There’s an interesting dichotomy with regard to calories and fat loss. We all know that you must burn more calories than you put in your body. No surprise there. However, if you happen to be someone who constantly works out (say, 6 days per week for an hour or more), it’s likely that you need more calories to get your body out of starvation mode.
Now, it’s safe to say that most people don’t fall into this category. Three or four decent workouts per week is all you probably have time to fit in your hectic schedule. For you, it makes more sense to lower calories in order to create the deficit that’s needed to force your body to use fat for fuel.
This, however, is where it gets tricky. If you start dropping meals or snacks, you won’t lose fat. You must eat less, while still feeding your body 5-6 times per day.
Here are three effective ways to ensure that you don’t overeat. These tips are best performed before your three main meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No need to eat less at snack time.
1. Take Fiber 30 Minutes Before Your Meals: virtually none of us eat enough fiber. That’s a travesty because it’s nature’s blood sugar stabilizer. It’s essential to keep your blood sugar from swinging up and down in order to control: cravings, fat burning hormones, and limit the amount of calories you eat in one meal. Plus, digestive health is key to staying lean and healthy. There’s no easier way to do it than with more fiber. Think of fiber as a natural “fat burner.”
One simple trick I have my clients use is with fiber capsules. Companies such as NOW and Country Life make inexpensive fiber supplements in pill form (I like Daily FibeRx by Country Life). Just take 2 capsules 30 minutes before each meal and you’ll boost fiber, minimize overeating, and improve digestive health.
2. Drink Room Temperature Water 10 Minutes Before You Eat: just like fiber, most of us don’t drink enough water. Put another way, most of us don’t drink water at strategic times throughout the day. If you simply wait until you’re thirsty, you’re already behind since our nervous system isn’t good at letting us know in advance that we need water.
Water can also curb your cravings. Ten minutes before your three main meals, drink 16 ounces of room temperature water. Why not iced water? Because room temperature water, for whatever reason, curbs hunger more. It could be due to the fact that our digestive tract doesn’t like the shock of cold water. In fact, Chinese medicine cautions against drinking iced beverages since it can put a strain on digestion.
3. Eat a High Fiber, High Water Food First. When you sit down to eat your brain and digestive enzymes are already prepared for a meal. However, the signals between each other (the signal from your stomach to tell your brain that it’s getting full) is pretty slow. If you start eating dense, high calorie foods right away it’s likely that you’ll eat more than your body needs before your brain gets the memo.
An effective strategy is to start your meals with a food that’s high in fiber and water content, and relatively low in calories. This will allow your digestive system time to gauge where your caloric needs really are once you get to your normal foods. In other words, it will keep you from overeating.
Start your three main meals with a salad, a few stalks of celery, or an apple. All of these foods are high in water and low in calories, and that will keep you from stuffing too many calories in your body.
Looking for an ideal fat loss training and nutrition plan for your wife, girlfriend, or sister? Just click here.
Stay Focused,
CW
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Good stuff, I’ve been following these tips for a couple weeks now and I like them. Also, I absolutley LOVE “Huge In A Hurry”, I’m actually that overweight guy who picked up that book, I’ve done Get Ready and am now well into Get Lean. Love it!
Hi Chad,
Good tips. What about, in addition to the above tips ofcourse, drinking a protein shake a little before having the main meal? Just a 1/2 dose of whey with some leucine? I feel this could not only add some protein to you diet but also could help in avoiding overeating.
I have also another question. You are still advocating frequent feedings, in other words the “grazing” method (like 99% of the physique\performance enhancing world is and it is a working, empirically proven tool, not saying anything else)
But what is you opinion on intermittent fasting? Example the warrior diet (warriordiet.com), or other feeding window approaches for example leangains (leangains.com).
The main idea in these is to give the digestive system some rest for a while which gives the body more time for detoxification. Also another key idea is to reap the benefits of undereating (fasting) and overating while minimizing the negative effects by frequently switching “modes”.
As we know there are hormonal and other positive effects on being hungry, as in nature hunger is what drives you to seek food. Only after a prolonged period of restricted calories the negative effects like muscle loss and slowing of metabolism should start to overhelm. And of course we also know for sure that overeating has very positive effects on things that we muscle heads like
But again, when overused and\or done too long, the negative effect of fat gain will catch us eventually.
If you think, in a very brute simplification you could see that the eating window IF schemes are just like the common bulk – cut phases commonly used but compressed to a very short cycle – one day.
There is some research giving some credibility to IF but it still quite new concept as a tool to use for performance\physique enhancing and the research is still incomplete I know.
All that being said, I think IF has some potential but not perhabs for very active people or for those who want to be really BIG. But what is your take on this? How well you know the IF?
Atleast trainers like Mike Mahler from T-Nation has had some postive things to say about the Warrior Diet:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mahler49.htm
http://tnation.tmuscle.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding/_warrior_diet