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- Eat All You Want (But Wisely)
Today’s almonds have been activated by:
Caffeine is the “payday loan” of energy. If you are already tired, then what you need is rest, not to mask your tiredness.
If you cannot rest, plunging your face into cold water (with ice in it, ideally—but gently, please) will give you the vasoconstrictive perks of caffeine without the adenosine-blocking self-sabotage.
⏰ IN A RUSH?
Today’s 30-Second Summary
If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:
Restricting what we eat, in a bid to lose weight, will not work—we’ll always put it back on later.
There are, however, tricks we can use to eat as much as we want, but reduce the amount we want to eat
These include surprising research on such topics as “water yes, but not in a glass” (see today’s main feature for why, and much more)
We know that 10almonds subscribers love learning about nutrition, and know a whole-foods plant-based diet is a good option for many.
Today's sponsor Imperfect Vegan is a free newsletter for those who are curious about vegan nutrition, health, and general veganism-related life.
Read on to learn about these things and more…
👀 WATCH AND LEARN
If You're Trying To lose Fat And Not Succeeding, This is Why (5:31)
Cori (whom we’ve featured before with one of her “building strength with age” videos), has answers:
Prefer text? You might like her “Strong At Every Age” Facebook group for many text-based resources!
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖
😋 RECIPES WORTH SHARING
Homemade Hummus With A Fermented Kick
This one is from Eliza Sullivan over at Mind Body Green, as part of a collection focusing on incorporating recipes from the Supercentenarian Blue Zones.
Long life has never been tastier!
For all those who asked for more text-based recipes… Enjoy!
🍽️ MAIN FEATURE
Some Surprising Truths About Hunger And Satiety
This is Dr. Barbara Rolls. She’s Professor and Guthrie Chair in Nutritional Sciences, and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Human Ingestive Behavior at Pennsylvania State University, after graduating herself from Oxford and Cambridge (yes, both). Her “awards and honors” take up four A4 pages, so we won’t list them all here.
Most importantly, she’s an expert on hunger, satiety, and eating behavior in general.
What does she want us to know?
First and foremost: you cannot starve yourself thin, unless you literally starve yourself to death.
What this is about: any weight lost due to malnutrition ("not eating enough” is malnutrition) will always go back on once food becomes available. So unless you die first (not a great health plan), merely restricting good will always result in “yo-yo dieting”.
So, to avoid putting the weight back on and feeling miserable every day along the way… You need to eat as much as you feel you need.
But, there’s a trick here (it’s about making you genuinely feel you need less)!
Your body is an instrument—so play it
Your body is the tool you use to accomplish pretty much anything you do. It is, in large part, at your command. Then there are other parts you can’t control directly.
Dr. Rolls advises taking advantage of the fact that much of your body is a mindless machine that will simply follow instructions given.
That includes instructions like “feel hungry” or “feel full”. But how to choose those?
Volume matters
An important part of our satiety signalling is based on a physical sensation of fullness. This, by the way, is why bariatric surgery (making a stomach a small fraction of the size it was before) works. It’s not that people can’t eat more (the stomach is stretchy and can also be filled repeatedly), it’s that they don’t want to eat more because the pressure sensors around the stomach feel full, and signal the hormone leptin to tell the brain we’re full now.
Now consider:
On the one hand, 20 grapes, fresh and bursting with flavor
On the other hand, 20 raisins (so, dried grapes), containing the same calories
Which do you think will get the leptin flowing sooner? Of course, the fresh grapes, because of the volume.
So if you’ve ever seen those photos that show two foods side by side with the same number of calories but one is much larger (say, a small slice of pizza or a big salad), it’s not quite the cheap trick that it might have appeared.
Or rather… It is a cheap trick; it’s just a cheap trick that works because your stomach is quite a simple organ.
So, Dr. Rolls’ advice: generally speaking, go for voluminous food. Fruit is great from this, because there’s so much water. Air-popped popcorn also works great. Vegetables, too.
Water matters, but differently than you might think
A well-known trick is to drink water before and with a meal. That’s good, it’s good to be hydrated. However, it can be better. Dr. Rolls did an experiment:
The design:
❝Subjects received 1 of 3 isoenergetic (1128 kJ) preloads 17 min before lunch on 3 d and no preload on 1 d.
