No, not from this module (I hope!). But how well and how much you sleep can have a profound effect on your weight, body composition, and more. We'll look at the "why" of getting more and better sleep in another module. (Take my word for it: it matters.) For now, let's get started on the "how."
The first step is to make sure you have an environment conducive to a good night's sleep.
Make your bed comfortable. We spend a huge amount of time in bed. Making it be as comfortable as possible is kind of a no-brainer. Yet many of us sleep on cheap or worn-out (or both) mattresses, stacking some undersized pillows in an attempt to prop up our heads. Evaluate your mattress, pillows, and sheets. If they're not helping you sleep well, they're hindering you. Upgrading them should be a very high priority.
Be cool. Cooler temperatures have been shown to improve sleep quality for most adults. This might mean lowering the thermostat, opening a window, using a fan, or switching to a lighter blanket or cooler sheets. There are many options, and not one "right" temperature for everyone. Find your sweet spot.
Go dark. Turning the room or bedside light off is a good start, but other light sources can disrupt your sleep as well. LEDs and standby lights from electronic devices and clocks can cause just as much sleep disruption as a glowing phone or tablet screen. Turn them away, turn them off, cover them up--whatever works to keep you in the dark. Window shades and curtains can also be a big help.
Cut the distractions. Anything waking you up during the night? There's probably not much you can do about the kids. You should have a few more options with pets. But electronic devices that flash, beep, or vibrate? They gotta go. Bedtime is for sleep. Get over it. If you're in a noisy area, you might want to try a white noise generator or even ear plugs.
So your first activity will be to make sure you have a good sleep environment. You probably won't be able to get a new mattress, pillow, or sheets right away, so if you do need them, make a note of it in the Program comment. The other tips you should be able to control immediately. What are you waiting for?
Oh, and make sure you do an honest appraisal of your sleep environment before you check off this module.
Most people who are interested in changing the way they eat are motivated by fat loss. There's nothing wrong with this, and given the state of the country (and much of the world), it's an appropriate motivation.
Changing your diet (as opposed to going on a diet) to facilitate fat loss really comes down to just three simple things:
Reducing the amount you eat. (Quantity)
Reducing how often you eat. (Frequency)
Eating better foods. (Quality)
That's it! And while they're conceptually simple, that doesn't mean they're easy.
You don't have to do all three (although it usually helps). Some people even increase their meal frequency, but with a reduction in quantity and usually an increase in quality.
Let's take a closer look at each of these changes.
Quantity
This is usually what people think of first: just eat less! The concept of "portion control" goes here, along with eating until 80% full (Hara hachi bu). This can make a huge difference in your daily caloric intake, especially if you eat high-calorie foods. For example, having a half-pint (one cup) of ice cream instead of a pint can reduce your intake by 500 calories! Even cutting the olive oil on your salad by one tablespoon can save 120 calories.
Simply put, whenever you eat anything that's not a vegetable (because they have a low caloric density), eat less of it. And the higher the calorie count, the more impact you'll get from cutting back. This is conceptually simple, but not always so easy in practice!
Frequency
Some people are grazers and eat five, six, or more times per day. Others may eat only once or twice per day. What's better?
The answer...drum roll please...is whatever works best for you. Oh the disappointment!
Increased meal frequency does not promote greater weight loss in subjects who were prescribed an 8-week equi-energetic energy-restricted diet.
(Why do so many good health studies come out of Canada?) But that's just one study. An earlier one had concluded otherwise, but only based on blood lipid levels, not actual weight change.
any effects of meal pattern on the regulation of body weight are likely to be mediated through effects on the food intake side of the energy balance equation.
In other words, meal frequency doesn't matter.
Still, as usual, you can generally find some studies supporting whatever position you want to take, and some refuting it. But the preponderance of the evidence is definitely leaning toward meal frequency being unimportant--when caloric intake stays the same. Aye, there's the rub.
Some people like to eat a little at a time, some people like to eat large meals. Either can work. What doesn't work is to eat frequent high-calorie meals and snacks. Duh. And that's when frequency really matters: when it impacts your total calorie intake for the day.
There's a modality known as intermittent fasting (IF) that comes in multiple forms, one of which is eating in narrow "windows" of time. For example, eating only during an 8-hour period of the day. Turns out that this kind of eating usually leads to reduced daily caloric intake: people don't eat as much during that time as they would if eating less per meal but all day long. Other forms of IF include eating just once a day. I recall from a tour of Mt. Vernon in Virginia that George Washington ate just two meals a day. (Or maybe two meals and a snack.) And he was a 6' 2" manly man.
But anyway, the point is we can manipulate meal frequency to affect our daily caloric intake and thus our weight.
Oh, and about that "eat 5-6 small meals a day to keep your metabolism going" thing. Pfft. It doesn't even make intuitive sense. And in case you want more info, read this. Or just the "Quick Answer":
There may be benefits to manipulating meal frequency and eating the same amount of food more often or less often, but metabolic rate is not one of them. There is no evidence to support the idea that multiple meals increases metabolic rate.
And for some information on meal frequency's (non-)effect on body composition, see this:
Here, "quality" refers to a food's quality as related to fat-loss. So broccoli would be higher quality than ice cream, but diet pop would also be higher quality than regular. Few people would contend that diet pop is a high quality food, but when it comes to fat loss, it will be higher quality than regular pop but lower quality than broccoli.
