The Hunger (Control) Games

A box o' magical thinking.

This past Monday I discovered a most effective way to hunger control. On Sunday I free-fed without much thought. I won't line list what I ate, but the day ended with cooking a nice meal for friends, and following that meal, we had our friend's apple upside down cake along with my home made ice cream. Of that, I had two servings. Then before bed, two more scoops of ice cream with a wallop of chocolate syrup....

Suffice to say, I was not very hungry on Monday and stayed below my calorie budget. Hunger controlled? Sure? Effective at controlling weight? Certainly not. You can not "starve the beast" if the beast is satiated from the day before - "vicious cycle" and all that. Fact is, I am hungrier than I've ever been day to day, and the goal is not eliminate the hunger, but to control it so it never gets to the point where I throw caution to the wind and start downing multiple helpings of ice cream.

There is no shortage of advice on-line about how to control hunger, to achieve a lower caloric daily intake and work towards reducing body fat. The good suggestions all seem to be repeated and are generally similar, while the bad ones tend to be horrible in their own unique way. Here is my findings in two parts. The first part are the good, commonsensical ones that are found all over the place, and I present them to you with minimal verbiage -- if you're smart, you can fill in the details or google it. The second part are the ones I found that are silly, dumb or downright unhealthy.

The Good, in no particular order:

• Plan your eating and look forward to it.
• Focus on what you eat, not what you deny yourself.
• Don't skip meals. Always eat breakfast.
• Make meals smaller, add healthy snacks in between meals.
• More protein, less carbs. In particular, less sugar the better.
• Allow yourself reasonable indulgences.
• Differentiate hunger from cravings.
• Differentiate hunger from thirst.
• Increase vegetable consumption.
• Sleep more, stress less.
• Identify and restrict hunger-trigger foods. 

Yes, each of these tips could probably have it's own blog entry, drilling down into the nitty gritty -- some seem vague and some seem unhelpful because they don't say "how". Fact is, unlike what a women's mag would have you believe (TEN FOOLPROOF HUNGER CONTROL TIPS TO BLAST YOUR ASS AWAY!!!!,) these kind of tips are a bit different for everyone, and you have to do work to figure them out. I can honestly say I've been thinking about food and health for practically a decade, and only a few weeks ago when I decided to try to eat no refined sugar, did I finally learn to honestly seperat] hunger from cravings.

A magazine o' magical thinking.

The Not So Good, from mild to full-bore Satanic (all are direct quotes, my commentary in italics)

• If you’re hungry but don’t want to eat yet, chew some sugarless gum and drink water. Thank you, AARP! -shudder-
• At parties, stand as far away as you can from the bowls of chips, dips and other munchies. Is it a surprise that this one comes from a Women's mag?
• An ounce of food fat (like butter or ice cream) causes you to gain more than twice as much weight as an ounce of carbohydrate (like rice) or protein (like lean meat).  And eating less fat will not only help you to lose weight but it will also keep your arteries from getting clogged, and keep you from getting diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart attacks.  So you will live for a longer time.  But even more important, you will enjoy your life for a longer time, because diseases like diabetes, heart attacks, and high blood pressure can make you feel sick all the time. Ugg, the old fat-will-make-you-fat silliness. Fat will actually help you feel satiated, and has been decoupled form the idea of cholesterol production. 
• Drink hot or cold fluids throughout the day to speed up your metabolism. Extreme temperatures trick the body. Actually, just about ANY tip from any website that has "pro ana" in it's title or subject lines. Some tips like this one is silly but harmless, but most speak to some serious mental issues and can do real harm. I was tempted to include one of the scarier ones and include some "thinspo" pics, but I really don't want to spread that kind of hardcore evil on the internet for the sake of entertainment.
• One more supplementary strategy to all of (the previous hunger control tips) is that you can multiply the appetite suppressing effects of all foods by swallowing a couple of fiber tablets before you begin eating. Fiber tablets or capsules would include psyllium husk, glucomannan, oat bran fiber, apple pectin fiber, or other natural fibers. You can find fiber supplements at any health food store. Be careful to watch the dosage of the fiber and drink plenty of water as you take these pills because without adequate water, they can gum up in your digestive tract and in extreme cases, they can block your digestive tract. So, you want to drink plenty of water with them. Uh, yeah. Too many high-fiber foods and you poop a lot. Too many high-fiber pills and you have surgery in the hospital. Thanks for that, dude.

