You Can Be Thin: The Ultimate Programme to End Dieting... Forever (19 page)

All animals have natural satiety and will stop eating after a while but when we give them our food then they will overeat and become fat. This happens when we give domestic pets sweets, cakes and other food they could not get if they were hunting for it themselves. It also happens when laboratory animals are fed processed food and it happens in zoos when the animals are given too much variety.

When are we faced with too much variety? At a breakfast buffet, for instance, with ten varieties of bread, muffins and pastries. Eggs cooked in five different ways, a table full of every kind of breakfast cereal, every kind of jam, fruit, dried fruit and bacon, sausage, mushroom, tomatoes and potatoes. We are easily tempted to take far too much and to try a little of everything and we end up overfull, bloated and lacking energy. Even at home if you made a breakfast of scrambled eggs with mushrooms you would eat less than if you had bacon, eggs, mushrooms, beans, tomatoes and toast. Your taste buds would not be so stimulated by too much variety which would not encourage you to overeat.

I stayed at a hotel in Dubai and the evening buffet was so vast it was spread over three different rooms. They had dishes from almost every country and another separate area just to house all the desserts. Most people overate because it was a set price no matter how much you ate or how many times you returned for more, and the food was so tempting and so varied you had to overeat if you wanted to sample all of it.

We overeat on junk, stodge and sweets much more than we would on, say, unlimited chicken or unlimited eggs. We become satisfied and less hungry on protein and stop eating quite quickly when we eat basic protein. The amino acids in protein send a message of fullness to our brains rapidly. Protein changes the biochemistry in our brain because protein-rich foods encourage the production of the hormone peptide YY which is known to suppress appetite.

If we were eating a whole chicken it’s unlikely we would finish it, or a whole pan of soup or lamb stew. Even with confectionery, when we have a box of assorted chocolates or fancy biscuits we want to try them all but if they are all the same we are less likely to finish the box. If you had a big box of plain digestive biscuits you probably wouldn’t finish it but when you have assorted biscuits even as you eat the bourbon you are planning to eat the custard cream then the jammie dodger then the chocolate digestive and so on. If you think of the variety involved in Christmas lunch it’s no wonder people fall asleep in front of the TV afterwards and report weight gain over the holidays. Originally, the Victorian Christmas lunch consisted of turkey, parsnips, potatoes, sprouts and carrots. Now it also includes stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, bread sauce, Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, trifle, mince pies, endless chocolates and alcohol. We can love and enjoy Christmas lunch but still limit the amount and variety of food we eat and avoid the processed foods as there are so many other foods to enjoy.

In order to control conditioned reflex eating, treat all-you-can-eat buffets with caution. If you are eating at a buffet go up and be selective in serving yourself, aiming for protein and vegetables and filling your plate to what you think is a reasonable portion for a meal, but not too much.
And do not return for more
. Do not delude yourself that you must eat it because it’s free and remember that you already served yourself a full-sized portion so why would you need more? The notion of eating more because it’s free is a lie. I have clients who would frequent all-you-can-eat establishments and then spend hundreds even thousands of pounds trying various quick fixes, miracle diets, pills, liposuction and gym memberships to work off the excess fat. They spent much more trying to get rid of the weight than they ever saved in gaining it.

I love that expression, ‘Take whatever you want and then pay for it.’ It’s an old Jewish saying but it could have been written for the all-you-can-eat restaurants. My other favourite saying is, ‘If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.’ Be a part of the solution. Don’t have too much variety at each meal and don’t keep the wrong foods in your house.

One of the keys to weight loss is to eat some protein at every meal and to eat healthy carbohydrates such as fruits and vegetables, but to eat far fewer bad carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes and pasta. In the previous chapter I explained how detrimental these foods are for people with weight issues but only you can decide whether to keep them in your diet or not. If you love them and cannot be without them then eat them at lunch but stop all cereals after your midday meal. Cereal is not just what you have for breakfast, it is everything made from grains including bread, pasta, pizza, pies and crackers (and it also includes rice).

