Hungry? How To Beat Cravings
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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!
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From banning junk food ads to a sugar tax: with diabetes on the rise, we can’t afford to ignore the evidence any longer
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There are renewed calls this week for the Australian government to implement a range of measures aimed at improving our diets. These include restrictions on junk food advertising, improvements to food labelling, and a levy on sugary drinks.
This time the recommendations come from a parliamentary inquiry into diabetes in Australia. Its final report, tabled in parliament on Wednesday, was prepared by a parliamentary committee comprising members from across the political spectrum.
The release of this report could be an indication that Australia is finally going to implement the evidence-based healthy eating policies public health experts have been recommending for years.
But we know Australian governments have historically been unwilling to introduce policies the powerful food industry opposes. The question is whether the current government will put the health of Australians above the profits of companies selling unhealthy food.
Diabetes in Australia
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing chronic health conditions in the nation, with more than 1.3 million people affected. Projections show the number of Australians diagnosed with the condition is set to rise rapidly in coming decades.
Type 2 diabetes accounts for the vast majority of cases of diabetes. It’s largely preventable, with obesity among the strongest risk factors.
This latest report makes it clear we need an urgent focus on obesity prevention to reduce the burden of diabetes. Type 2 diabetes and obesity cost the Australian economy billions of dollars each year and preventive solutions are highly cost-effective.
This means the money spent on preventing obesity and diabetes would save the government huge amounts in health care costs. Prevention is also essential to avoid our health systems being overwhelmed in the future.
What does the report recommend?
The report puts forward 23 recommendations for addressing diabetes and obesity. These include:
- restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, including on TV and online
- improvements to food labelling that would make it easier for people to understand products’ added sugar content
- a levy on sugary drinks, where products with higher sugar content would be taxed at a higher rate (commonly called a sugar tax).
These key recommendations echo those prioritised in a range of reports on obesity prevention over the past decade. There’s compelling evidence they’re likely to work.
Restrictions on unhealthy food marketing
There was universal support from the committee for the government to consider regulating marketing of unhealthy food to children.
Public health groups have consistently called for comprehensive mandatory legislation to protect children from exposure to marketing of unhealthy foods and related brands.
An increasing number of countries, including Chile and the United Kingdom, have legislated unhealthy food marketing restrictions across a range of settings including on TV, online and in supermarkets. There’s evidence comprehensive policies like these are having positive results.
In Australia, the food industry has made voluntary commitments to reduce some unhealthy food ads directly targeting children. But these promises are widely viewed as ineffective.
The government is currently conducting a feasibility study on additional options to limit unhealthy food marketing to children.
But the effectiveness of any new policies will depend on how comprehensive they are. Food companies are likely to rapidly shift their marketing techniques to maximise their impact. If any new government restrictions do not include all marketing channels (such as TV, online and on packaging) and techniques (including both product and brand marketing), they’re likely to fail to adequately protect children.
Food labelling
Food regulatory authorities are currently considering a range of improvements to food labelling in Australia.
For example, food ministers in Australia and New Zealand are soon set to consider mandating the health star rating front-of-pack labelling scheme.
Public health groups have consistently recommended mandatory implementation of health star ratings as a priority for improving Australian diets. Such changes are likely to result in meaningful improvements to the healthiness of what we eat.
Regulators are also reviewing potential changes to how added sugar is labelled on product packages. The recommendation from the committee to include added sugar labelling on the front of product packaging is likely to support this ongoing work.
But changes to food labelling laws are notoriously slow in Australia. And food companies are known to oppose and delay any policy changes that might hurt their profits.
A sugary drinks tax
Of the report’s 23 recommendations, the sugary drinks levy was the only one that wasn’t universally supported by the committee. The four Liberal and National party members of the committee opposed implementation of this policy.
As part of their rationale, the dissenting members cited submissions from food industry groups that argued against the measure. This follows a long history of the Liberal party siding with the sugary drinks industry to oppose a levy on their products.
The dissenting members didn’t acknowledge the strong evidence that a sugary drinks levy has worked as intended in a wide range of countries.
In the UK, for example, a levy on sugary drinks implemented in 2018 has successfully lowered the sugar content in UK soft drinks and reduced sugar consumption.
The dissenting committee members argued a sugary drinks levy would hurt families on lower incomes. But previous Australian modelling has shown the two most disadvantaged quintiles would reap the greatest health benefits from such a levy, and accrue the highest savings in health-care costs.
What happens now?
Improvements to population diets and prevention of obesity will require a comprehensive and coordinated package of policy reforms.
