Always Hungry? Here’s Why

Everyone serious about this understands that carbs are the problem.

The consequences would be immense if we could override even one of these triggers.

Because the science is still incomplete, the article unsurprisingly ends on a "more research is needed" note, but I completely agree with that!

While your point about fat cells, ghrelin and leptin has some factual basis, precisely how these hormones affect eating patterns and are themselves affected by bodyfat, carbohydrate intake and insulin resistance, are among the things that need more carefully controlled studies.

I'd also like to see more science into the effects of intermittent fasting. There is IIRC only one actual study on this, far from enough to back up all the various protocols and broscience articles on how "fasting is good for you". Anecdotally, it seems to be very effective for some people but I don't think we yet have a very good understanding of why that is, or indeed whether it is even true under controlled conditions.

I personally suspect that carb restriction and intermittent fasting both have very similar effects on this group of 3 hormones, while sugar has basically the opposite effect. What's lacking however is clear scientific evidence of this.

Of course, it is still calorie in, calorie out, but we need to understand what effects metabolic changes in our body if we want to understand what calories are going out. Furthermore, quality of life generally indicates most people don't want to shut their metabolism down even if it did mean weight loss -- we want to be energy using machines that are motivated to "get up and do stuff", so just blindly reducing calories is not the path to that.

Calorie counting is an important part, but knowing what macro-nutrients ratio is just as important. More protein, more fat, more fiber, less carbs will help that a lot. Why is calorie tracking still so important? because fat takes forever to metabolize and is denser than carbs, so (a) You will need to break the psychological programming of expecting food to provide instant fuel, fat will take an hour(ish) to energize you; if you just are "still hungry" and eat more in 30 minutes you're losing the battle. (b) Most of us are used to eating a volume of food that equates to the calories we want from carbs. Eating that much in fat will obviously not help weight loss goals, so when eating fat dense foods we must eat much smaller portions.

There are really two separate feedback loops we use to feel sated. Fat is good

If the control system responds faster than the plant you've got a decent shot at keeping things under control and your system is said to be critically damped or overdamped. Both of these are pretty acceptable solutions for process control. If your system doesn't respond fast enough, it's said to be underdamped and shit is real bad. We're talking the kind of runaway shit that you see in the Tacoma Narrows bridge video. Here's a nice picture of various control systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Second_order_transfer_func...

Our bodies have a control system for hunger, I'm sure of that. But we don't get to choose how fast that control system reacts; that's fixed. For a lot of foods, our control system responds faster than our blood sugar and things are fine. But some foods can cause our blood sugar to go up faster than we can store it or otherwise react to it. Then eventually enough insulin gets dumped into the blood stream that blood sugar starts to crash. So then you get really hungry and start eating again. The more you eat large amounts of easily digestible sugars, the further you go from the critical damping of (zeta = 1) to horrifically underdamped (zeta = 0).

I wonder when the engineers and the scientists are going to get together and hammer this stuff out formally.

THAT's thinking like an Engineer.

A bad night's sleep or a lack of sunlight will slow your metabolism down. It's quite variable. Under eating for just a couple days will tank it. Going low protein (under, say, 80 grams) is also sure to lower metabolism.

Imho the easiest way by far to lose weight is eat foods that combine low carb + high satiation index.

Well, it's supposed to be a diet after all :)

I think that one should remove snacks/sweets/junk foods from their life before even considering what kind of a diet one should do. After all, those are probably 50%+ of the intake (at least, they are of mine... I'm trying to stop) and there are very few foods with so many calories/carbs.

Sodas are particularly nasty, because one drink them all the day without realizing how much (my suggestion: switch to water, I've done it years ago and I couldn't be happier. Now I can't bring myself to drink a soda while eating, way too sweet).

(Unrelated) you know, I don't even like those this much. I just have a craving for them. When I finish eating those, I usually even drink a cup or two of water because I don't like the taste left in my mouth.

I agree that 1500 calories are hard to stick to though, I did this for a while and lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time (19 pounds in 3 months). Once the initial, rapid weight loss was over, it felt like too much of a sacrifice for very little gain. Unfortunately that let me abandoning calorie counting altogether and putting some of the weight back on.

