The 20/20 Diet (13 page)

Reward you with food (e.g., candy for good grades, dessert for

finishing meal)

  

Require you to “clean your plate” at mealtime

  

Constantly talk about food

The top response to this question was “Require you t
INC.

o ‘clean your

plate’ at mealtime,” with 64.2 percent of people choosing that answer.

That might have also been the case with you, but listen: You’re in a

different time and place now. No one is watching over your shoulder

and telling you to lick the plate clean. Save the leftovers for another

meal, use them for compost, throw them away, whatever works—but

please don’t use “I was raised this way
BOOKS,

” as an excuse to con yourself out

of reaching your goals. And while we’re on the topic—please don’t say

“I was eating out and I paid for all this so I’m going to eat it,” or “It was an all-you-can-eat buffet; I had to stuff myself.” I want you to get out of the “clean your plate” mentality and into the “eat until satisfied but not stuffed” frame of mind.

You’re setting a new pattern for your mind and body, so your hun-

ger signals will very quickly line up with your new eating routine.

You’ll likely return to a 3 on the scale after four or so hours have

passed followin
STREET

g a meal. Anything in between could be mind hun-

ger, or you might be so used to mindless snacking all day that it feels

uncomfortable to be at a 4 or 5 on the scale. Again, stick with the new

routine and your body will adjust.

You’ve already taken the important step of removing as many

of your external triggers as possible, so you’ve lowered your risk of

eati
BIRD

ng in reaction to stimuli when you aren’t hungry at all. Plus, the

foods in this plan were picked because emerging research suggests

that they increase satiety (i.e., that feeling of fullness), so you won’t find yourself leaving the dinner table unsatisfied and thus rifling

through the cupboards for late-night snacks.

Extinguish Your Fake Hunger | 73

Top Seven Tricks for Dealing with Fake Hunger

I want to give you some clear strategies to help overcome mind hunger,

because, in my experience, it’s often just a matter of getting through

the impulse to eat and then you probably won’t think about food for

a while. Below are some valuable tools for combating that fake, phan-

tom hunger.

First, you’ve got to understand that if you’re enterin
INC.

g Phase 1

straight off a 10-day or even a 10-year food bender, where you’ve been

eating anything that crosses your path and you’ve put nary a thought

into the quantities or qualities of the foods you were consuming, then

this diet is going to be a shock to your system. Depending on what

you’ve been up to, making a drastic change will likely feel jarring at

first. If you’ve been a chronic muncher, always snacking on some-

thing, just the sudden switch to a different eating routine will take

some getting used to.

The same goes for your alcoho
BOOKS,

l consumption—if you’ve been

drinking booze every day, you might experience some symptoms of

withdrawal when you take that out of the equation. This is all part of

reconfiguring your body to switch from “gaining” mode to “losing”

mode.

Nobody said this was going to be easy. Remember, this is not

one of those diet mirages that falsely promise you an overnight, easy

cure for your fat, only to leave you just as heavy as before. This is the real deal, and it’s going to take some adjusting. You need to pay close

attention to the h
STREET

unger you’re feeling and identify whether it’s just

your body adapting to your new regimen.

Here are seven tricks you can use to combat fake hunger and crav-

ings. Use them, or let them inspire you to come up with new ones that

work for you.

1. Slo
BIRD

w down and chew each bite for 30 seconds

Studies indicate that obese people ingest their food quicker and chew

their food less than slender people. This is certainly something I have

observed with my overweight patients as well. Are you guilty of taking

enormous bites, chewing the food barely enough to swallow it, and

74 | The 20/20 Diet

then immediately going for the next bite? I assure you, there is no

reward for eating the fastest or the most food in one sitting.

From now on, I want you to make a conscious effort to slow down,

take
much
smal er bites (use a salad fork instead of a dinner fork to make it easier), and spend an entire 30 seconds chewing each bite. Research

shows that the extra chewing can actual y lower your level of the “hun-

ger hormone,” ghrelin, and boost your level of the appetit
INC.

e-suppressing

hormone, cholecystokinin. That’s right; you can actual y create a phys-

iological response in your body that will keep you from overeating, al

by slowing down and chewing longer.

2. Turn off the screens

You might think that your smartphone or tablet is your best friend,

but did you know it could be causing you to eat more? That’s right—a

recent study published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

found that people who were expose
BOOKS,

d to the type of blue light emitted

by this kind of screen before and during an evening meal experienced

an acute increase in hunger and insulin resistance. And that’s not all;

this blue light has also been shown to decrease overall sleepiness, and

if you mess with your sleep patterns, you’re setting yourself up for even more cases of the munchies the next day.

So, switch off your e-reader or smartphone near mealtime or

bedtime. If reading helps you wind down, opt instead for a good,

old-fashioned hardcover or paperback book.

3. Revamp you
STREET

r sleep

Catching proper zzz’s is a vital aspect to weight loss, especially when

you consider one randomized sleep study recently published in the

American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
, which showed that people who sleep less than seven hours per night are predisposed to overeati
BIRD

ng. In fact, these sleep-deprived study participants consumed

an average of nearly 300 calories more per day than those who got

enough sleep, and many of those extra calories came from saturated

fat. So, make it a priority to get within the ideal range of seven to

nine hours of sleep per night.

