Why We Eat (Too Much)

  Surfing the urge – what goes up, must come down! People often believe that the urge or craving will just keep building and building. However, when we allow ourselves to really observe what happens when the cravings emerge, we often notice they build in intensity and then something happens and the urge disappears (until the cycle potentially repeats itself). I often get people to write down a self-coaching mantra, a statement that sounds convincing to them, something that they would like to say to themselves when the cravings bite, for example, ‘Don’t panic, this will go away’, and practise using this each time they feel driven to eat in a way that doesn’t fit with their overall goals. The important thing here is that this mantra is prepared in advance as our capacity to ‘think straight’ in the moment may be somewhat impaired.

  And breathe … !!!Cravings arise from a high-energy state, which we can lower by simply remembering to breathe again. I have added an exercise for a three-part breathing space below, which, if used over time, can help us respond more skilfully to all sorts of difficulties and uncomfortable experiences.

  HOW CAN BREATHING MINDFULLY HELP?

  The breathing space provides a way to step out of autopilot mode and reconnect with the present moment. The aim is not necessarily to relax; you may find that you are not relaxed at the beginning or at the end. However, giving yourself this space can help you decide how to respond thoughtfully to any difficulties or discomfort that might be around. The three parts are as follows:

  1. Awareness

  Begin by sitting comfortably, feet firmly on the floor and, if it is possible, close your eyes. Start by noticing the sensation of being held by the chair and the points of contact and pressure. Now ask yourself, ‘What am I experiencing right now, which thoughts are going through my mind (pause), which emotions or feelings are around (pause) and which physical sensations are here (pause)?’ You do not have to change anything, just register what you are feeling right now, even if you don’t like it.

  2. Gathering

  Move your attention to the place where you feel the breath moving in and out of your body most vividly. Try to give your full attention to each in-breath and to each out-breath as they follow, one after the other. This focus on the breath will bring you into the present and help you tune into a state of awareness and stillness. (You may decide to count a certain number of breaths, with each in-breath and out-breath as one count.)

  3. Expanding

  Now move your attention away from the breath and bring into your awareness the entire body. See if it is possible to notice and hold a sense of the whole body from the soles of the feet to the crown of the head, including a sense of the arms and hands, the trunk of the body, the head, neck and face.1

  An audio download of the three-minute breathing space can be found at https://franticworld.com.

  Of course, it takes time to create new habits. Initially, trying one of these techniques might feel like trying to write with your non-dominant hand, or ignoring rather than scratching an itch. However, over time these techniques do work and are worth trying out!

  Dr Jacqueline Doyle is the Lead Clinical Psychologist, UCLH Centre for Weight Management, Metabolic and Endocrine Surgery, University College London Hospitals NHS Trust, London, and Director of Living Well Psychology Ltd.

  FIFTEEN

  Eat More, Rest More

  Lowering Insulin and Cortisol

  Eating more and moving less may sound counter-intuitive to weight loss. Surely, this will lead to gaining weight? This is what our energy in vs energy out weight-loss equation tells us.

  But, as we have learned, energy in vs energy out (the amount of food that you take in and the amount of energy that you expend) is outside our conscious long-term control.

  We know, from what dieters tell us, that eating less (by dieting) and moving more (by flogging yourself in the gym) do indeed lead to short-term weight loss. However, this is rapidly followed by metabolic adaptation by the body (slowing the metabolism and increasing hunger hormones), and by weight gain to an often higher weight than before the diet. Your body has been scared into a higher weight set-point.

  So we are going to try something different. Instead of dieting, we are going to change the environmental signals that our body is picking up. These signals will reset your weight set-point at a lower level and then the hormonal and metabolic signals will drive your weight downwards (towards the lowered set-point). As a consequence, you will notice a natural decrease in your appetite and a natural increase in your metabolism – making you feel more energetic and alive.

  In the programme that I am about to set out there is simple step-by-step guidance to move that set-point down. Each step will gradually help you lower your set-point. It will be like a cross-country run: the steps at the start are quite easy, the middle section is enjoyable, but the final steps may be more difficult. Everyone has different goals in weight regulation – some people want to lose 5kg (10lb) and others may want to lose 20kg (over 3 stone). And every person has different genes, meaning weight loss is more difficult for some than others.

  If you reach your target weight before the end of the course (after only one or two steps for instance) you can stop there if you want to – you don’t have to run the whole race. But this is really a lifelong plan. The steps should be integrated into your daily routine, your normal way of living. This is the only way of not only losing the weight but keeping it off for good.

  STEP 1 – EAT MORE

  The first step will focus on decreasing your average daily insulin levels – but at the same time you can eat really well. As we learned in chapter 10, insulin levels will drive your weight set-point up or down. We also learned that insulin levels are controlled by the types of food that we eat. The big drivers of insulin spikes in our current Western diet are sugar, wheat and corn. We will replace these with more natural foods that are less damaging to our metabolism.

  In this part of our plan we will be flooding our body with lots of tasty and nutritious foods. This will not only provide great sources of extra vitamins (particularly B vitamins that optimize metabolism), but also calm down our body’s cortisol levels. We are not going to shock our bodies by any type of calorie restriction.