In conclusion, there are no hard and fast rules to control hunger healthily, just a web of suggestions that tend to reinforce each other when real steps are taken to change diet. Like a web, you can't really just pull one thread out and expect it to hold all the weight, but if you pull out the ones that are strongest for you, you'll get somewhere. There are plenty of ideas out there to some how "cheat" or game the body, but if they really worked, they would be oft repeated and enter the common web of suggestions. 

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Last weekend was weird. Made pancakes and bacon for the family early Saturday, and did a count on the pancakes as there are a lot on the freezer for later eating. I consumed 850 calories with 5 little pancakes and 3 pieces of bacon, and it didn't phase me! I also churned ice cream, and a few spoonfuls ended up in my mouth, that didn't phase me either.

Pretty much free-fed all weekend, and looking back it was mostly wheat-products and sweets, with some protein thrown in as an afterthought. I did have a good weekend, but damn, I used to eat like that 7 days a week? A few friends who've seen me relatively recently who I hung out with on the weekend said I was looking good and trim, but I suspect that was less due to not eating sugar for a week and more to buzzing back my slightly unruly beard....

Found myself looking forward to eating vegetables and cutting out the sugar again Sunday night, as I helped myself to a third helping of homemade vanilla ice cream with a shot of chocolate syrup...
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Obama once ate fast food. HYPOCRITE, obvs.

Oy! I guess if politicians feel no shame in supporting unfettered access to assault rifles in protection of the funds they get from the gun lobby, then they'll certainly feel no shame in supporting less access to calorie information of some of the worst foods out there in protection of the funds they get from the food lobby.

Calorie counts will soon be required on chain restaurant menus, thanks to the landmark health care reform legislation signed by President Obama in March 2010 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in June. Draft regulations that implement the calorie-labeling provisions have been released by the Food and Drug Administration, though final regulations have been stalled for months, according to CSPI.

GObama!
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WEEKLY AVERAGE: 2008

Speaking of hunger control! Hah! I did NOT intend to eat this little this week, but it partially wasn't up to me. Monday I was still feeling the excess calories of the weekend, Tuesday I actually went over-budget, then the rest of the week was flu'd out.

I'm writing this on Saturday, surprised to find myself feeling better  (nope, was temporary -- ed) -- I was afraid I might be out of it for upwards of a week (though other members of my family are in different states of repair.) Looking back a year ago at my 2 weeks with sickness, I now suspect it was a confluence of three factors):

1. long term bad diet and strain on my system
2. doubling down on high fat/high sugar comfort foods to feel better
3. an upset digestive system aggravated by a flu

My sugar cravings did rear up a few times late this week, because I wanted to feel better, but I didn't want to break a promise to myself (and have to cop to it here, so thank, all two of you readers out there!)

I'm not out of the woods yet, but if my recovery stays on track, I should be able to get outside tomorrow. I'm happy I listened to my body and took in the calories it called for, not what I thought it needed. And though I indulged in some unhealthy restaurant food, I balanced it with some veg to keep my system relatively balanced.

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MONDAY COUNT: 2000

Surprising how easy it is to come in under budget when the day before I probably ate close to 4000 calories. Eat 1500 calories too many one day, eat 200 calories too few the next, -sigh-

AM SNACK: 8:15am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 11:15am, fruit smoothie, 375 cal

PM SNACK: 1:15pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, chicken sausage, madras lentils, pickle, 7oz diet coke,  580 cal
Not horrendously hungry, think I may be riding a calorie hangover from the weekend...

PM SNACK: 5:15pm, fresh apple/carrot/beet/celery/parsley/cilantro/ginger juice, 175 cal

DINNER: 9pm, sauteed shrimp with Shirataki noodles and sesame oil, poppa salad with homemade dressing, 590 cal
Holy crap! I picked up this tofu-based Shirataki noodle at Wholefood on a whim, thinking it will probably be gross, and it was actually good. Basic Asian noodle, a little slimy but over all quite pleasant. And the whole $1.39 8 oz package was only 40 cal, nicely neutral tasting and really carried the simple tossing of hot shrimp and sesame oil perfectly. If that was normal wheat pasta, this would have been a 1000+ cal meal. I gotta stock up on this stuff.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, cheesy poofs, 7oz diet sprite, 280 cal

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TUESDAY COUNT: 2530

Surprising how easy it is to come in under budget when the day before I probably ate close to 4000 calories. Eat 1500 calories too many one day, eat 200 calories too few the next, -sigh-. It's not surprising how easy it is to go over budget when I eat out at a restaurant, and even if conservatively guesstimate the calorie density, it's still urgle burgle!