Globally, a range of countries facing rising epidemics of obesity and diabetes are starting to take such strong preventive action.
In Australia, after years of inaction, this week’s report is the latest sign that long-awaited policy change may be near.
But meaningful and effective policy change will require politicians to listen to the public health evidence rather than the protestations of food companies concerned about their bottom line.
Gary Sacks, Professor of Public Health Policy, Deakin University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Philosophy Gym – by Dr. Stephen Law
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If you’d like to give those “little gray cells” an extra workout, this book is a great starting place.
Dr. Stephen Law is Director of Philosophy at the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford. As such, he’s no stranger to providing education that’s both attainable and yet challenging. Here, he lays out important philosophical questions, and challenges the reader to get to grips with them in a systematic fashion.
Each of the 25 questions/problems has a chapter devoted to it, and is ranked:
- Warm-up
- Moderate
- More Challenging
But, he doesn’t leave us to our own devices, nor does he do like a caricature of a philosopher and ask us endless rhetorical questions. Instead, he looks at various approaches taken by other philosophers over time, and invites the reader to try out those methods.
The real gain of this book is not the mere enjoyment of reading, but rather in taking those thinking skills and applying them in life… because most if not all of them do have real-world applications and/or implications too.
The book’s strongest point? That it doesn’t assume prior knowledge (and yet also doesn’t patronize the reader). Philosophy can be difficult to dip one’s toes into without a guide, because philosophers writing about philosophy can at first be like finding yourself at a party where you know nobody, but they all know each other.
In contrast, Law excels at giving quick, to-the-point ground-up summaries of key ideas and their progenitors.
In short: a wonderful way to get your brain doing things it might not have tried before!
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Super Joints – by Pavel Tsatsouline
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For those of us for whom mobility and pain-free movement are top priorities, this book has us covered. So what’s different here, compared to your average stretching book?
It’s about functional strength with the stretches. The author’s background as a special forces soldier means that his interest was not in doing arcane yoga positions so much as being able to change direction quickly without losing speed or balance, get thrown down and get back up without injury, twist suddenly without unpleasantly wrenching anything (of one’s own, at least), and generally be able to take knocks without taking damage.
While we are hopefully not having to deal with such violence in our everyday lives, the robustness of body that results from these exercises is one that certainly can go a long way to keep us injury-free.
The exercises themselves are well-described, clearly and succinctly, with equally clear illustrations.
Note: the paperback version is currently expensive, probably due to supply and demand, but if you select the Kindle version, it’s much cheaper with no loss of quality (because the illustrations are black-on-white line-drawings and very clear; perfect for Kindle e-ink)
The style of the book is very casual and conversational, yet somehow doesn’t let that distract it from being incredibly information dense; there is no fluff here, just valuable guidance.
Bottom line: if you would like to be more robust with non-nonsense exercises, then this book is a fine choice.
Click here to check out Super Joints, and make yours flexible and strong!
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Infrared-Reflecting Patches For Health?
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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!
Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!
In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!
As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!
So, no question/request too big or small
❝Hi! I’ve been reading about LifeWave patches, would you recommend them?❞
For reference first, this is talking about these: LifeWave.com
Short answer: no
Longer answer: their main premise seems to be that the patches (subscription prices seem to start from about $100–$300 per month) reflect infrared energy back into your body, making you more energized and healthy.
Fun fact: aluminum foil reflects infrared energy (which we feel as heat), by the way, and that is why space blankets (of the kind used in emergencies and by some athletes) are made shiny like that, often with aluminized mylar.
We cannot comment too closely on the rest of the presented science of their products, as it seems quite unlike anything we’re accustomed to reading, and we were not able to make a lot of sense of it.
They do cite research papers to back their claims, including research conducted by the company’s founder and published via an open journal.
Many others are independent studies conducted by often the same researchers as each other, mostly experts in acupuncture and acupressure.
For the papers we looked at, the sample sizes were very small, but the conclusions were very positive.
They were published in a variety of journals, of which we cannot claim any prior knowledge (i.e:, they were not the peer-reviewed journals from which we cite most of our sources).
Also, none were registered with ClinicalTrials.gov.
To be on the safe side, their disclaimer does advise:
❝LifeWave products are only intended to maintain or encourage a general state of health or healthy activity and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, mitigate, or prevent any disease or medical condition of the body❞
They do have a Frequently Asked Questions page, which tells about ancient Egyptian use of colored glass, as well as more modern considerations including joining, ordering, their commissions system, binary commissions and matching bonuses, and “how to rank up in LifeWave” as well as a lot of information about subscribing as a preferred customer or a brand partner, opting in to their multi-level marketing opportunities.
