Why the power of saying no to your favorite food may make you fat.
I love nature shows. Watching a pack of hungry wolves chase their dinner makes my heart beat faster. Seeing them tear the little rabbit into tasty little morsels makes my stomach growl. Just the thought of chowing down on prized prey stirs my primitive instinct to feed.
Watching a swarm of suburbanites at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet has the same effect. Beyond the crowd’s hotplate etiquette (and impressive waistlines), I see a pack of wolves about to devour the warm flesh of their kill. Freed from social norms or moral values, possessing a portion of pizza flesh becomes the very foundation of their Maslovian pyramid.
But the parallels breaks down when it comes to frenzy frequency. A pack of wolves makes a kill about every 4 days, but the pepperoni and sausage special which is the endgame of the other pack makes its way into the buffet rotation every 14 minutes. Waistline, we have a problem.
When the rabbit flesh has been devoured by the wolves, the game ends. A wolf’s greedy appetite can only lead to a small deviation from median carnage intake, but in the battle of the pizza buffet, there is no end to the spoils of war. Any warrior willing to invest 45 seconds standing in line can score another carcass of simple carbs and saturated fat. See the problem?
I typically lose the desire to fight for another serving somewhere around slice #3, but old habits, herd mentality and a deeply seeded need to get the most of the $5.99 entrance fee propels me easily through slice #11. What if I stopped at the point that I’d no longer fight for another bite?
Maybe the battle with the scale is not won by saying no, but by saying enough.
The taming of hunger hormones is the latest frontier in weight control. Could the hormones that ebb and flow during the wolf’s feeding frenzy be the same as those at play in the swarm of pizza buf-foodies?
Leptin, Ghrelin and Cortisol are three dancers in our body’s hormone hustle that regulate hunger, metabolism and mood. Research and theories abound, but productive guidelines are hard to find. I suspect an answer to making better decisions about what and when to eat is lurking on the ESP to PhD continuum.
It’s helpful to keep in mind that if all of human existence were represented by the last 24 hours, only in the last few minutes have we had any choice about when or what to eat. Our hunter gatherer ancestors simply ate food when it was present and stopped when it was gone. A caveman’s trim waistline was not a result of “being present” when eating food, but rather eating when food was present.
How can we use the hormone hustle to our advantage?
Mind Over Milkshake: How Your Thoughts Fool Your Stomach presents an entertaining experiment which demonstrates how Ghrelin levels are affected not only by the food eaten but also by the food’s perceived value. Ghrelin is affected not just by eating the slice of pizza, but it’s predicted ability to satisfy. Our gut’s trusty Ghrelin meter jumps up and down with joy each time a morsel of our beloved “kill” enters our mind and mouth.
Saying no is not the key. Saying enough is the holy grail.
Dolly Parton said, “I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren’t in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.” Snacking on “feel full” bars (or diet books) gets the same response as when a wolf surfaces with a mouth full of rabbit hair. It may result in a lot of chewing, but it does nothing to satisfy hunger or reduce Ghrelin.
The relationship with Ghrelin and metabolism is why saying no to our favorite treats is not helpful in reaching or maintaining a healthy weight. When Ghrelin levels rise and stay there – prize prey is in our mind but not our mouth – our hearty metabolism fades. Each time we deprive ourselves of prized prey, our metabolic rate decreases and we gain weight. But each time we eat more than a healthy portion of prize prey, caloric intake exceeds our healthy metabolic rate and we gain weight.
If you think this presents an impossible mission, you’re wrong. It’s like bowling. Most of the battle is won by just staying out of the gutters.
Maintaining your desired weight is a matter of avoiding the extremes. Keep your metabolism at a healthy level by regularly (yes, even daily!) saying yes to your prize prey, but keep the caloric intake at a reasonable level by saying enough when you’ve had enough.
The next time I’m at a pizza buffet, I’ll remind myself that a wolf can be satisfied by just a few chunks of warm rabbit flesh. For me, the third slice is a charm. A little prize prey goes a long way. It’s so easy, maybe you should give it a try.
If you wouldn’t fight for your next bite, it’s not so tough. Just say enough.