  This part of the plan is designed to help you come away from any addiction to sugary foods and at the same time to encourage you to cook good and delicious foods. We want this to become your new routine before progressing to the rest of the course.

  The simple instructions of this step are:

  Eat three meals per day

  Have a high-fat/protein and low-carb breakfast

  Cook/prepare your own food

  Avoid sugar, wheat, corn, and fruit juices

  Snack if required.

  Clearing out the Pantry

  The final preparation for this step of our programme is to make sure that you have cleared the food cupboards and fridge of the foods that you are going to avoid – including snacks that contain sugar – and filled it with more nutritious alternatives. There should be no bread in the house; you can probably remove the bread bin as you won’t need this any more. Perhaps put a blender (for soup) in its place.

  Any foods containing wheat should go – these include biscuits, cakes, crackers and many types of processed foods. Sugary snacks and confectionery should not be available. Replace the ‘treat’ box with a visible fresh fruit bowl. Pre-packed fruit juices and dried fruit should also be avoided as these will give you a sudden sugar bomb.

  Have healthy snacks in the fridge: meat, cheese, boiled eggs, yogurt, full-fat milk. Vegan options would include hummus or salsa dips; sliced vegetables, avocados, rice cakes, baked vegetable chips, and dried coconut or even dark (non-sugar) chocolate. Fresh fruit is OK, but try to limit yourself to a maximum of two pieces of fruit per day. Have a book for recipes and cooking notes handy. Remember you are going to be cooking a wide variety of foods, so make sure you have a full range of cooking spices prominent and have herb plants growing and available on the windowsill. It’s
important to make these changes to your kitchen. If unhealthy ‘sugar-rush’ food is in the home, it’s more likely that you will eat it.

  If you live with children, then you should get them on board with this new food environment. You cannot force them to eat home-cooked foods outside the house, but as they see you looking happier, healthier and slimmer, they may slowly be converted.

  The Full English

  At this stage we want to even out the glucose fluctuations in your bloodstream – so it’s important to start this process in the morning. We know that when you eat a high-carbohydrate breakfast, you will experience a mid-morning fall in your blood-sugar levels which will drive you to seek more sugar and carbs. The high-carb and low-fat breakfast sets you up for that ‘sugar roller-coaster’ ride, resulting in high average levels of insulin throughout the day, driving up your set-point. We want to reverse this.

  In this first step of the programme I want you to avoid the type of low-fat, supposedly healthy breakfast that we have been told to eat by nutrition experts for the last thirty years. Avoid toast, cereals that contain sugar, wheat or corn, yogurt that contains lots of sugar (if it is labelled ‘low fat’, this is code for ‘high sugar’), and avoid orange juice (or any fruit juice). A traditional full English breakfast,fn1 or even avocado, salmon and eggs, is fine if you have the time. The one proviso is not to have bread with your eggs, bacon, sausage and tomato. It may seem unusual to have a full English on the first morning of your new food diet. But you will see that this time will be different (you may even gain a small amount of weight before your body adapts to lower insulin levels and settles at your new lower set-point).

  Other acceptable low-carb but high-fat protein breakfasts could include eggs (boiled, fried, poached or scrambled) on their own, a continental-type cold breakfast of meats, cheeses, yogurt and olives, any type of fish or full fat milk, oat porridge (with salt or a small amount of honey for flavour). It’s probably best to avoid fresh fruit for breakfast due to its natural sugar content – save this for later if you require a snack. You should drink water, milk, tea or coffee (a full-fat latte is also OK).

  You will notice that after this type of breakfast you are well set up for the day. You will not crave mid-morning carb snacks and you will not be ravenous at lunchtime.

  Prepare for the Food Desert

  Lunch choices can be difficult, particularly if you work in a town or city. Remember, despite our city shops overflowing with food, we still live in a virtual ‘real food’ desert. Foods that do not contain added sugar or wheat can be difficult to find; many of the food labels tell you ‘low fat’ (lots of sugar) or ‘no added sugar’ (lots of fruit sugar). If you have not cooked or prepared your own lunch, you might be tempted by these types of food, or even hedonic fast food. It is for this reason that this part of the plan tries to get you into the routine of planning your lunch and taking it with you if you are out and about.

  The easiest option is to prepare your lunch the day before. It could be a home-made soup, a chickpea or pasta salad, egg-fried rice with cauliflower, mushroom, meat or fish etc. The choices are countless and just need some thought and imagination: try and get into the habit of using fresh vegetables, dairy, meat or fish to prepare a tasty and nutritious lunch. If you are a meat-eater, then regularly roasting a beef or lamb joint can provide for many lunches and snacks.

  Evening Meal

  You are going to spend your new-found time enjoying cooking the evening meal. You can use any ingredients so long as there is no excess of wheat, sugar or corn. This part of the programme is not designed to starve you of carbohydrates or send you into starvation shut-down mode – potatoes and rice are OK. If you usually had a dessert course at the end of your meal prior to this programme, why don’t you consider replacing this with a starter course such as home-made soup?

