Welcome back! I hope that you & your family had a safe & enjoyable New Year’s celebration.

When you are trying to lose fat, recondition your metabolism manipulate your hormones, exercise intelligently and still create a calorie deficit experiencing hunger is the quickest way to fall off the fat-loss wagon.

Constant, nagging hunger pangs are usually the sign of a diet too full of processed carbs and sub-par protein. Your body is so used to eating nutrient sparse foods that it has become conditioned to hit he hunger switch so it can get as many nutrients as possible. On a processed food diet these nutrients are sparse so they come with a load of sugars & so-called empty calories.

Lots of calories with little nutrition...

Even worse it is now believed by researchers that when you don’t consume enough nutritious foods your body enters a state of nutrient under supply which creates inflammation and a release of metabolic waste products that are toxic. The end result is a hunger pain that is truly painful & only alleviated by eating.

A recent study (Changing perceptions of hunger on a high nutrient density diet. Fuhrman, J. et al., Nutrition Journal 2010 Nov 7;9:51. Carried out at Hahn School of Nursing, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA ) has the answer though. And it echoes what I put forward in my 4-part post on reconditioning your metabolism.

The study involved 768 people who changed from diet lacking in micronutrients to one that was high in micronutrients. They then completed a survey that dealt with a number of the dimensions of hunger – things like mood swings, irritability, physical symptoms and where they felt the hunger in their bodies – on the 2 diet types.

In the study the level of and pain associated with hunger experienced (and the level of difficulty involved in coping with it) both dropped dramatically when the people involved switched a diet heavy in healthy foods. Large differences in the physical & emotional symptoms were found in the reporting between the 2 diets.

On the nutrient dense diet, hunger was not experienced as often as the sparse nutrient diet, nor was it as painful or even as unpleasant. This held true even when meals were skipped! Positive changes to the way in which they experienced hunger were reported by almost 80% of participants with 51% saying they had experienced ‘a dramatic or complete change in their experience of hunger.’

The study concluded a nutrient dense, though calorie low diet reduces or removes the less pleasant aspects of hunger. They found that it was not the amount of calories that influenced hunger but the density of the nutrients in the food eaten.

This is the ticket for nutrient density...

So – forget about counting calories; instead fill your meals with nutrient dense, low- or unprocessed foods. Focus on quality foods like nutrient-rich fruit, vegetables, whole grains with lean proteins and healthful fats – if you don’t your body is going to miss them and demand more fuel.

Just imagine – once you start feeding your body better it will make hunger a more pleasant and rarer experience, it will crave good food instead of processed crap, and you’ll find it easier to stay on the fat loss wagon.

I’ll be back soon – in the meantime why not leave a comment, Tweet this to others or ‘Like’ us on Face Book.

Be well.