On
Celebrity Fit Club
, when the contestants wanted to improve their weekly weight loss, they stopped eating bread, potatoes, pasta and rice after midday. You can even stop them after breakfast, it is quite safe and you will certainly drop weight by doing this.

If you do eat cereals at lunchtime you can make smarter choices such as brown rice with tuna instead of sandwiches, microwaved poppadoms are great too, gluten free and usually made with gram flour (lentil flour: lentils are pulses, not cereals). If you must have a sandwich, have it in the form of a wrap, a tortilla or brown pitta. Tortillas and pittas have much less dough than baguettes, rolls, bagels and French bread. It’s so easy to resume eating cereals and to forget how much you’ve consumed and to increase their intake without really noticing it. Stopping cereals after lunch naturally restricts your intake of them without you feeling deprived. It allows you to stick to an easy routine without allowing your cereal intake to creep back up.

Rye, maize, millet, rice and barley are all cereals, but are much more digestible than wheat so eating rye bread and Ryvita instead of wheat bread or eating rice cakes is a better alternative if you are still eating cereals. When I was a child I used to feed my guinea pigs bran and my father would buy huge sacks of it for about twenty pence. It was only available in pet shops, no food shops sold it as it was not considered a food for human consumption. We would never have considered eating it any more than we would have considered eating the hay that was used to feed horses. Then it became marketed as a food to alleviate constipation and became fashionable and highly promoted despite it being too rough and corrosive for most people’s intestines. I do not believe eating lots of glue makes people regular, but flaxseeds are a brilliant alternative for constipation. Flaxseeds are also known as linseeds – only buy the milled flaxseeds or linseeds. They are a wonder food full of Omega oils and they are also excellent for your skin. Fruit and vegetables and enough water are usually sufficient to make you regular. If not have about three tea-spoons of flaxseeds every other day and you will be fine. They’re easy to eat by adding them to smoothies, salads, soups or just sprinkle them into a small glass of water and drink them, they have no taste at all.

Of course, if you get invited out to a pasta dinner you can still participate. My programme is not rigid – it’s flexible and adaptable – but do adhere to these rules most of the time in order to keep any excess weight off.

The next very simple step to keep excess weight off is not to eat late at night. Our bodies are simply not designed to have a big dinner at 10.30 p.m. and then go to bed. This is fine occasionally and, of course, you will still want to go out to dinner, but avoid eating late on a regular basis and try to make it as early as possible and never eat a snack before going to bed. Our bodies are still like those of caveman really since it takes hundreds of years to evolve and adapt. Primitive man got up with the light and retired as it got dark as there was nothing else to do. Eating too much and too late at night leaves our bodies full of undigested food. Our metabolism slows down dramatically at night even if we are wide awake, because nature assumes we’re sleeping and therefore not as active as when we’re awake so our heart-rate slows right down making digestion more difficult.

Going to bed on a full stomach means your body is working all night to digest food when it should be resting and as a result you are likely to wake up feeling tired rather that refreshed and with a food hangover. This is because at around 2 a.m. our bodies begin the cycle of cell repair essential to good health. The later it is in the evening the less we should eat since the cycle of cell repair is set aside when we go to bed on a full stomach because the same pancreatic enzymes used for cell repair are used for digestion. If you eat late all the time you will age much more rapidly and be more susceptible to illness and poor health because this process of cell repair will be put on hold as you digest food. The tiredness you feel in the morning may cause you to eat a sugary snack for a quick energy boost thus perpetuating a damaging eating pattern.

We are designed to sleep more and eat less and since electricity was invented humans have increasingly slept less and eaten more and are suffering because of it. If you do find yourself eating too late at night because of social or work issues you could help your body’s digestion process by taking natural digestive enzymes after your meal which you can buy in a health food shop. They will help your body break down the food.

