> But satiation is a built-in feature of your body. A healthy human body counts calories automatically, and governs appetite and metabolism appropriately to keep body weight in a narrow target range.
It's not just the human body, but the mind as well.
Sometimes I'd get engrossed in a piece of work or reading something interesting and forget to eat for hours. Then I'd get hunger pangs, and eat some sugary crap or something laden in saturated fat (this often happened late in the evenings. Eating late in the evening is a terrible habit, as the carbs in your food is more likely to metabolise to fat.)
Now I find by simply calorie counting (MyFitnessPal is amazing, free, scans barcodes, you enter your goals etc.) and planning meals so that I have x4 relative low calorie meals (typically 400-600 calories) in a day, with no hunger pangs. I never feel like reaching for that 1200+ calorie pizza at 10pm anymore. It's simple, no bullshit, you don't have to massively overhaul your diet or starve yourself. Anyone could do it if they put their mind to it. I'm about a month into this new regime and I'm never going back.
> forget to eat for hours.... Then I'd get hunger pangs...
This is a typical symptom of impaired blood sugar control. If you need four meals a day to keep the hunger pangs away, you're on the road to type 2 diabetes. With a healthy metabolism, you can go all day without eating, with no discomfort and no loss of function (so long as you've been eating well in prior days).
> I'm about a month into this new regime and I'm never going back.
Study after study says that calorie counting diets work great for the first several months, up to a year.
And then by year five, only a tiny fraction of people are still doing it, and the rest have gained back all their weight and then some.
Maybe you will beat the odds. I do think that many HN readers are more likely than the general population to succeed this way -- geeks are better at living inside number-based systems of rules. Good luck.
> If you need four meals a day to keep the hunger pangs away, you're on the road to type 2 diabetes.
That's...a bit of an extreme way of looking at it.
Four small, low-calorie, healthy meals. Snacks, more like. For example, a day could look like:
- Breakfast: x2 small boiled eggs, cup of green tea, 1 teaspoon sugar
- Mid-morning: Banana, cup of coffee
- Dinner: Chicken and pasta meal (brown pasta)
- Evening snack: toasted ham and cheese sandwich (wholemeal bread)
This will comfortably last me the day without hunger pangs. I won't necessarily strictly follow this every single day, this is a rough guide. The overall point is regularly spaced out meals, before I get ravenous and eat crap food, with as little processed food and sugar as possible.
> Study after study says that calorie counting diets work great for the first several months, up to a year.
And then by year five, only a tiny fraction of people are still doing it, and the rest have gained back all their weight and then some.
Maybe you will beat the odds. I do think that many HN readers are more likely than the general population to succeed this way -- geeks are better at living inside number-based systems of rules. Good luck.
I don't think of it as a calorie counting diet. The whole point of calorie counting is a temporary measure (perhaps for a month or two total), more as a mental trick to make me realise the shit I was shovelling absently mindedly into my body every day. After a few weeks, I'll be able to roughly gauge the calories simply by memory, and hopefully be in a good habit of small regular healthy meals by then.
It's not just the human body, but the mind as well.
Sometimes I'd get engrossed in a piece of work or reading something interesting and forget to eat for hours. Then I'd get hunger pangs, and eat some sugary crap or something laden in saturated fat (this often happened late in the evenings. Eating late in the evening is a terrible habit, as the carbs in your food is more likely to metabolise to fat.)
Now I find by simply calorie counting (MyFitnessPal is amazing, free, scans barcodes, you enter your goals etc.) and planning meals so that I have x4 relative low calorie meals (typically 400-600 calories) in a day, with no hunger pangs. I never feel like reaching for that 1200+ calorie pizza at 10pm anymore. It's simple, no bullshit, you don't have to massively overhaul your diet or starve yourself. Anyone could do it if they put their mind to it. I'm about a month into this new regime and I'm never going back.