall risk for cardiovascular disease.

Fad diets may, says Hawks, offer short-term weight loss, "but at one level or another they are not in harmony with what your body is telling you, which means you have to work against biological urgings and ultimately you're going to fail. It's not sustainable because it's not natural."

Prior definitions of Intuitive Eating

Prior to commencing this blog, I googled Intuitive Eating and discovered that the concept had in fact been around for a long time. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the subject:

"Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy based on the premise that becoming more attuned to the body's natural hunger signals is a more effective way to attain a healthy weight; rather than keeping track of the amounts of energy and fats in foods. It's a process that is intended to create a healthy relationship with food, mind, and body. Intuitive Eating, just like the many books available today, goes by many names, including non-dieting or the non-diet approach, normal eating, wisdom eating, conscious eating and more.

Intuitive eating is the opposite of dieting, the latter of which is externally driven. Supporters argue that eating in response to internal cues of hunger and fullness, while allowing all foods to be part of the diet, weight will be maintained to one's "natural" weight. Natural weight is the weight range predetermined by genetics.

When someone is disconnected from his or her internal cues of satiety, it is easier to be trigged by external triggers to eat (which can be emotions, "because it's time", opportunity, and/or perceived rules of eating.)

If someone has rigid rules for so-called healthy eating, he or she is more likely to succumb to overeating, as a consequence of breaking their well-meaning rules. Scientifically, this all-or-none type of eating, built around eating rules rather than internal hunger/satiety cues, is referred to as restraint eating or Restraint Theory.^[6]

^{In 2005} Steven Hawks, a professor of Community Health at Brigham Young University, made headlines when he claimed to have lost 50 pounds following his version of an intuitive eating program. Hawks claims the underlying philosophies of intuitive eating are thousands of years old and exist in most eastern and some western religions. Intuitive eating is designed to be a "common sense, hunger-based approach to eating," where participants are encouraged to eat when and only when their body tells them it is hungry."

Intuitive Eating is the Answer

The answer to reaching your perfect weight, being healthy, full of vitality, having abundant energy and feeling your best is so simple: Intuitive eating.

Although I have been interested and studying health and nutrition for around 15 years, I thought of the concept recently while reading a book called "The Decisive Moment" which speaks about rational vs. intuitive decision making in the human brain. The author argues that the human brain has certain evolved and inherited characteristics which enable us to make decisions more accurately and quickly in some situations than what the rational brain is able to do.

The exact same concept applies to our eating patterns and a lot of the problems which people face with eating and their relationship with food in modern, western societies is caused by the rational brain taking over something which should properly be within the realm of the intuitive brain. In this blog, I will explain why this is true and show you how to change it.

The management trainer's story

Before I provide a solution, I think its important for you to acknowledge that what you have tried in the past has not worked. And to understand why that is. Let me begin by telling you a short (true) story.

I went to a management training course recently where the trainer told the group about a top level law firm partner whom he had provided private sessions to. At their first meeting, the partner looked anxiously at the trainer and said, "I am terribly disorganised in my administration tasks and a poor manager. This makes me stressed and frustrated in my job. I want to learn how to be an organised person and a good manager. Can you help me?" The trainer looked at the partner, whose face was tight with worry and expectation, and paused before answering: "Have you tried to improve these qualities in the past?"

The partner breathed out heavily and said: "Yes, I've tried everything. Calendars, outlook reminders, books, training courses. You name it, I've tried it!"

The trainer went on: "And has any of it every worked?" "No," said the partner sadly.

Everyone in the audience waited for the trainer to describe how he then went on to transform and empower the partner to become an organised and talented manager. But instead, to our surprise, the trainer said, "Then I asked the partner: So what makes you think things are going to be different this time?" The partner, like the audience in the training course, answered with surprise, "why, I don't know, nothing I guess."

The trainer then asked the partner: "Tell me, what engages you about your work?" The partner's face lifted and he answered immediately: "It's when I am working uninterrupted on a challenging, intellectually stimulating legal problem." The trainer then said, "And what happens to your administration and management tasks when you are in that state?"

The partner paused and contemplated for a moment before answering: "Well, they just kind of get done as and when required." "And how do you feel at those times?" "I feel great", responded the partner, "because I am doing what I love."

The trainer said: "Right! So what I want to do is work with you to find ways to maximise your time in the engaged state and minimise the time when you are dealing with management and administration requirements which you don't enjoy".

And so he did, apparently with great success and to the partner's delight. Rather than trying to change the partner's character and teaching him to become a more organised and better manager, he focused on helping the partner to find ways to spend more time being engaged in his work. As the trainer predicted, the administration and management tasks which the partner had previously been so focused upon simply 'got done' and ceased to be a problem.

You are the partner in the above story and your constant worry and obsessive focus upon your eating and exercising is likewise setting you up to fail. Until you shift your focus, you will continue to fail again and again - regardless of whether you try dieting, calorie counting, low fat foods or a new exercise regime. I am here to tell you to shift your focus and to help you to succeed once and for all.

Never diet again

Do any of the following sound familiar:

1. You know exactly what you should eat and you pretty much do it, most of the time, anyway;

2. You record everything you eat and/or count calories or have in the past;

3. You exercise just about every day and panic on days when you don't get your exercise in;

4. You almost never buy snacks or junk food or take away;

5. The person who sits next to you in the office / your partner / friend seems to eat 10 times more junk food or food quantities than you do;

6. You spend a significant portion of your time thinking either consciously or unconsciously about your weight, what you ate today, or what you are going to eat - and generally feeling bad or worried about them;

7. You have tried no carbs, high protein, no meat, gluten free, etc diets, with varied success but the results never last;

8. You feel that the body you have holds you back from being who you want to be, and who you really are;

9. You feel that your relationship with food is obsessive, abnormal or unhealthy and deep down you are unsure whether you will ever really be able to change that;

10. You are successful at so many other things in life but for some reason you just cant seem to beat this simplest of things and it is so frustrating and depressing. Sometimes, you just feel like giving up!

I am here to offer you a solution. It is a solution which is free and will last a lifetime. It does not involve taking any chemicals or pills. It does not involve abstaining from your favourite foods or any particular food for that matter. It does not involve more exercise or changing the way you currently exercise. It does not involve eating at particular times, in particular quantities or mixing particular food groups.

All of the above will be up to you. What I offer could be the most liberating thing you have ever done and do more to increase your happiness, peace and well being than anything you will ever do. Interested? Read on.