The Do It Yourself Diet - The Comfort Factor

original article here: http://builtblog.wikidbody.com/2009/01/24/the-do-it-yourself-diet-comfort-food-for-life/

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Every diet works for at least one person, right?

I mean, you’d at least HOPE this was the case. You’d hope that for every diet book published, the method produced results for the person who wrote it – and it sometimes seems that every person who has somehow won the battle of the bulge has a book with which to offer us salvation.

Thing is, sometimes a method works in spite of what we do, and not because of what we do.

We’re all different.

Aren’t we? Different I mean? Well, sort-of. What unites us all is the calorie. The sad fact of the matter is that irritating little truth, the conservation of mass. You can’t gain weight unless you consume more food than you require, and you can’t lose it unless you consume less food than you require. Even if you keep your intake the same, if you burn more than you consume, you’re going to lose weight, no matter how metabolically challenged you are.

So we’re all the same then.

Well, sort-of. One noteworthy difference between us all is comfort.

Surprised? Nobody ever mentioned that part? They should – because if you aren’t comfortable, you will NOT stick to a reducing diet. This is the part where people who find that magical combination of foodstuffs and timing that keeps hunger at bay think they have “The Way”.

One of the most contentious of these comfort-food based diets is the Atkins diet. Now I’m not hating on Atkins – that diet gave me my life back. After those first few days of the “Atkins flu”, for the first time in my life, I felt comfortable, fed – and the weight FELL off me, at least initially. It stayed off, too – effortlessly – getting me from “obese” to “healthy lean”. But it did not get me ripped, and I could not understand why.

It took me a very long time to come around to the idea that if there is, indeed, an metabolic advantage to ketosis, it is slight at best, I finally had to accept The Great Unified Theory of Weight Loss: I ate less food on Atkins, and that’s why I lost weight.

So how come it didn’t keep going?

Appetite, Hunger and Satiety

There are many reasons why people get – and stay – fat. My feeling is that comfort underlies ALL of them. Whether emotional or physiological, discomfort drives us to find an escape from it, if only for a moment. If only we could find this point without food – right? So we search for the ultimate diet pill. You know, the one that kills hunger. But it’s not just about hunger.

Appetite drives our overall intake. Our appetite is a product of many things, and one of them is starvation: over the course of a long hard diet, leptin levels plummet and appetite goes through the roof as the body does what it can to help you survive the famine and EAT, dammit!

Hunger drives us to eat our next meal. Hunger is also a product of many things, one of which is ghrelin: as ghrelin goes up, so does our hunger, and ghrelin doesn’t go down until insulin kills it.

I can’t get no satisfaction… (with apologies to the Rolling Stones)

Where appetite and hunger are our enemies, satiety is our very good friend. Satiety is why – outside of celebratory feasts – we don’t generally eat until we burst. Also a product of many things, one of the main drivers of what the literature refers to as post-prandial satiety (that’s the feeling of satisfaction after a meal, folks!) is a hormone called cholecystokinin - itself a bit of a mouthful, if an unsatisfying one – mercifully abbreviated CCK.

Comfort food

When CCK is high, so too is satiety. In light of this, it should come as no surprise that CCK is highest after a protein meal and lowest after a carbohydrate meal. Interestingly, certain health conditions can suppress post-prandial CCK, noteworthy among them are bulimia and celiac disease.

In bulimia, the frequent binging behaviour may be caused by OR driven by the fact that satiety may take twice as long to kick in as it does in “normal” people, making it that much harder of a disorder to kick.

In celiac, secretin production is impaired, and this is a real problem because secretin stimulates not only the release of CCK but also the acid-neutralizing sodium bicarbonate. Notwithstanding the autoimmune assault due to gluten, the constant bathing of the upper intestine with incompletely-neutralized hydrochloric acid doesn’t sound very friendly!

Getting back to the suppressed CCK, if appetite and hunger are high and satiety is low, it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon (yes, I said rocket SURGEON) to see why many so-called “silent” celiacs are obese.

If you’re one who likes it when things balance, you’ll see that I have described a system with two accelerators and only one brake. I don’t like THOSE odds!

There are plenty of conditions that uncouple the balance between intake and expenditure, far more than I will even begin to address for now, but suffice it to say that if the brakes don’t work as well as the accelerators, you’re going to get fat unless you and hunger decide to get along really, really well!

