How To Lose Fat According To Stephan Guyenet’s The Hungry Brain1
I. The Problem
If you are obese, overweight, or otherwise carry more body fat than you would like, it’s because you eat too much. But that is not necessarily, and probably isn’t, because you are stupid or lacking in willpower.
The parts of the brain that govern appetite and consumption are adapted for environments that differ significantly from those in which we live today. The body contains a number of mechanisms that regulate appetite and food consumption in order to maintain a constant amount of body fat. Under normal circumstances, these mechanisms ensure that when we are above that set point, our appetite is reduced so we eat less until we return to it; when we are below that set point, our appetite is increased so we eat more until we return to it.
But there are specific foods that shut off these mechanisms, preventing us from feeling satiety at the right time and permitting us to eat far in excess of our actual caloric needs. These are high reward foods, that is, foods dense in calories, fats, sugar, and carbohydrates. We are naturally primed to stuff our faces with these high reward foods, even far in excess of our actual caloric needs, whenever they are available.
This worked just fine in almost any environment prior to 1945, because such foods were rare and exercise of all types was a sufficiently large part of daily life to offset them. But now such foods are cheap and widely available in the form of cookies, breads, restaurant foods, breakfast cereals, fast food, juices, and every other kind of food commonly consumed today.
We thus find ourselves surrounded by foods that we are by nature primed to eat to excess and that shut off our natural mechanisms of appetite and weight control. This environment, more than laziness or stupidity, is the reason why most people, probably including you, eat too much.
II. The Solution
The solution is simple. You need to eat less. But how?
The most important thing is to be conscious of food reward and to construct your food environment in such a way that you have ready access only to low reward foods that allow your body’s natural mechanisms of body fat regulation to operate smoothly.
In practice, this looks much like what anyone with an interest in healthy living would tell you. Fill your home and fridge with whole foods low in caloric density, high in protein and fiber, and that require effort to prepare and consume.2 A single Oreo contains fifty to one hundred calories. A single large carrot contains at most fifty calories, but its greater size and fiber content will make you feel more sated. A diet of eggs, fish, meat, whole fruit and vegetables, whole milk, oatmeal, honey, potatoes and so on, ideally organic etc., cooked in only as much olive oil, butter, coconut oil, or animal fat as is necessary for the job will create the conditions for your body’s internal lipostat to function properly, leading, if done right, to effortless reduction in caloric intake and fat loss over time.
The flipside is that you will have to completely throw out high reward foods like seed oils3, cookies and other high calorie baked goods, breakfast cereals, all ice cream except those made with the basic ingredients of eggs, sugar, milk, cream, and coconut oil4, premade foods, frozen foods, and make a habit of avoiding restaurant food except in carefully controlled amounts and from rigorously selected vendors.
There are other, secondary factors to take into account, which you have heard already from millions of others. If you are not regularly sleeping as long as your body individually needs and turning off all sources of blue light as soon as the sun goes down, you will suffer from dysregulated appetite and probably eat too much and get fat. If you are experiencing too much unmanaged stress, you will probably eat too much high reward food and get fat. If you are not exercising regularly, specifically if you are not building muscle through resistance training in order to increase your basal metabolic rate and change the way your body processes sugar and other nutrients, you will probably get fat.5 But none of these will do you any good if you stuff your face with Oreos and other high reward foods on a regular basis.
If you follow these guidelines strictly, you will eat less, it will feel good, normal, effortless, and natural, and you will lose fat.
This essay is a condensed summary of the contents of Stephan J. Guyenet’s The Hungry Brain: Outsmarting the Instincts that Make Us Overeat. It should not be taken to constitute health or medical advice, and the author assumes no responsibility for any adverse effects that may occur as a result of following the ideas of Guyenet.
Food variety is also an important factor. A diet low in food variety decreases the reward of each individual food item and can contribute to greater satiety and improved regulation of body fat levels.
I have heard that high oleic sunflower oil is an exception to this rule, but I have not investigated the matter for myself.
This basically restricts you to Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream or whatever you make yourself.
Even if you manage to remain thin, you’ll look pathetic and potentially disgusting if you don’t lift weights, or at least do rigorous calisthenics, martial arts, or other physical training.
Tres bien fait. Bravo