Now I'm on a 1800 calorie limit per day and find it perfectly manageable. I often even have 100-200 calories left at the end of a day for a snack. Around 500 calories for breakfast, 600-700 for lunch (which fell often like copious amounts of food. A bowl of pasta with marinara sauce and cheese or such) and another 400-500 for dinner, which leaves just enough room for snacks. I also make a point of eating dinner fairly early, about 12 hours before I'll have breakfast.

What I'm trying to get at is that if you eat the right food (and ideally prepare it yourself) 2000 calories (which should still lead to a significant weight loss) can go a long way without leaving you hungry at the end of the day.

There are a ton of calorie restriction experiments involving all species (except humans, since that is not realistically possible). These studies show that calorie restriction clearly results in weight loss.

- Is corn syrup in nearly all their breads/pasta?

- Do they create their pastas(and sauce) at home rather than USA's commonly TV-dinner style or high-processed fast foods?

- I suspect that what a low income person in Italy typical eats is very different from what a low income person in America typically eats.

- This... http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-carbo...

- Do they... [One million other things that make the common American's diet a horrible disaster]?

Whether summering in Italy or in hot weather in the US, I don't experience hunger the same way as when I am in cold weather. My guess is my body does not need as much energy to generate heat, and I tend to drink much more water (sweating) than have a desire for food.

Of course, this is my personal experience and genetics and does not explain obesity rates in hotter parts of the US (unless rather than water people are drinking Coke).

I lived in Pisa for 2 months and was surprised to find that the cuisine (at least in the region I stayed) focused heavily on seafood. I believe the cuisine in Sicily is a little closer to the pasta/tomato sauce centric cuisine which I grew up with in the Philadelphia area. But still, I am certain their is far more seafood in Sicily than one might think. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised at the amount of seafood in the cuisine in Italy, it's a skinny peninsula and Sicily is an island. :) There is also the difference in portion sizes in Italy vs the US. I certainly have no data to support that but my anecdotal experience is in line with the hypothesis.

This said, as US-style food becomes more mainstream (thank you, Hollywood), obesity rates are going up in Italy as well.

http://djstrouse.com/italy-small-portions-smaller-people/

Looking at the UK and Ireland, my few times in those countries (especially Ireland) showed me that fast food and a lack of veggies is pretty common, especially out in the local villages. There were a few entire days while traveling throughout Ireland (as a visitor) where my choices for food in some local village were basically the local fish & chips/pizza place or the pub and that was it. The local children were pretty hefty, but the farmers and other locals were about as fit as that kind of life can make you. I did manage to find a few great local restaurants, but the meals were basically local pork in cream sauces and potatoes with a few greens. It was great food if you're working a farm or something similarly labor intensive, but sedentary lifestyles are not compatible with it.

Fructose is much more of a problem than glucose. Here's a video from one of the authors referenced in the article that explains the two metabolisms in depth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Besides whether they eat processed food or not, look into what they drink and what they have for desert in particular. In e.g. Italy or France, consumption of soda or fruit juice is low, and deserts are small and refined when it's not a simple fruit.

It's a completely different story in e.g. the UK where they binge on soda, candy, and sugary chocolate, Malta where they binge on a local soft drink so sweet your entire body is sweating with sugar from merely tasting it or Hungary where they frequently eat sweet bread and enormous sugary cakes.

I'm sorry, but that is not a marginal effect. That is the difference between weight gain and weight loss. Also, if you read the article you would have noticed that a calorie deficit is not the only thing that necessitates weight loss, in fact, it might not help at all. There are good calories and bad calories, and how your body handles each depends on the source of the calorie.

Anecdote: several years ago, my brother and his wife were in their thirties and starting to get a bit soft around the middle like everyone does when they exit their twenties.

Like most Americans, they lived in a pedestrian-unfriendly city and drove everywhere. They moved to Vancouver and sold their car. Suddenly, they were walking everywhere. I went to visit them and they both looked markedly better: slimmer and healthier.

They eventually moved back to the States and they went right back to the shape they were in before.

I think walking is one of the easiest and most pleasurable things we can change to improve our health. Aside from the time cost, there's little downside to it.