Fortunately, there are a few strategies to finding comfort. The following is a simple framework I like to suggest to people looking for a way to do just this. So, with no further ado, I introduce to you…

The Do It Yourself Diet

You will need an estimate of your lean mass – use 80% of your “goal weight” if you’re female, or 90% of your goal weight if male.

You will need an estimate of your maintenance calories. Use 13-15 times your bodyweight if you can’t be arsed to track your intake on something like www.fitday.com for a few days.

Using your own food choices, build your diet around the following guidelines:

Set protein at no lower than a gram per pound of lean mass.
Set fat at no lower than half a gram per pound of lean mass.
Set fibre at or around 25g – this has to come from food, not fibre supplements!
Fill the remainder of your calories by comfort.

There you go – that’s maintenance.

See? It’s a BUDGET! The protein and fat minimums are already spent, but the rest is up to you to spend however you wish – as long as you don’t go over budget.

The fibre requirement encourages you to make better choices with your “discretionary spending”, an effect you will find makes this process particularly elegant in its simplicity: if your calories are restricted to only what will sustain you, I challenge you to come up with a truly unhealthy diet based on the above guidelines.

(Now I’m sure the more creative among you can come up with SOMETHING, but unless you really work it, you’ll likely find like others have that these few modest guidelines form the basis of a really automatic series of checks and balances. )

Weight gain and weight loss

Most people reading this are probably trying to lose weight, but the fact is you can easily gain weight this way, too.

To lose weight, drop your calories but keep the protein, fat and fibre no lower than their minimums.
To gain weight, increase your calories and keep the protein, fat and fibre no lower than their minimums.

I know, it’s revolutionary – more food makes you gain, and less food makes you lose. For my next trick, I shall invent FIRE!

From here, you may incorporate whatever strategies you have found helpful from your own experience and or from other diets you have tried.

Feel better when you eat a heavy breakfast but hardly eat anything at night? Do that.

Feel better when you barely eat all day, and stuff yourself at night? Do that.

Find protein shakes help keep you full when you’re trying to lose weight? Drink ‘em.

Find they make you hungrier? Don’t drink ‘em.

If you eat more food than you require, you will gain weight. If you eat less food than you require, you will lose weight. Figure out a way to do what you need and not mind, and you’ll be able to stick to it.

Eat as many or as few meals as you desire – there is no evidence that eating more frequently will help you lose weight.

Eat as early or as late as you wish – this one really doesn’t impact upon your weight either – not unless you go OVER your budget.

Use the foods that make you feel comfortable and don’t eat anything you don’t like. There’s a world of food out there. Find ways to enjoy your food. Vegetables, for example, taste better with butter and salt, or in a stew or sauced – so do that. You can also purée veggies into a soup if you want to sneak in a little more nutrition. If you account for the calories, there’s no law that says nourishing food should taste bad!

Foods that promote storage are less satiating than foods that are burned easily. Since insulin is a storage hormone, you might find it helpful to eat in such a way as to keep insulin down. (Psst – that means lower your carbs, fool!)

If you’re female and/or still quite fat, you may find a higher-fat diet more satiating. Focus on heart-healthy monounsaturated fats as they are more satiating. Fish oil is another excellent addition for the healthy, easily-oxidized polyunsaturates they contain. These fats tend to oxidize fairly easily, where saturated fats resist oxidation and are more likely to be stored.

You do need SOME saturated fat, but keep it to a dull roar if you’re trying to stay comfortable on lower calories.

Soluble fibre slows the rate of gastric emptying and promotes post-prandial (you know what that MEANS now!) satiety. Foods rich in soluble fibre include eggplant, okra, oatmeal, fruit, and legumes and pulses- so look for ways to incorporate these foods into your budget.

Wheat makes some people hungry, as do other grain foods – so if you find this matches your experience, stay away from wheat if you’re trying to stay comfortable while you lose weight. On the other hand, potatoes – demonized on the now-outdated glycemic-index score highly on the satiety index. If you’re looking for a starch that won’t make you want to gnaw your arm off, try the humble white potato.

Getting your eating figured out is a lot like buying a house. Don’t get caught up picking out curtains before you have a house to hang them in. Likewise don’t get bogged down by the minutiae of meal-timing, supplements and food combinations before you even know how many calories you’re eating. Build the framework for your sustenance first. Then it’s YOUR diet, the one that suits YOU – and you’ll know it will work because you designed it that way.

Now go eat your comfort-food. (Or eat it later, if you prefer.)