Five appetite control foods that suppress cravings without adding calories

 

Five appetite control foods that suppress cravings without adding calories

Copyright 2006 Truth Publishing

There is a reality about weight loss that people need to be
aware of. Losing weight requires you to feel hungry from
time to time. There is no way to lose weight without
feeling some degree of hunger. Believe me, I have
exhaustively explored this issue. I have tried appetite
suppressants. I have tried food combinations. I have tried
meal-timing strategies. I have tried just about everything
natural under the sun to eliminate those hunger pangs and
food cravings that you get when you are attempting to lose
weight and there is nothing that completely eliminates
those cravings. Hoodia gordonii helps, as I’ve stated in
previous articles, but it by no means turns off your hunger
like a light switch.

There are many strategies that help reduce hunger: avoiding
refined carbohydrates, getting plenty of natural sunlight
on your skin, drinking large amounts of water on a regular
basis, and getting plenty of fiber in your diet. But there
is nothing that absolutely eliminates hunger. The bottom
line is that if you are going to lose weight, you are going
to experience hunger at one time or another. This is
especially true if you, like me, engage in strength
training. Nothing gets your appetite whipped into a fury
like the leg press.

The key in all this is realizing there’s nothing wrong with
experiencing hunger from time to time. It’s a normal human
response to a decrease in your consumption of calories. The
problem that most people encounter when they feel hungry is
they feel it’s some sort of emergency. It feels like they
are dying or wasting away when, in fact, the body is just
signaling that it doesn’t have enough calories to add new
fat to the fat stores it’s already carrying around. The
first feelings of hunger are really more of a false alarm
than anything to be concerned about. At least from a
logical point of view. (But when you feel like you’re
starving, logic goes out the window, right?)

A person who is aiming for a low percentage of body fat
learns to manage their hunger so that it becomes something
they can live with. In my own experience with losing weight
— and remember, I dropped 50 pounds of body fat using
absolutely no drugs or pharmaceuticals of any kind — I
found that there are several “lifesaving” foods and
beverages you can turn to when you are feeling intense
hunger pains but you don’t want to consume foods that add
significant calories to your daily intake.

These foods and drinks are what I call emergency appetite
control foods. What these foods and beverages have in
common is that they make your stomach feel like it’s full
of calorie-rich foods. But in reality, you are filling your
stomach with foods that contain almost no calories or
carbohydrates. This way, even though your stomach is full,
you are not adding calories to your intake. But your body
is temporarily fooled into thinking you’ve just woofed down
a triple-plate buffet.

In other words, if you eat two cups of cashews versus two
cups of cabbage, your body can’t really tell the difference
for the first few minutes. Your stomach will turn off the
hunger signals thinking you have eaten a large quantity of
food regardless of whether you are eating cabbage or
cashews, but in fact the cabbage may only contain 20
calories while the cashews contain as much as 900 or even
1000 calories. Two cups of cashews provides probably half
the calories you need for the entire day, whereas two cups
of cabbage provides virtually no calories whatsoever. You
burn off the cabbage just digesting it. (Raw cabbage is, in
fact, an outright cure for ulcers. But that’s another
article…)

Emergency appetite control food #1 Fresh drinking water.
That’s right: water is a powerful appetite suppressant and
if you drink an 8-ounce glass of water when you first start
feeling hungry, you will find that it suppresses your
appetite in nearly every case. If you just drink a full
glass of water and have the discipline to wait 10 minutes,
you will find that your appetite is either completely gone
or dramatically reduced.

Your next choice, if water does not do the trick for you,
is to purchase a 32-ounce quart of natural, organic
vegetable broth. You can get organic vegetable broth from
Trader Joe’s, health food stores, or even many of the finer
grocery stores that have a natural health section. The key
is to get organic vegetable broth that does not contain
excitotoxins. These are ingredients that cause neurological
disorders because they overexcite and harm nerve cells.
Those ingredients are MSG, yeast extract, autolyzed yeast
extract, hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, and other similar
ingredients. Warning: watch out for broth products made by
Kitchen Basics. They claim their products don’t contain MSG
or yeast extract, but when I tried their product, I
experienced a massive “MSG headache” that tells me it
contains free glutamic acid that isn’t listed on the label.
(I’m very sensitive to MSG.) The brand of broth I buy is
Trade Joe’s house brand, which does not contain free
glutamic acid.