Its an artistic illustration of Betty Crocker vanilla cake and vanilla frosting having a GI of 42 and a total glps around 24 (for 111 grams) vs kraft mac n cheese having a GI of 64 and total glps around 32 (for 180 grams). (Yes I actually looked this up not just make up example)

Some of this is political BS in that the serving size for the mac n cheese is about 60% larger than the serving size for the cake. None the less it is a medical experimental fact that your blood sugar level will spike about 50% harder after the pasta than after the cake. Probably all the oil in the cake, and grease (if purchased) or butter (if homemade) in the frosting, and egg in the cake (intended as an emulsifier rather than a protein source).

But yeah, like it or not, WRT blood sugar levels, at the end of dinner, you're WAY better off eating a serving of cake than going back for seconds of pasta. Crazy but true.

Now notice that the total glycemic load is what annoys / kills your pancreas, so cake is slightly worse (per gram of serving). However wild crazy fluctuations in blood sugar both drive your brain crazy and screw up the rest of your body, so pasta is worse for that. Your pancreas is not in charge of the quantity of food you eat, so the net effect is eating "more cake and less pasta" will in the long run loose weight or at least result in less weight gain.

It's really not hard to get complete nutrition from well chosen foods like fruit and dairy. Here's 20 bananas and four pints of 1% milk, totally nutrient replete: http://imgur.com/a/X6F6j You could eat this every day for weeks and have no problems. If you're fat you'd almost certainly lose weight and maintain muscle.

For myself, I accepted his premise and did my own experiment: by making a minimal attempt to stay away from most sugar, I've lost 15 lbs in the last year and a half.

You have to constrain calories somewhat while making sure not to lower the metabolic rate. You can do this by tracking resting body temperature and pulse rate. If you wake up in the morning and have a body temperature much below 98F, you need to eat more. You also want to maintain a resting pulse rate over 70 bpm. If these measures dip, you are probably going too low in carbs or protein.

The fact is, only quite slow fat loss is safe and sustainable. All the more reason to not get fat in the first place.

I'm currently going for 1800 calories and after losing a decent amount of weight initially, I feel I'm making fairly little progress (to be expected). It seems to me that I actually lose more weight when I go a bit over the limit, which leads me to believe I might be eating so little that my metabolism slows down.

But, there are many people in America that don't care enough to know, and more to the point, we benefit in motivation from every reminder that our eating habits are fucked up.

Actually, the general cultural attitudes are to castigate overweight individuals for some sort of moral failing. In reality, it is substantially harder for different people with different genes to maintain a lower weight. Disregarding that is purely callous and is equivalent to denying the existence of phenomena like addiction.

People are 100% accountable, but that doesn't mean we should ignore that it's harder for certain people to make the "right" choice. It also doesn't mean we shouldn't give them support and assistance to make the right choice.

You are technically correct, except in the case of children who were raised with terrible eating habits and found themselves with the same habits and damage in adulthood. In my (terribly uninformed) opinion, I think this is more common than we give it credit, and the behavioral effects of several years or more of terrible eating is more powerful and controlling than we give it credit.

The statement "You are 100% accountable" is very good for empowering individuals to change, but it is commonly confused as something intended to shame.

"if you eat without consideration and control" the battle is you vs an entire army of PR people and biochemists focused on defeating you for profit. My betting money is on the army. The moral and ethical failure is creating a civilization designed to kill in exchange for a few making high profits, its not a moral or ethical failure for some wanna-be Rambo's getting wiped out by the combined arms attack of an entire army. Or, a "hate the game not the players" argument.

As this article points out people who are trying to lose weight and following the advice of 'experts' may have been doing the wrong thing Staying hungry eating grain bread, pastas and fruit and not satiating themselves with enough fats or proteins. Jump in and join the discussion don't try and dismiss it with a disdainful wave of the hand.

Um, yes. I don't at all understand your point. That's the most ridiculous point I've heard in a long time.

Are you somehow insinuating that overweight people are not well-read or intelligent? The many, many overweight NYT readers I know (including myself) would beg to differ.

> And to the person who says that what people put into their mouths is, "generally out of their control"

Your attitude is a terrible example of the moralistic viewpoint which this article disparages. Being overweight is in no way equivalent to a crime.

Choice is not a binary. Of course people have some control over what they eat, but it's well established by science that different people at different times have different drives to eat. Or are you completely dismissing addiction as a phenomenon?