6 Ways to Fight Weight Loss Hunger (Without Willpower)
Your body is hardwired to fight weight loss. Here's how to fight back.
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In 2018, a Stanford study—the largest and most rigorous of its kind—quietly killed years of diet dogma1.
Low carb? Low fat? Mediterranean? Paleo? It didn’t matter.
For weight loss, what people ate mattered far less than how much they ate. Calories in, calories out still ruled.
Burn more than you consume, you’ll lose weight. Eat more than you burn, you’ll gain it.
So then the question is, if weight loss is a simple numbers game, why do 97 percent of people who start a diet fail within a year?
The answer is simple: Hunger.
On Monday, we covered the 1944 Minnesota Starvation Experiment. One of its key findings is unsettling: Once you lose weight, your body fights back. It amplifies your hunger and directs your thoughts toward food.
Modern research has confirmed this. A team at the NIH2 found that for every two pounds a person loses, their brain unconsciously ramps up hunger and causes them to eat about 100 more calories.
It’s an ancient survival mechanism that kept our ancestors alive, but it now backfires in a world of stocked pantries.
It’s also why fad diets haven’t solved the nation’s weight problem. It’s not information we all lack (after all, fad diets work when followed consistently over the long run). It’s our inability to persist against the discomfort of hunger.
If we can figure out how to manage hunger, we can lose weight and keep it off—or stay at the weight we want to be for the long haul.
That’s what today’s post is about.
We’ll break down science-backed ways to control hunger—not eliminate it, but manage it—so you can lose weight, keep it off, and make the experience feel less like the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
Today you’ll learn:
Why you may be under-eating the one macro that can reduce cravings.
The three foods research shows are most filling. Leaning into them will help you manage your weight with less hunger.
The surprising link between your sleep schedule and your pantry raids.
The truth about “healthy fats.”
A research-backed psychological trick to get over hunger.
How fasting can both help and hurt hunger and weight loss.
Quick housekeeping
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