You can also choose organic chicken broth if you prefer the
flavor of chicken. Once you have that, simply empty the
entire quart into a very large bowl, heat it up and eat it
like soup. You will probably be unable to get through the
entire bowl without feeling full. And how many calories
have you consumed? Not 900 like you get in two cups of
cashews or 1200 like in a big Mac, not even 300 calories
like you get from a typical protein bar, instead you get 20
calories only. That’s right: you can feel full on 20
calories by drinking an entire quart of organic vegetable
broth.

Emergency appetite control food #2 The next best strategy
is to turn to green vegetables such as lettuce, cabbage,
bokchoy, and other leafy vegetables. They have so few
calories that in my own diet, I don’t even count them.
That’s right: I allow myself to eat an unlimited quantity
of any green leafy vegetables without even recording the
number of calories I have consumed. In my book, they are
“free” foods.

It takes just as many calories for your body to digest them
as you get out of the foods themselves. And yet at the same
time, they fill your stomach and make you feel full,
turning off the hunger signals in your brain. You may have
also heard these called “negative calorie foods.”

You can consume these green leafy vegetables in a couple of
ways. Most people don’t like to eat them plain. Instead,
you can fill up a very large bowl (I am talking about
something the size of a family dinner salad bowl) with
lettuce and salad greens, then add only 100 calories worth
of salad dressing. You will want to find some of the lower
calorie salad dressings out there, and of course you want
to avoid MSG, high-fructose corn syrup, and other
ingredients in salad dressings. There are many very good
salad dressings that only have 25 calories per tablespoon.
Using those dressings, you can put four tablespoons of
salad dressing on your salad and start munching away. In a
few minutes, you will feel quite full and yet will have
only consumed 100 calories that count. Remember the
calories for the green leafy vegetables are free. You only
count the calories of the salad dressing itself. This is an
excellent way to fill your stomach and turn off your hunger
signals while only giving yourself 100 calories.

Another strategy that uses green leafy vegetables is to
stir fry them in a pan with no oils whatsoever. Just use
water and flavoring such as onions, garlic and soy sauce.
Simply stir fry all the green vegetables you want, add the
spices and eat it. I do not count the calories in onions or
garlic either, nor do I count the calories in soy sauce
since none of these spices have very high calorie density.
As a result, that entire meal goes in your stomach and
counts for zero calories. Once again, it’s a great way to
curb you appetite without consuming large quantities of
calorie rich food.

Emergency appetite control food #3 This is one of my
favorites: I call it my “instant banana pudding” recipe,
but of course, it’s nothing at all like store-bought
pudding. You’ll need a blender for this one.

Add a quart of soy milk to the blender, then a couple of
scoops of unsweetened banana-flavored simply natural
spirutein soy protein powder. (Sources are listed in the
downloadable book, “Secret Sources.” Add stevia powder as
the sweetener. I also toss in some supergreens powders, but
you may want to avoid that at first, since it’s an acquired
taste (and it turns your banana pudding green).

If you were to blend this up, you’d have a banana-flavored
soy protein shake. But we’re not done yet: while the
blender is running, put in about 1/2 tablespoon of guar gum
powder, plus another 1/2 tablespoon of xanthan gum powder.
These are thickeners. Within seconds, your blender will
start whining and the whole mixture will attain the
consistency of pudding. Now just pour it into a bowl and
eat it like banana pudding! The mixture has near-zero
carbs, no sugars, and is high in soy protein. Plus, it
tastes great and fills you up fast. This is my favorite
choice for a late-night appetite emergency.

You can get guar gum and xanthan gum at a health food
store, or order online at a vitamin supplier.