Remember, the human body has a cycle of its own. It digests food best during the day, the earlier the better, and digests food very poorly at night. The body conducts all its detoxifying work between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. So if you go to bed after 2 a.m. you may wake up feeling as tired as if you hadn’t slept. It’s good to go to bed hungry as it means you are burning off fat and you can have a healthy breakfast in the morning. Since eating is supposed to give us energy there is no benefit at all in a late-night snack we don’t need the energy since we are about to sleep.

This next step is one you have heard over and over: avoid fast food.

It isn’t a coincidence that the fattest nations eat the most fast food. Eating fast food once a day means you are eating up to one pound of sugar daily and 1,700 calories in one meal – almost a full day’s allowance. The danger with fast food is not just the fact that it is cooked really fast in saturated fat that is often rancid, but that it is eaten so fast. Fast food is given that name because it’s so quick to prepare and even quicker to consume. Burgers, chips, doughnuts, sandwiches and pizza are very easy to bolt down in a matter of minutes. Because this food is nutritionally very poor we are likely to be hungry again far too quickly
.
Our body will continue to demand food because it is not getting any nutrients from the junk food we have put into it.

Fast food is often full of taste enhancers which need to be avoided as they are chemicals designed to make you crave more and therefore overeat. Fast food restaurants also load their food with chemicals which make the food break down in your mouth really quickly like baby food. We love food that breaks down quickly. Think of chocolate and how it melts on your tongue immediately. Butter, cream, ice cream, cakes and creamy desserts, buttered popcorn, hot white toast and butter require no effort to break down in your mouth. We eat too much of these types of foods because it’s so easy. This is because your appetite is stimulated yet your brain is not registering that you are eating because you are eating too quickly. The only reason the fast food industry alters its food with taste enhancers is because we consume more of it. When you can wolf down a burger in minutes you will buy another one.

It’s a money-making venture. When we eat quickly our stomach doesn’t even register that it’s full until twenty minutes later. Real food like vegetables or a grilled steak require a lot of chewing to break them down so we feel full and satisfied much sooner.

Research by American scientists suggests fat and sugar in high quantities have a similar effect on the brain as opiates and cocaine, which means that we get high on the chemicals in processed foods. Remember how cheese protein has opiates in it and is highly addictive. High-fat chemical-laden snacks like crisps can affect the liver and gall bladder and are addictive. Doctors have discovered that the drug-like effects certain foods have on our brain is very similar to alcohol and keeps us wanting more, and because this kind of food is so easily and quickly consumed we’re not aware of how much we’ve eaten, which means that most overweight people do overeat although many think they don’t. The very food we should not eat is chemically altered to make us want it all the time and in large quantities. Do you recall the advert that said ‘Bet you can’t eat just one’. Of course you can’t eat just one, it’s been chemically altered to ensure you eat several. Advertisers know this and play on it – this is what you are up against when you eat chemically altered food. If someone pointed out to you that a particular food was highly addictive and proven to not only cause tremendous weight gain but also to make you want even more of it in the process and to make you ill, unhealthy and very unhappy, why would you continue to eat it when there are many lovely alternatives available to replace it?
This book is that someone
.

When we become addicted to a food and eat it all the time and in excessive amounts our bodies are likely to become intolerant and sensitive to that food. The symptoms of the intolerance will show as headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, indigestion, bad skin, tiredness, weight gain and difficulty sustaining weight reduction. The common symptoms of eating badly are that body fat increases, your liver becomes fatty and you may get frequent headaches. High-fat fast food is extremely harmful to your heart, liver and blood, in fact it can be as dangerous to your liver as alcohol.

If you accept that these foods are addictive and promoted by companies who want to keep you addicted to their products because of the vast profit involved you can then choose to break the pattern of addiction and overeating. Remember earlier in the book when I asked you to work out how long you could feel good for after eating junk food? For most people it’s only minutes and even if you could feel good for an hour after eating junk it’s still never worth it – remembering that helps you to change.