Healthy Dieting

If you’ve been on a restricted-calorie diet before, you know how hard it is to avoid overeating when you feel hungry all the time. Throw in the sudden and unexpected food cravings that can make a mess of your best intentions, and it’s easy to see why staying on a restricted-calorie diet is agonizingly difficult and certainly not fun. On a dieting index weight-loss program, however, it is easier to avoid both overeating and the horrendous, and at times irresistible, food cravings. That kind of hunger is induced by the restrictive nature of those diets.

Natural hunger—the kind you experience when your body actually needs food—is good because it signals that it’s time to eat. But your natural hunger feelings can easily get confused with false hunger. False hunger comes when you feel compelled to eat more food than your body requires.

False hunger is often the result of swings in insulin levels. When you eat a high- carbohydrate meal or snack, your blood sugar is elevated and you feel satiated. Soon after that, however, your insulin levels increase quickly and lower your blood sugar levels. You feel hungry again. If you respond to this feeling by eating yet more high dieting, high-carb foods, you end up in an unsatisfying and fattening cycle. By eating mostly low-dieting carbohydrates, you eliminate false hunger.

Food cravings are often a result of the same high-carb insulin-hunger cycle. You crave high-carb foods because they quickly increase your blood sugar levels and make you comfortable. Yes, it’s usually carbs we crave. Very few of us—if anyone—who’s caught up in an insulin-hunger cycle craves a fish fillet or a plain tossed salad. Instead, our cravings range from donuts and cookies to candy and bagels—foods that will keep the insulin-hunger cycle going strong. By avoiding the high-carb foods altogether, you avoid cravings and the insulin-hunger cycle.

Food cravings are also caused by stress. When times get tough and schedules become hectic, levels of the stress hormone cortisol rise. That’s when many of us seek comfort foods such as mashed potatoes, rice pudding, and oatmeal cookies. These are among the foods that seem to lift our moods and soothe our stress, at least temporarily. But why?

These high-carbohydrate foods increase levels of the brain neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin soothes the brain and makes us feel relaxed. But—you guessed it—there’s a downside. These foods make us fat, only work temporarily, and can ultimately increase anxiety and depression.

Here’s how. These foods put us back on the insulin-hunger cycle in which our blood sugar is lifted and then crashes as more insulin is delivered to the bloodstream. Insulin and cortisol tend to always stay balanced in the body; so when people are stressed, their insulin level and cortisol level increase, which causes their body to store fat more readily. Ultimately, they gain weight. As insulin increases, so does cortisol. Cortisol uses up serotonin, which results in yet more feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression.

You learn more about how to manage your stress without eating high-dieting, highcarb foods. But for now, know that you have plenty of excellent alternatives, ranging from meditation to exercise, and even sleep will restore serotonin levels.

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