All the while they have no need for an ani­mal king­dom ver­sion of weight watch­ers because they stay at their ideal weight with­out try­ing. There is a good rea­son for this. “Nature does noth­ing uselessly”

This is the foun­da­tion for helofuud.

The word diet imme­di­ately con­jures up con­no­ta­tions of depri­va­tion right from the start. I don’t like to even use the term because for many it is syn­ony­mous with “starv­ing and fail­ing”. If you diet, there is always an ele­ment of your mind that thinks you are deny­ing your­self some­thing. This in and of itself causes anx­i­ety that can make you want to eat even more. It also requires willpower. This method of man­ag­ing what you eat can’t be done by most with any longevity or suc­cess. If it could, the weight loss indus­try wouldn’t be a bil­lion dol­lar indus­try as it is today. I know a great deal of peo­ple with willpower and the lack thereof isn’t the prob­lem when it comes to eat­ing. The prob­lem is that when we fol­low a typ­i­cal “diet” we attempt to fight a fight that can never be won. It is a fight against the very design of nature itself.

We are hard wired to be hun­gry and to over eat. This is a sur­vival mech­a­nism that has been in place for a very, very, long time. In the ear­li­est parts of our exis­tence food was not easy to come by. We didn’t just go to the local gro­cery store and pick up din­ner on our way home to the vil­lage. Much of our time, before the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion and the onset of mod­ern agri­cul­ture, was spent look­ing for food. When we found it, we ate as much as we could because we didn’t know how long it would be until the next meal. This is why there is a delay between our brain and our stom­ach when we eat. How many times have you thought, I should have stopped at three pieces of pizza (burp)!

The Good, the bad, and the hungry

When we become hun­gry it is because there are very pow­er­ful com­pounds at work in our bod­ies that nature put there for a rea­son. The first is Ghre­lin, a pow­er­ful hor­mone, secreted in the intestines and pan­creas that tells our brain it’s time to eat. If you ignore it your body releases more and more until you’re absolutely beady eyed with hunger and ready to eat any­thing in sight. I am fairly cer­tain that Ghre­lin is respon­si­ble for the say­ing “I am so hun­gry I could eat a horse! “ We all know that bloated feel­ing when our eyes were big­ger than our stom­achs – again, Ghrelin.

The sec­ond com­pound at work with our appetites is Lep­tin, a pro­tein that’s secreted by our own fat tis­sue. It is the counter mea­sure for Ghre­lin. Its job is to tell us we are full when we eat. The effec­tive­ness of Lep­tin is directly pro­por­tional to the level of Ghre­lin that we let get backed up by not eat­ing. These two com­pounds are the Yin & Yang of what dri­ves our appetite.

Is being hun­gry actu­ally bad for you?

When you are hun­gry it means you need fuel. If you don’t stop to fill up your body pulls a “git­ter dun” style atti­tude and does what it must in order to keep you going. It finds fuel. I have found a tremen­dous amount of con­fus­ing and con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion on exactly how our bod­ies accom­plish  this. Some believe you burn fat first while oth­ers say mus­cle, and yet oth­ers say a com­bi­na­tion of both depend­ing on your body makeup. The short answer I have is that I don’t know.  What I do know from per­sonal expe­ri­ence is that you can eat like there is no tomor­row and still lose weight at a ridicu­lously fast rate. All the while you can also pack on mus­cle too.  It is all about what you eat and not how much. So why would you want to be hun­gry to start with?

Why we eat

We eat for many rea­sons and not just because we are hun­gry. We eat when we are stressed, happy, bored, or in social set­tings. We do it out of habit and even some­times out of addic­tions to cer­tain foods as well. Yes, some foods are phys­i­cally addic­tive. We also eat to be polite and to avoid awk­ward sit­u­a­tions. How many times have you eaten some­thing you didn’t like just so you wouldn’t offend some­one? No mat­ter what the rea­son, it is always a good idea to stop and take pause to iden­tify why we feel the need to eat before we do. If you are hun­gry, then by all means answer the Ghre­lin knock­ing at your door. Just make sure to look through the peep­hole before open­ing it. Is it truly hunger or is it some­thing else?

It is impor­tant to note that the con­cept of three square meals a day is a social and cul­tural prac­tice and not a phys­i­o­log­i­cal design of nature. Ghre­lin is released in small incre­ments about every 30 min­utes. That sim­ply doesn’t add up to three meals a day.

Strate­gies for work­ing with hunger rather than against it

• The bot­tom line is that if you are truly hun­gry, eat. If the urge  is per­sis­tent then fight­ing it will only make it more per­sis­tent. Resis­tance is futile.  Lis­ten to your body with a Zen like atti­tude and go with it. The key how­ever to going all Zen with the way you eat lies in what you eat and not so much why you do. If you do let your­self get beady eyed with hunger, exer­cise a lit­tle bit of rea­son­able willpower and remem­ber the delay between your brain and stom­ach. Avoid let­ting your eye­balls tell you how much to eat when­ever you can.

• An even bet­ter way to work with hunger is not to wait for it to arrive and eat proac­tively. On aver­age I eat roughly 6 to 8 times a day in addi­tion to meals and still man­age to eat my share at din­ner time. Eat­ing smaller and more fre­quent meals also reduces the capac­ity of your stom­ach in time. This even­tu­ally reduces how much food is required for you to feel sati­ated. It is nature’s method for avoid­ing that surgery where they tie sta­ple up your stomach.

• Prior to meals do exactly what your mother told you not to do and try to spoil your din­ner. Eat­ing some­thing small like an apple or some raw nuts about 30 min­utes before your meal is a good way to take the edge off your appetite. You will still be hun­gry enough to eat your meal with­out offend­ing the host at your din­ner party. Avoid refined carbs as a pre-meal snack as this will drive your appetite fur­ther. Good carbs such as fruits and veg­gies or pro­teins like meat and nuts are best. I am noto­ri­ous for eat­ing a small piece of chicken or left­over steak before din­ner (my wife hates it when I do that!).

• If you are fol­low­ing a lifestyle sim­i­lar to the one that we do, you can eat fre­quently and in vol­ume, and still find your ideal weight eas­ily. The impor­tant thing is that you have to eat the right foods in order for it to work this way.

• It requires plan­ning. You can’t wait until you are hun­gry to decide what and where you are going to get some­thing to eat. You must know at the start of your day where your food sup­ply is com­ing from for the whole day. Even if you are unable to take food from home for some rea­son you must plan ahead. You also need to get over social and cul­tural dog­mas about when it is accept­able to eat.

Chang­ing your eat­ing habits is a whole lot eas­ier when you aren’t fight­ing hunger at the same time. If it weren’t for this fact I would not have been able to make the changes I did. Peo­ple are often amazed at how much they see me eat and don’t under­stand how I don’t have a dough­nut ring around my waist in doing so. This almost always leads them into an unsus­pect­ing intro­duc­tion to helo­fuud.

Remem­ber, ani­mals don’t count calo­ries and they eat when­ever they are hun­gry. You can too! Check out the “Diet & Lifestyle” page for more info on that. (I still don’t like the “d” word but it is a nec­es­sary evil).