There’s a whole lot of technical processes that go on when your body eats, and without going on about more hormones than a high school anatomy class, the main culprit is something called high glycemic carbs. What that means is foods like white rice and breads, sugars, corn syrups, will shoot your insulin through the roof and turn most people into a monster that will eat the entire bag of pasta. Typically these surges of appetite are present in dishes where there’s no protein or fat and these two are the ones that actually get your body to say “We’re full”. Given a lot of the world still recommends most of the daily energy comes from carbohydrates, and doesn’t have a long boring technical chart of all kinds of carbs squeezed on the outdated nutrition block, most of the world is eating way too many carbs compared to fat and protein. Lowering daily carbohydrate intake and getting calories from healthier protein and fat sources will do a lot to calm the appetite. Lower the carbs, and replace them with carbs from things like sweet potatoes and brown rice.
Low Carb? Won’t that put me into Ketosis?
If you go low enough, yes. However the scope of this post is just to address preventing a surge in appetite. While ketosis is a fantastic way to get your weight down, a lot of what gets the weight up is not knowing how many of the tastiest carbs shoot up your blood sugar and then that blood sugar getting stored as body fat. These carbs are very high on something called the Glycemic Index, which basically is how much glucose is released when the food is eaten and how quickly it’s absorbed. Sodas, white rice and bread, pastries, and cakes are all high glycemic. The best carbs to be eating are ones that have fiber and are more gradual in their release of energy and not a big sugar grenade that blasts your insulin to the moon. LESS carbs will actually work well to get you ready to do a ketosis diet by making the stress of change more gradual on your body. If you go from eating a super high glucose bomb diet straight to ketosis, that hard pivot will likely put a lot of stress and discomfort on your body, especially if ketosis has never been done before and the body isn’t adapted to using fat as fuel. Sickness and discomfort from a hard transition into burning fat often turns people off from sticking to ketosis, and relapsing to the previous diet.
Stop Eating Before Bed!
Your body’s insulin needs a chance to come down after it goes up from eating something. The most opportune and normal time for this to happen is during sleep. Continuous meals and constant spikes of carbs will cause hunger and appetite to disrupt sleep. “Grazing” and midnight snacking are all caused by never allowing blood sugar to come down and your body wanting to eat again when it starts to fall because it’s used to it always being elevated. Food digesting in your gut will release energy all the same now that the stomach is needed and then all that food and no movement piles all the energy into fat. Mark a cutoff point for your food for every day, at least 4 hours before bed if you get 8 hours of sleep. Good quality sleep is important for burning fat and it is during sleep a lot of fat is actually burned during sleep, so just let your body help you!
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Don’t give up, honor your gift
-Ed