4 Powerful Ways to Easily Regulate Your Appetite

For many people, the word “diet” is synonymous with “appetite control.” And if you’ve ever tried to control your appetite in order to lose weight or eliminate certain foods for health reasons, you know how hard it is. Whether you follow a strict eating plan or take pills that promise to suppress your appetite, at the end of the day, the cravings are still there, and it’s very common to give in to them now and then. But did you know that you can have a huge impact on your appetite simply by adjusting the way you eat? Instead of beating yourself up for being a willpower weakling, please check out this practical and encouraging new video from #IPEtv, where Emily Rosen, Director of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating, shares 4 things you can do to rediscover your natural appetite and ditch the diet pills forever!

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Here is a transcript of this week’s video:

Hi, I’m Emily Rosen, Chief Operating Officer for the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

Today’s Topic: 4 Powerful Ways to Easily Regulate Your Appetite

A lot of people these days are trying to control their appetite. Chances are, if you’re one of those people, it’s not quite working. There’s a fantastically huge industry that makes money off of our obsession to suppress and control a very natural need of the human body. Appetite suppressants – be it an herb, supplement or prescription drug – simply don’t work. If even one of them did, the entire world would know about it and we wouldn’t even be in this conversation.

So in the interest of saving you a lot of time, headache, and maybe even some money, I’m going to share with you four very potent ways that you can easily and naturally regulate your appetite.

As always, don’t take my word for it even though I’m clearly convinced about what I’m saying. Try it out for yourself. If we don’t experiment, we don’t discover.

Appetite is a complex psychobiologic experience. No matter how much researchers study it, we don’t really have any breakthroughs in this realm to speak of from the scientific community that have radically changed people’s lives.

What I have noticed, though, is that there are some basic, boilerplate and well proven strategies that will lead to natural and easy appetite regulation.

And indeed, I’d love for you to understand that in our most natural state – no human would ever worry about this thing called appetite. It takes care of itself. It’s no different than breathing.

So with that in mind, here are the four easy-to-practice appetite regulation strategies:

Number 1 – Meal Timing

Appetite is powerfully influenced by the timing of our meals. If you’re the kind of person who’s skipping meals because you love to diet and you’re trying to minimize your food intake and calories, then there’s a good chance that you might be skipping breakfast and/or eating a small lunch. If you don’t get your caloric and nutritional needs met in the early part of the day, eventually, your body will scream for more food. In other words, your natural appetite will begin to fight back. This is a good thing. Your body needs nutrition to survive. The more you meal-skip with the intention to artificially limit your food intake, the more intense will be your hunger pangs at odd times later in the day. Eat regular meals for three weeks – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – and see what happens.

Number 2 – Macronutrient Balance

Appetite is powerfully influenced by macronutrient balance – the macronutrients being protein, fat, and carbohydrates. When we’re low in any one of these because we are following any kind of extreme diet that doesn’t work for the body – our appetite will scream at us in an effort to have its nutrient needs met. I’m specifically referring to diets that have very little fat, or very little protein, or very small amounts of carbohydrates. The body requires protein. The body requires healthy fat. The body will always call for some amount of carbohydrates. When we’re artificially limiting any one of these, you can bet all your money at Las Vegas that at some point, your body will demand food in a big way.

Number 3 – Food Amount

I wish I didn’t need to point out this obvious fact, but appetite is dramatically tied into the amount of food that you eat. Any time we artificially restrict the nutrition of the body because of our desire for weight loss or weight maintenance – appetite will once again talk back. The less food you eat – especially when we are restricting what the body truly needs – the slower our metabolism becomes because the body responds to starvation mode by hanging onto body fat and burning calories more slowly. And at the same time, it will demand via appetite – more food. This sounds counterintuitive, but for those who want to lose weight, we still need to eat a sustainable amount of food. It’s all about the right kind of food. Which leads us to our last strategy:

Number 4 – Food Quality

Food quality has a dramatic impact on appetite. In general, what I will say is this – and it’s true for the vast majority of human beings – the more nutrient deficient our food, the more powerful and intense will be our appetite. Many of the people with the most ravenous out-of-control appetites are those who exist on a diet of junk and processed foods. They think they have a willpower problem. The problem is, even if they’re eating a large amount of bread, chips, soda, candy, cake, cereals, and more – the lack of real essential nutrition in these foods is noticed by your brain and your gut physiology. The body brilliantly scans every meal for nutrition. When it doesn’t have what it needs, it simply says “hungry.” So if you want to regulate your appetite in an easy and natural way, eat real food. And you know what real food means – fresh, organically grown, locally grown, non-GMO, minimally processed, sometimes raw, sometimes cooked, nutrient dense, and produced with care and consciousness.

Eating real food rewards us with our real and natural appetite.

And our real and natural appetite will ultimately provide us with our truest and most natural weight.

I hope this was helpful. Thanks so much for your time and interest.