The preloads consisted of 1) chicken rice casserole, 2) chicken rice casserole served with a glass of water (356 g), and 3) chicken rice soup.
The soup contained the same ingredients (type and amount) as the casserole that was served with water.❞
The results:
❝Decreasing the energy density of and increasing the volume of the preload by adding water to it significantly increased fullness and reduced hunger and subsequent energy intake at lunch.
The equivalent amount of water served as a beverage with a food did not affect satiety.❞
The conclusion:
❝Consuming foods with a high water content more effectively reduced subsequent energy intake than did drinking water with food.❞
You can read the study in full (it’s a worthwhile read!) here:
Protein matters
With all those fruits and vegetables and water, you may be wondering Dr. Rolls’ stance on proteins. It’s simple: protein is an appetite suppressant.
However, it takes about 20 minutes to signal the brain about that, so having some protein in a starter (if like this writer, you’re the cook of the household, a great option is to enjoy a small portion of nuts while cooking!) gets that clock ticking, to signal satiety sooner.
It may also help in other ways:
As for other foods that can suppress appetite, by the way, you might like;
Variety matters, and in ways other than you might think
A wide variety of foods (especially: a wide variety of plants) in one’s diet is well recognized as a key to a good balanced diet.
However…
A wide variety of dishes at the table, meanwhile, promotes greater consumption of food.
Dr. Rolls did a study on this too, a while ago now (you’ll see how old it is) but the science seems robust:
Notwithstanding the title, it was not about a man (that was just how scientists wrote in ye ancient times of 1981). The test subjects were, in order: rats, cats, a mixed group of men and women, the same group again, and then a different group of all women.
So, Dr. Rolls’ advice is: it’s better to have one 20-ingredient dish, than 10 dishes with 20 ingredients between them.
Sorry! We love tapas and buffets too, but that’s the science!
So, “one-pot” meals are king in this regard; even if you serve it with one side (reasonable), that’s still only two dishes, which is pretty good going.
Note that the most delicious many-ingredient stir-fries and similar dishes from around the world also fall into this category!
Want to know more?
If you have the time (it’s an hour), you can enjoy a class of hers for free:
Want to watch it, but not right now? Bookmark it for later 🔖
Enjoy!
❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE
Imperfect Vegan?
Here at 10almonds, we sometimes talk about the science-based health merits of a whole foods plant-based diet.
Imperfect Vegan is a free newsletter for those who are curious about vegan nutrition, health, and general veganism-related life.
Get the scoop on eco-friendly recipes, plant-based health, and climate trends, all in one newsletter:
Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free
🤫 A WORD TO THE WISE
 | Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue!You probably know lifestyle changes that might help—if only you had the energy to implement them! But, there are sneaky ways to make the vicious cycle a little less vicious: |
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Eat to Your Heart's Content: Recipes to improve your health from an award-winning chef and heart attack survivor – by Dr. Sat Bains
Making food heart-healthy and tasty is a challenge that vexes many, but it doesn't have to be so difficult.
Dr. Sat Bains, a professional chef with multiple Michelin stars to his name, is an expert on "tasty", and after surviving a heart attack himself, he's become an expert on "heart-healthy" since then.
The book contains not only the recipes (of which there are 68, by the way), but also large sections of explanation of what makes various ingredients or methods heart-healthy or heart-unhealthy.
There's science in there too, and these sections were written under the guidance of Dr. Neil Williams, a lecturer in physiology and nutrition.
You may be wondering as to why the author himself has a doctorate too; in fact he has three, none of which are relevant:
Doctor of Arts
Doctor of Laws
Doctor of Hospitality (Honorary)
...but we prefix "Dr." when people are that and he is that. The expertise we're getting here though is really his culinary skill and extracurricular heart-healthy learning, plus Dr. Williams' actual professional health guidance.
Bottom line: if you'd like heart-healthy recipes with restaurant-level glamour, this book is a fine choice.
What did you think of today's newsletter?We always love to hear from you, whether you leave us a comment or even just a click in the poll if you're speeding by! |
May today see you sated, healthy, and happy,
The 10almonds Team
