Health & Family Poor Eating Habits Make You Perpetually Hungry

I read emails from Tom Corley, who is the author of the Rich Habits website and sends insights from studying Rich people (not just wealty people, but those with a rich life).

I found this article interesting about diet and microbiota:

About two years ago, I began intermittent fasting. This requires me to go about 14 hours without eating in order to maintain a ketonic state.

When you are in a ketonic state, this means your body has run out of glucose, or stored glycogen, and must burn fat cells in order to release ketones. These ketones are then used to fuel every cell in the body. This burning of fat, in order to release ketones, forces weight loss.

In the beginning, my hunger pains were particularly acute around 8am. Eating any food that contained glucose would take me out of this ketonic state. Not wanting to disrupt my ketonic state, I searched for food that did not contain any glucose.

I stumbled upon a study about microbiota (bacteria in the gut). This study highlighted the need to feed microbiota. When your microbiota are hungry, you experience hunger pains.

I experimented with various non-glucose foods, and found that celery almost immediately ended my hunger pains. I wanted to know why and thus began my two-year research into microbiota.

The Vagus Nerve runs from the brain stem all the way down into your gut (small and large intestines). It’s branches, known as tendrils, are like fiber-optic cables sending and receiving information between the brain and the gut.

Hunger pains are triggered in two instances:

1. When the body needs glucose, and
2. When your microbiota need their food

The body communicates its need for food through to Vagus Nerve. The Vagus Nerve then sends a signal to the brain that the body needs food and the brain releases certain chemicals/neurotransmitters that cause you to crave food.

Living inside your gut are 100 trillion bacteria, or about three pounds of bacteria. Those bacteria, like the cells in your body, require food in order to survive. The food they need is very specific, however. It is often referred to as prebiotic food.

When you eat unhealthy food, that food may satisfy your body’s glucose needs, but it lacks the requisite prebiotics to feed the bacteria in your gut.

So, the Vagus nerve will continue to send hunger signals to the brain in order to get more food to feed the 100 trillion bacteria, screaming for prebiotics, like newborn hatchlings in a nest.

The prebiotic food that does the best job of feeding bacteria is high fiber foods. Spinach, kale, broccoli, Avocado, pears, apples, turnips, celery, artichokes, raw garlic, raw leeks, onions, wheat bran, yogurt, kefir, asparagus, cabbage, legumes, beans, root vegetables (ie. potatoes, carrots) and some others.

If you want to lose weight, you must shut down those hunger pains. You do this by forging the Rich Habit of eating plenty of prebiotic foods. At least two of your meals a day should include some prebiotics. This will keep those 100 trillion bacteria happy, which keeps the hunger pains away.

It turns out my microbiota just happen to love celery.

 

I've been living the keto way for close to 6 years now with the odd "break" here and there. However, I achieve ketosis by restriction of carbs by keeping them to <25g a day. I find that intermittent fasting is also a natural side effect of this too. I listen to my body and only eat when hungry. I generally eat between a 6-8 hour window as I'm just not hungry before about 2pm then have dinner of an evening.

If I'm strict enough for long enough then I become properly fat adapted and the feeling is amazing. Endless energy, no brain fog and just an overall feeling of wellness.

Now that I've been living this way for a while I wouldn't have it any other way. The difference in myself is amazing and the foods I eat are even better!

 

I've been intermittently fasting for maybe 7 years now, though only on work days. No food before 4pm, so just under 20 hours.

I haven't really noticed a huge difference in my food intake over a 24 hour period whether I'm fasting or not.

 

But intermittent fasting doesn't put you into kestosis, restricting carbs does. I tried keytosis last year for a few months and yes lost weight but also strength. For the first week felt a bit odd but then felt better, and had less hunger generally. Did the opposite this year and ate a ton of carbs and calories even when I wasn't hungry, managed to put on 12kg and achieve a strength goal (100kg bench 3 reps), but that came with a lot of fat. Will try keytosis again soon see if I can maintain the strength and lose fat.

 

Keeping your electrolytes up is key (sodium, potassium and magnesium are the main ones), particularly in the beginning as your body processes them differently once in ketosis and it will help you avoid the keto flu too.

Some people can take up to 12 weeks to become properly fat adapted and it's the period in the lead up where some people struggle with fatigue and lack of strength.