Here’s what “Honest Brand Reviews” had to say:
Honest Brand Reviews | LifeWave Review
Our position:
We cannot honestly claim to understand their science, and thus naturally won’t actively recommend what we can’t speak for.
An expert’s position:
Since we couldn’t understand how this would work, here’s what Dr. Paul Knoepfler has to say about their flagship product, the LifeWave X39 patch:
LifeWave X39 stem cell patch story has holes
Take care!
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Young Mind Young Body – by Sue Ziang
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This is a very “healthy mind in a healthy body” book, consistent with the author’s status as a holistic health coach. Sometimes that produces a bit of a catch-22 regarding where to start, but for Ziang, the clear answer is to start with the mind, and specifically, one’s perception of one’s own age.
She advocates for building a young mind in a young body, and yes, that’s mind-building much like body-building. This does not mean any kind of wilful self-delusion, but rather, choosing the things that we do get to choose along the way.
The bridge between mind and body, for Ziang, is meditation—which is reasonable, as it’s very much mind-stuff and also very much neurological and has a very real-world impact on the body’s broader health, even simply by such mechanisms as changing breathing, heart rate, neurotransmitter levels, endocrine functions, and the like.
When it comes to the more physical aspects of health, her dietary advice is completely in line with what we write here at 10almonds. Hydrate well, eat more plants, especially beans and greens and whole grains, get good fats in, enjoy spices, practice mindful eating, skip the refined carbohydrates, be mindful of bio-individuality (e.g. one’s own personal dietary quirks that stem from physiology; some of us react differently to this kind of food or that for genetic reasons, and that’s not something to be overlooked).
In the category of exercise, she’s simply about moving more, which while not comprehensive, is not bad advice either.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for an “in” to holistic health and wondering where to start, this book is a fine and very readable option.
Click here to check out “Young Mind Young Body”, and transform yours!
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Why Going Gluten-Free Could Be A Bad Idea
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Is A Gluten-Free Diet Right For You?
This is Rachel Begun, MS, RD. She’s a nutritionist who, since her own diagnosis with Celiac disease, has shifted her career into a position of educating the public (and correcting misconceptions) about gluten sensitivity, wheat allergy, and Celiac disease. In short, the whole “gluten-free” field.
First, a quick recap
We’ve written on this topic ourselves before; here’s what we had to say:
On “Everyone should go gluten-free”
Some people who have gone gluten-free are very evangelical about the lifestyle change, and will advise everyone that it will make them lose weight, have clearer skin, more energy, and sing well, too. Ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the idea—a dietary change gets seen as a cure-all.
And for some people, it can indeed make a huge difference!
Begun urges us to have a dose of level-headedness in our approach, though.
Specifically, she advises:
- Don’t ignore symptoms, and/but…
- Don’t self-diagnose
- Don’t just quit gluten
One problem with self-diagnosis is that we can easily be wrong:
But why is that a problem? Surely there’s not a health risk in skipping the gluten just to be on the safe side? As it turns out, there actually is:
If we self-diagnose incorrectly, Begun points out, we can miss the actual cause of the symptoms, and by cheerfully proclaiming “I’m allergic to gluten” or such, a case of endometriosis, or Hashimoto’s, or something else entirely, might go undiagnosed and thus untreated.
“Oh, I feel terrible today, there must have been some cross-contamination in my food” when in fact, it’s an undiagnosed lupus flare-up, that kind of thing.
Similarly, just quitting gluten “to be on the safe side” can mask a different problem, if wheat consumption (for example) contributed to, but did not cause, some ailment.
In other words: it could reduce your undesired symptoms, but in so doing, leave a more serious problem unknown.
Instead…
If you suspect you might have a gluten sensitivity, a wheat allergy, or even Celiac disease, get yourself tested, and take professional advice on proceeding from there.
How? Your physician should be able to order the tests for you.
You can also check out resources available here:
Celiac Disease Foundation | How do I get tested?
Or for at-home gluten intolerance tests, here are some options weighed against each other:
MNT | 5 gluten intolerance tests and considerations
Want to learn more?
Begun has a blog:
Rachel Begun | More than just recipes
(it is, in fact, just recipes—but they are very simple ones!)
You also might enjoy this interview, in which she talks about gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, and bio-individuality:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later
Take care!
Don’t Forget…
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Learn to Age Gracefully
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