Emergency appetite control food #4 The next food is
pickles. That’s right, pickles. But I am not talking about
the pickles you find at a regular grocery store. Nearly all
pickles you find in grocery stores contain artificial food
coloring. They have a yellowish tint to them that has been
added through the use of chemical colors. This is not a
natural ingredient and so it is something you want to avoid
purchasing. Instead, you want to buy completely natural
pickles like the ones you get at Trader Joe’s that are made
without artificial colors or flavors and that have an
extremely low calorie count as well. An entire jar of
pickles may give you only 50 calories or so and yet they
can be quite satisfying and take up a considerable amount
of space in your stomach, thereby turning off your appetite
cravings.

Just don’t buy pickles containing any added sugars or
artificial colors. Some pickles are, believe it or not,
loaded with sugar. They’re more like candied cucumbers than
pickles. Read the ingredients labels to be sure what you’re
getting.

By the way, while you’re eating pickles, it’s an excellent
time to take some calcium and mineral supplements, too. The
acidity of the pickles will accelerate the absorption of
calcium.

Emergency appetite control food #5 Here’s an easy one:
apples. Yep, apples. Eat the largest apple you can find.
Sure, you’ll get some calories and some carbs, but the
apple will fill you up for quite a while, and that will
stop you from eating far more calorie-dense foods.

Let me explain why this is such an effective strategy. If
you’re crazy hungry, it’s very easy to reach for some
processed foods (bag of chips, for example) and start
munching away until you’ve consumed 1000 calories or more.
And that’s about half the total calories you need for the
entire day!

But I dare you to try to eat 1000 calories worth of apples.
It’s impossible. You’ll fill up even before reaching 400
calories, probably. Apples are great appetite suppressing
foods because the bulky fiber fills up your stomach and
turns off your appetite control hormones before you
overeat. Plus, apples contain various phytonutrients,
vitamins and minerals. They’re even a decent source of
folic acid.

How to further suppress your appetite One more
supplementary strategy to all of this 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.

By consuming both the fiber and the water before you start
eating, you’ve already significantly turned off your
appetite. Then by consuming these extremely low caloric
density foods and beverages, you will further suppress your
appetite. You can get an entire meal into your stomach for
100 calories or less and you can trick your brain into
thinking you consumed an all-you-can-eat buffet.

But there’s a catch to all this: in about an hour or so,
your body will figure out that there isn’t much energy in
the food you’ve consumed. Your hunger will begin to return,
but at least you delayed the onset of that hunger by an
hour or more. If you combine this with physical exercise,
you can delay it even further because the very act of
exercising releases stored body fat and converts it back
into blood sugar, which raises your blood sugar level and
suppresses your appetite cravings.

You can also extend the effect of this by taking appetite
suppressant supplements. Hoodia gordonii is one I’ve
reviewed quite extensively, and it is currently increasing
in popularity. My own experience is that hoodia tincture
can help, but even hoodia doesn’t shut off appetite
completely.

Also, you don’t want to starve yourself by eating these
100-calorie meals all day long. Remember, starvation is the
fastest way to train your body to hold on to body fat.
These are just items to get you past a difficult time when
your appetite is unbearably intense.

Each day, you still need to get nutrition into your body in
the form of whole foods and whole food supplements. The
kind of meals I consume are soups made with quinoa, salads
with low-calorie dressing, raw fruits and nuts, or avocado
shakes made by blending avocado with soy milk and stevia.
Of course, I also consume my superfood shakes on a regular
basis. They are made from superfoods green powders such as
Berry Green or The Ultimate Meal.

Overall, keep in mind that weight loss takes effort. You
will experience moments of intense hunger, and these
low-calorie, filling foods are one excellent way to get
through a difficult time without packing on the pounds.

—————————————————-
Mike Adams, “The Health Ranger,” is chief contributor and
editor of the NewsTarget Network, a leading independent
news source for natural health, nutrition, medicine and
other wellness topics. NewsTarget and Webseed.com are
leading information resources for consumers seeking
non-corrupted information on natural health and nutrition.
Other articles can be found easily at
http://www.newstarget.com .

Article brought to you by Georgette Pann http://theNutriFitness.com