  If you live with your family, try and get them around the table to share the food. It’s best to put all the food dishes in the middle of the table so that people can help themselves and take more if they need to. Enjoy your food, savour it. Try and make mealtimes what they should be, and what, historically, they used to be: enjoyable, sociable occasions and an integral part of your life.

  STEP 2 – GET MORE SLEEP

  This sounds like an easy step to take. ‘No problem with this one,’ I sense you saying to yourself … but what we want you to do is improve the quality of your rest, and that may not be as easy as it seems.

  We all fall into mindless habits in our down-time. One of the most common is sitting in front of the TV – switching it on and switching ourselves off. I am as guilty as anyone else in this respect after a stressful, busy day. The average TV viewing time per day in the UK is reported to be three hours and twelve minutes.fn2 Total ‘audiovisual’ screen time is estimated at five hours, and with the advent of on-demand channels like Netflix and YouTube the time that we spend looking at a screen in the evening may be increasing even more.

  The problem with our unproductive screen time is that it can encroach on our sleep time. In addition, if we have only just switched off a bright screen when we finally do make it to bed, it can make falling asleep more difficult. As we found out in chapter 13, our ‘third eye’, the pineal gland, senses when light is fading and stimulates the secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. A lack of melatonin in night-shift workers is thought to explain their weight gain. It has an integral effect on high cortisol levels and leptin resistance – causing an increase in the weight set-point.

  A lack of sleep has also been proved to cause increased ghrelin (the appetite hormone). Not only are you leptin-resistant and metabolically sluggish, but you also have a sharper appetite and cravings for high-energy foods. In studies comparing groups of people who slept 4½ hours or 8½ hours, those with a sleep deficiency consumed 300kcal of energy more than those who got a good night’s sleep. In similar experiments a lack of sleep can cause average blood sugar levels to increase, leading to pre-diabetes.1

  From an evolutionary perspective, sleep deprivation may have been a factor long ago during migrations to different hunting grounds. It would make sense for the body to become metabolically more efficient and for us to be driven to increased food-seeking behaviour during this period. It would have helped us to survive these times. Unfortunately, we still carry these metabolic responses to sleep deprivation and this leads to a rise in our weight set-point. Our evolved bodies are still hard-wired to react in exactly the same way to the voluntary sleep deprivation experienced during a TV binge as we do to the enforced sleep deprivation of a long and arduous journey – namely, by increased appetite, increased blood sugar, increased insulin resistance … and, finally, weight gain.

  In the course of Step 2, we are going to try and reverse these changes, and use our understanding of how the body works to lose weight the smart way. We will try to sleep more and therefore decrease our set-point … and our weight.

  First, we need to change our evening relaxation and sleep habits. But, remember, you are only likely to sustain this change of habit if it becomes more enjoyable and relaxing for you. One of the critical factors in becoming sleepy is to stimulate that secretion of melatonin – and the best way to do this is to reduce the ambient lighting in your home environment as the evening progresses.

  We know that in areas of the world where there is no electric lighting, melatonin starts working at sunset, and then within two hours people will fall asleep (in rural African villages, sleep time is 9 p.m. and wake time is 5 a.m. as the first light starts to appear). To help you sleep you should try and get into a routine – just as you would if you were living closer to nature, when your pineal gland would automatically sense nightfall – and start to dim the lighting (and avoid screen time) two hours before bed.

  In preparation for this step you need to have installed lower wattage bulbs, low table lamps and maybe even dimmer switches. You can make this more primeval – and therefore probably even more effective – by using unscented candles for some of your lighting (caref
ully!). An hour or two of low lighting and you will start to feel sleepy.

  Sometimes an earlier sleep time than you’ve been used to can be difficult to adjust to. A relaxing hot bath, low music and some herbal tea can help. If you have lost the habit (or never had it in the first place) of reading in bed, take it up again. Books can take you into another world and reading can often have a soporific effect.

  Even if you don’t fall asleep immediately, don’t worry about it, just enjoy resting your body and try and have happy thoughts and pleasant memories. Sleep will come and you will feel more refreshed, enabling you to enjoy the day ahead when you wake.

  These new habits should become part of your normal routine. Obviously, there will be times when you are out and about until late, but try and slip back into and enjoy looking forward to your routine night in. In time an increase in your sleep to eight hours or so per day will help your mood, health and metabolism – and your set-point will drop. You will lose weight naturally.

  SIXTEEN

  Your Personal Blue Zone

  Improving Cell and Muscle Metabolism

  STEP 3 – PRIME YOUR CELLS

  In his book The Blue Zones (2008), Dan Buettner identified five areas, or zones, in the world where people live the longest. He visited these areas and studied the lifestyle and habits of their populations to try and discover the secret to their health. He identified several factors that each of the zones had in common and concluded that these traits were responsible for the remarkable fitness of the populations living in them. The characteristics he identified included: a plant-based diet, some moderate but not excessive physical activity, low stress and family-based communities with good social interaction.