Extinguish Your Fake Hunger | 75

4. Drink the right stuff

Sometimes when we think we feel hungry, we’re actually confusing

the signal for thirst with hunger, so it’s a smart idea to try drinking

a cup of water before reaching for something to eat. Plus, developing

research suggests that water may help increase thermogenesis, as scien-

tists observed in one particular study. If you’re not a big water drinker, jazz it up with a little squeeze of lemon or go for the sparkli
INC.

ng variety.

5. Brush your teeth

Have you ever noticed how bad food tastes if you eat right after you

brush your teeth? Use that fact to your advantage and brush your

teeth when you’re feeling a weak moment coming on.

Because you typically brush your teeth at times of the day when

you won’t be eating, your brain has an association between minty,

fresh breath and non-eating.

6. Call a supporter

Rely on the people to whom you are ac
BOOKS,

countable. Call, text, or e-mail

any or all of them for encouragement in the moments that you need

it. That’s what they’re there for!

7. Accomplish a task

You probably know the times of day when you tend to have weak

moments—it could be late at night after the kids go to bed, or

maybe it’s midaft
STREET

ernoon or right after work. Prepare for those

impulse moments, which most of us experience from four to seven

times a day, by having a list of quick tasks you could accomplish

instead of giving in and eating. Think about it; there’s always a bill

to pay, laundry to fold, a car to wash, or an errand to run. Or you

could even burn a few extra calories by doing 30 seconds of lunges

or ju
BIRD

mping jacks. As your concentration shifts to the task at hand,

it will move away from thoughts of food. Have some foresight and

plan incompatible activities (something you can’t do while eating)

for those times of day.

76 | The 20/20 Diet

When Old Wounds Crowd Out Motivation

Are you struggling with something deeper, an old wound that has

played a starring role in your weight problem? Maybe you suffered

emotional, physical, or sexual abuse? Were your parents really hard

on you growing up? Have you been the victim of ruthless bullying?

Perhaps your marriage failed or your spouse cheated?

Whatever the cause of your angst, now is the time t
INC.

o close that

book of unfinished emotional business because if you don’t, it can

stand in the way (once again) of your weight loss success.

I can help you accomplish this through a process I call your

Minimal Effective Response (MER). The key word here is “minimal.”

Now, the
maximum
response might be to shoot the bastard who did

this to you, but that has some pretty obvious consequences which

lead to a whole new set of problems. Not exactly a winning strategy

for healthy closure. But your
minima
BOOKS,

l
response is something you can

do that doesn’t cause more trouble and still gives you the maximum

result, which is emotional closure.

Here are questions to ask yourself to discover your MER for the

situation or person that has caused you harm:

 What action(s) can you take to resolve your emotional pain?

 If you achieve this resolution, how will you feel?

 Does this feeling you will have match the feeling you want to

have?

 Knowin

STREET

g we are looking for the minimal response that is still

effective for you, is there some other economical action that

would give you the resolution you need?

When you do this, you’re not saying what happened is acceptable.

You
BIRD

’re not, in any way, making what they did to you
right
. What

you’re saying is that you are no longer giving it the ability to crowd

out your optimism, your self-esteem, your motivation, or any other

positive part of you. You’ve been tied to this thing for long enough.

Extinguish Your Fake Hunger | 77

All I’m asking you to do is untether, take it off, lay it down, and leave it behind so you can finally say, “OK, I’m done. I’m closing the book

on you. This emotional business is finished. Over and out.”

Foods That Make You Hungry

As we’ve been discussing, there are certain foods that res
INC.

earch sug-

gests can help you feel full faster and longer, and you’re going to be

eating a lot of those foods on this plan. But did you know there are

foods (probably many of which you eat on a regular basis) that can

actually make you feel hungrier and experience
more
cravings? They affect your brain and production of certain hunger hormones so that

you constantly want more, more, more—they literally
drive
your hunger. These are very dangerous but also very common foods.

Beware of these potential hunger-inducing food traps:

 Regular and diet sodas

 Concentrated sw

BOOKS,

eeteners including artificial sugars and sugar

alcohols (closely check labels for such words as aspartame,

sucralose, polydextrose, xylitol, lactitol, mannitol, maltitol

syrup, and neotame)

 White bread, pasta, and other starches made with white flour

 Sugary cereals

 Alcohol

 Processed m
STREET

eats (like hot dogs, bacon, and cold cuts)

 Fast food

 French fries and fried chips

You might not have ever realized that these foods can make you

feel hungrier and cause you to eat more, but now that you know, you

ca

BIRD

n make a concerted effort to avoid them so they can’t derail you.

If these are your current everyday staples, don’t worry because in the

next chapter, you’ll learn about the 20/20 Foods that will help you

replace your old unhealthy, unhelpful food traps with healthy, helpful

alternatives.

78 | The 20/20 Diet

Choose Food Wisely

In the next chapter, you’re going to find out why we chose the 20 foods

we did for this diet. These 20/20 Foods are healthy, smart choices for

your new way of life to help you reach your weight loss goals.

Coping with Emotional Trigger
INC.

s

I asked about common triggers in our survey. I gave a range of

15 common triggers for overeating or eating unhealthy foods and

asked the responders to rate each one on a scale of 1 to 10.