I am fat adapted now and work a pretty active job and manage to go to the gym, if not every day, every second day where I do at least an hour of weights where I'm doing anything from 50% - 80% of my body weight of the various exercises. I can also run reasonably comfortably for 15k's and last hike I did was 12k's with over 1000m of elevation gain and felt like I was still bouncing off the walls with energy afterwards.

IMHO, perseverance is key as it's not generally something you can start and stop frequently as it stops you from reaching that fat adapted state.

 

Are you able to link to a 7 day diet or program of foods for example.

I eat fairly well but always struggle with having energy.
My diet is generally mixed meats and fish probably once a week, potatoes, broccoli, some rice and some pasta, spinach, tomato, general veg, and breads every day or two. I also eat cereal most days.
I rarely eat snack food or sugary stuff

 

Me?

 

There a few different types of keto you can follow - strict, lazy and dirty which comes down to macros - carbs, protein and fat and how strictly you track them. A lot of people think it's low carb and high fat, which it can be, but it seems the majority follow nutritional keto (or even carnivore keto) which is moderate fat, low carbs, decent amount of protein and lots of veggies. It's also about avoiding inflammatory foods but I find some of the not recommended foods I have no issues with whereas I have a newly discovered avocado allergy so I think it's more of a case of what works for you.

There's quite a few facebook groups too which are good if you're keen to start out as there's a lot of good information on them.

Here's a link to a google album I put together that has some photos of the food I've had over the years.I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything and have lost over 40kg in doing so in the beginning and have kept the weight off for a few years now.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/V6v6UeRygXXgK2Y4A

 

Keto has very much become a marketing gimmick, and unfortunately is misleading. To truly enter a ketosis state takes a long time, months with your average person that has been on a western diet their whole life. Your body doesn't just decide to switch fuels because you fast for 14hrs, whilst you may get some great health benefits from fasting it really has nothing to do with ketosis.

The simple fact is its more of a restrictive diet as your reducing carbs which a lot of the time are more calorie dense per g, a higher protein diet has a higher thermal effect when breaking down proteins in your system causing more calories burned even at your resting metabolic rate. If your loosing weight its because your in a deficit and simply expending more energy than your consuming- Roughly a 3500cal deficit is equivalent to 0.5kg fat. Of course hormones, water, and sleep come into play but that's a simple way of looking at it.

Carbs are not the devil, fat is not the devil, how much you consume of each is -
1g carb = 4cal
1g protein =4cal
1g fat -7-9cal

Your body doesn't work on a 24hr clock with food, you could fast for 14hrs and eat 2000cal within 10hrs, and it would be no different from a body composition/weight management that not fasting and spreading 2000cal over the course of the day. Look at it over longer periods like 1 week, 17,500cal maintenance for example (2500 a day), goal is to loose .5kg a week (-3500cal) tracked deficit of - 14,000 divided by 7 = 2000cal a day (-500 deficit per day)

VERY simple maths and is a lot more complex but this generally works for most

 

I think it's important to note fasting isn't just about weight loss but the fact that some studies have shown what fasting can do to your cell health and regeneration.

There's been quite a few studies but below is one I just found after a quick google.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/fasting-boosts-stem-cells-regenerative-capacity-0503

 

If you want a good diet plan like all the above above,go back to the old site and look up a name TheFirstBruce and what diets that gentleman posted..Some of those post's were priceless and maybe saved my life..imho..

 

That's actually the reason that I started doing it. After watching Dr Michael Moresley's "eat, fast, live" or something like that.
I thought at worst it's going to do nothing and at best it might add a couple of years to my life.
Plus it's cheaper than buying lunch.

 

I feel like I barely survived a diet of almost all processed foods where nearly everything I ate had processed sugar added. I ate no fresh fruit and virtually no fresh vegetables. I felt hungry all the time and it felt like the more I ate the hungrier I got. I was eating 6 to 7 times a day! Ouch! Eating like that made me really sick. By the the time I took action, I was so sick, tired and hungry that I felt that I simply had to change.

I switched to eating almost all unprocessed food. It's a lot of food! By the end of each day I was actually tired of chewing. Within 24 hours my hunger levels stabilised. It took a lot longer to get my health back on track.

But yeah. When I eat too much sugary processed food it makes me really hungry.