AM SNACK: 7:45am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 9:15am, plain yogurt with agave, almonds and vanilla, 330 cal

Thought I'd give an organic, batch produced traditional full fat plain yogurt a try, after eating only Greek yogurt for almost a decade. DISGUSTING! The flavor was fine, but the watery consistency made me imagine that someone blew their nose into my Greek yogurt. Ugg. The slight calorie saving totally not worth  it.

AM SNACK: 11:30am, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 12:30pm, double quarter pounder, 16 oz diet coke, 750 cal

PM SNORT: 6pm, pint of Fulllers ESB, 250 cal cal

DINNER: 7:15pm, japchae with bulgogi, veg dumpling, scallion pancake, small amounts of white rice, kimchi, various little Korean bites, water, +/- 800 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, cheesy poofs, 7oz die sprite, 300 cal

Somewhere between hunger and a craving for sugar. Wonder if that pint of beer hours before primed the pump.

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WEDNESDAY COUNT: 1950

Made dahl today while both kids were a at home a bit feverish and causing constant distraction and chaos. Dahl was good, better than the microwaveable packets. but not as a good as a good Indian restaurant (I'd say an Indian grandma, but I never really had real Indian family food!) Spices were a bit muted, but nicely balanced -- rather than use the old preground stuff living in my cupboard, should have ground from whole seeds. I went off recipe a little and added the dry spices to the oil/onion mixture after the onions were well cooked, and added minced ginger and garlic then too, to avoid overcooking them. The minute in the hot oil supposedly livened up the spices a little, which the recipe skips. The final taste was good -- the consistency is nice and soft, how I like lentils to be, and there is a surprisingly sweet note -- I double checked the tomato paste to make sure there was no added sugars. Must have been the onion, onions can get sweet when you cook them properly.

Got the bug myself in the evening, felt feverish and lightheaded, chills mixed with waves of warmth. On the plus side, my appetite mostly disappeared, though I did find myself hungry enough for poofs in the eve.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 10:30am, cereal with whole milk, 275 cal

PM SNACK: 12:30pm, momma salad, 100 cal

LUNCH: 2pm, chicken sausage, roasted broccoli & homemade dahl, pickle, 7oz diet coke, 580 cal

EVENING SNACK: 4:30pm, apple/carrot/beet/kale/parsley/cilantro/ginger juice, 115 cal

DINNER: 8pm, S1`touffer's french bread pizza, poppa salad, 580 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10:30pm, cheesy poofs, water, 300 cal

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THURSDAY COUNT: 1630

Woke up with a splitting headache, sound and light aggravating it, which is something I never experienced. Fortunately, B stayed home and I was able to stay in bed in the dark until close to noon.

AM SNACK: 9am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 11:45am, Fage whole yogurt with almonds, agave and vanilla, 430 cal

PM SNACK: 6pm, momma salad, 100 cal

DINNER: 8pm, sushi, shrimp shumai, tempura +/- 1000 cal

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FRIDAY COUNT: 1930

Still ill. Didn't taste dinner, except for the saltiness, though enjoyed the textures immensely. Didn't even taste the bit of chocolate I had at the end of the night, but loved the texture and was a good experiment -- without taste, it gave less distraction to how I felt when it melted on my tongue and a serene feeling kinda took over my body. Amazing. Sugar, it's a hell of a drug.

AM SNACK: 8am, iced green tea, 0 cal

BREAKFAST: 11:15am, pancakes, bacon, 470 cal

PM SNACK: 6pm, half a momma salad, 60 cal

DINNER: 7:45pm, string beans with shrimp, half a serving of pork fried rice, shrimp toast, 7oz diet coke, +/- 1000 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10pm, cheesy poofs, 225 cal

EVENING SNACK: 10:45pm, small quantity of British chocolates, +/- 175 cal