The Science of Hunger, And How To Sate It

This is Dr. David Ludwig. That’s not a typo; he’s a doctor both ways—MD and PhD.

Henceforth we’ll just say “Dr. Ludwig”, though! He’s a professor in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center.

His research focuses on the effects of diet on hormones, metabolism, and body weight, and he’s one of the foremost experts when it comes to carbohydrates, glycemic load, and obesity.

Why are we putting on weight? What are we getting wrong?

Contrary to popular belief, Dr. Ludwig says, weight gain is not caused by a lack of exercise. In fact, people tend to overestimate how many calories are burned by exercise.

A spoonful of sugar may make the medicine go down, but it also contains 60 calories, and that’d take about 1,500 steps for the average person to burn off. Let’s put this another way:

If you walk 10,000 steps per day, that will burn off 400 calories. Still think you can exercise away that ice cream sundae or plate of fries?

Wait, this is interesting and all, but what does this have to do with hunger?

Why we get hungry

Two important things:

• All that exercise makes us hungry, because the more we exercise, the more the body speeds up our metabolism accordingly.
• Empty calories don’t just add weight themselves, they also make us hungrier

What are empty calories, and why do they make us hungrier?

Empty calories are calories that are relatively devoid of other nutrition. This especially means simple sugars (especially refined sugar), white flour and white flour products (quick-release starches), and processed seed oils (e.g. canola, sunflower, and friends).

They zip straight into our bloodstream, and our body sends out an army of insulin to deal with the blood sugar spike. And… that backfires.

Imagine a person whose house is a terrible mess, and they have a date coming over in half an hour.

They’re going to zoom around tidying, but they’re going to stuff things out of sight as quickly and easily as possible, rather than, say, sit down and Marie Kondo the place.

But superficially, they got the job done really quickly!

Insulin does similarly when overwhelmed by a blood sugar spike like that.

So, it stores everything as fat as quickly as possible, and whew, the pancreas needs a break now after all that exertion, and the blood is nice and free from blood sugars.

Wait, the blood is what now?

The body notices the low blood sugar levels, and it also knows you just stored fat so you must be preparing for starvation, and now the low blood sugar levels indicate starvation is upon us. Quick, we must find food if we want to survive! So it sends a hunger signal to make sure you don’t let the body starve.

You make a quick snack, and the cycle repeats.

Dr. Ludwig’s solution:

First, we need to break out of that cycle, and that includes calming down our insulin response (and thus rebuilding our insulin sensitivity, as our bodies will have become desensitized, after the equivalent of an air-raid siren every 40 minutes or so).

How to do that?

First, cut out the really bad things that we mentioned above.

Next: cut healthy carbs too—we’re talking unprocessed grains here, legumes as well, and also starchy vegetables (root vegetables etc). Don’t worry, this will be just for a short while.

The trick here is that we are resensitizing our bodies to insulin.

Keep this up for even just a week, and then gradually reintroduce the healthier carbs. Unprocessed grains are better than root vegetables, as are legumes.

You’re not going to reintroduce the sugars, white flour, canola oil, etc. You don’t have to be a puritan, and if you go to a restaurant you won’t undo all your work if you have a small portion of fries. But it’s not going to be a part of your general diet.

Other tips from Dr. Ludwig:

• Get plenty of high-quality protein—it’s good for you and suppresses your appetite
• Shop for success—make sure you keep your kitchen stocked with healthy easy snack food
• Nuts, cacao nibs, and healthy seeds will be your best friends and allies here
• Make things easy—buy pre-chopped vegetables, for example, so when you’re hungry, you don’t have to wait longer (and work more) to eat something healthy
• Do what you can to reduce stress, and also eat mindfully (that means paying attention to each mouthful, rather than wolfing something down while multitasking)

If you’d like to know more about Dr. Ludwig and his work, you can check out his website for coaching, recipes, meal plans, his blog, and other resources!

Jim Kwik: from broken brain to brain coach

This is Jim Kwik. He suffered a traumatic brain injury as a small child, and later taught himself to read and write by reading comic books. He became fascinated with the process of learning, and in his late 20s he set up Kwik Learning, to teach accelerated learning in classrooms and companies, which he continued until 2009 when he launched his online learning platform. His courses have now been enjoyed by people in 195 countries.

So, since accelerated learning is his thing, you might wonder…

What does he have to share that we can benefit from in the next five minutes?

Three brain exercises to improve memory and concentration

A lot of problems we have with working memory are a case of executive dysfunction, but there are tricks we can use to get our brains into gear and make them cumulatively stronger:

First exercise

You can strengthen your corpus callosum (the little bridge between the two hemispheres of the brain) by performing a simple kinesiological exercise, such as alternating touching your left elbow to your right knee, and touching your right elbow to your left knee.

Do it for about a minute, but the goal here is not a cardio exercise, it’s accuracy!

You want to touch your elbow and opposite knee to each other as precisely as possible each time. Not missing slightly off to the side, not falling slightly short, not hitting it too hard.

Second exercise

Put your hands out in front of you, as though you’re about to type at a keyboard. Now, turn your hands palm-upwards. Now back to where they were. Now palm-upwards again. Got it? Good.

That’s not the exercise, the exercise is:

You’re now going to do the same thing, but do it twice as quickly with one hand than the other. So they’ll still be flipping to the same basic “beat”, put it in musical terms, the tempo on one hand will now be twice that of the other. When you get the hang of that, switch hands and do the other side.

This is again about the corpus callosum, but it’s now adding an extra level of challenge because of holding the two rhythms separately, which is also working the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex.

The pre-frontal cortex in particular is incredibly important to executive function, self-discipline, and being able to “do” delayed gratification. So this exercise is really important!

Third exercise

This one works the same features of the brain, but most people find it harder. So, consider it a level-up on the previous:

Imagine there’s a bicycle wheel in front of you (as though the bike is facing you at chest-height). Turn the wheel towards you with your hands, one on each side.

Now, do the same thing, but each of your hands is going in the opposite direction. So one is turning the wheel towards you; the other is turning it away from you.

Now, do the same thing, but one hand goes twice as quickly as the other.

Switch sides.

Why is this harder for most people than the previous? Because the previous involved processing discrete (distinct from each other) movements while this one involves analog continuous movements.

It’s like reading an analog clock vs a digital clock, but while using both halves of your brain, your corpus callosum, your pre-frontal cortex, and the motor cortex too.

Want to learn more?

You might enjoy his book, which as well as offering exercises like the above, also offers a lot about learning strategies, memory processes, and generally building a quicker more efficient brain:

Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life