Food choices aren't black and white. We grade on a curve.
Looking at the red curve, we see most servings are of unhealthy foods with few, if any, being healthy. Shifting the curve to the right (the green curve) doesn't mean eating only healthy foods; it just means increasing the quality of at least some of the foods consumed during the day. Shifting the curve towards healthy, even just a little at a time, can make a big difference in the quality of your diet. And that can help with fat loss.
The other concept that fits in nicely here is substitutions. These don't have to be dramatic, like substituting asparagus for potato chips. Indeed, those kinds of substitutions are likely to fail because the asparagus won't satisfy the same cravings as potato chips: it's not salty or crispy or fatty. (Salted celery might be a better option here.) In the same way, fruit can be a good substitute for candy because of the sweetness. It's usually best to look for substitutions that make a small move on the quality curve, stabilize there, then move again when you're ready.
You might be wondering where "organic" foods fit in here, since they are generally deemed to be higher quality than conventional. But for purposes of this discussion, it doesn't matter because organic food is no better than conventional for fat loss purposes.
And there you have them: the three keys to fat-loss nutrition. You'll be seeing references to these as we go along. There might even be a quiz!
In order to develop your "80% full" habit, we suggested starting with half your normal portion and seeing how you felt after that. This (along with plate size) is an example of "portion control": eating smaller quantities of foods, rather than different foods. (One thing at a time.) Of course, this is easy to say but not always so easy to do. So in this module, we'll look at a couple of ways you can develop this important habit.
We already mentioned using a smaller plate size. While this may seem intuitive, it also has a name: the Delboeuf illusion, named for the Belgian scientist who discovered it way back in 1865. You've probably seen this one before:
Which black dot is bigger? The answer, of course, is neither: they are both the same size. The size of the outer circle makes the dot on the right look bigger. In the same way, an equal portion of food looks smaller on a big plate.
Researchers also discovered that plate color matters. Food that blends in with the plate looks like less; it's better to use a contrasting color. (Tablecloth color can work, too.) Check out the first video here:
So plate size and color can help you reduce your starting portion size. Interestingly, the researchers found that even when the subjects knew these facts, they still routinely underestimated the food on their plate. So it's better to actually make the change, if you're using big or colorful plates.
Another tip is to not keep refills handy. In fact, make it an effort to get more food. For example, if you're having a bowl of cereal, put the box away before eating. Don't make it easy to just pour more into the bowl. Or if you're having a large chicken breast that's probably too big, don't start eating it and expect to stop when full. Instead, cut it down to size and put the remainder away before you start eating. If you really need the extra food, you can still get it; just don't make it too easy!
Remember that it can take 15-20 meals to reset the muscle memory of the stomach to get used to less food. You'll get there by the end of this Blitz, so be patient and keep checking it off!
In Okinawa, they practice a Confucian teaching called hara hachi bu, roughly translated to "eat until you are eight parts (out of ten) full."
Okinawa is also known for its disproportionate number of people older than dirt (or at least over 100 years). And a tendency towards non-obesity. Is their longevity and general health related to hara hachi bu? No one knows for sure. But let's take a closer look at it anyway.
What It Means
When the food you eat enters your stomach, its internal stretch receptors help relay a message to your brain to tell it you’re full. But it's not an instant message; it can take 15-20 minutes to arrive. This means that if you eat until you’re (100%) full, you will wind up being over-full at each meal. And because your stomach stretches every time you do this, you’ll gradually have to eat more and more to feel satisfied.
While it's normal for the stomach to expand after eating and shrink back down as it empties its contents into the intestines, there is evidence that eating too much can lead to a stretched-out stomach and eating less can cause its capacity to shrink. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22real.html) In other words, constantly overeating (which is what eating quickly until full means) will increase the stomach's capacity, requiring more food to make it feel full.
Also, in 2007 a Cornell University study investigated "whether people who use internal cues of satiation when eating a meal are likely to weigh less than people who instead rely on external cues." An "internal cue" would be feeling full, while an "external cue" would be something like an empty plate. The study found that: "Normal-weight people indicated that they were more likely to be influenced by internal cues of meal cessation, while overweight people indicated that they were more influenced by external cues."
How It's Done
So how do we hit the 80% mark? There's no magic signal that we're at 80% but once we begin to feel any stomach pressure that's a really good hint. Beyond that, there are some things we can do to make it so. We'll be hitting on more of them later in the Blitz. Here are the ones we'll be starting with:
Slow down. This is #1 on the list for a reason.
Chew your food. This will help you slow down. It could be 1.5.
Eat half of what you normally eat and then check how you feel. More on this later, but give it a go now.
If you're using big plates, then use smaller plates. If not, be smug.
Keep water drinking to a minimum during meals to allow your gastric juices to be potent.
That's it! For now, anyway.
When you first start following hara hachi bu, you might feel a bit uncomfortable getting up from the table before you feel full. However, you may notice that about 20 minutes after the meal is over you suddenly do feel full.
It can take 15-20 meals to reset the muscle memory of the stomach to get used to less food. Trust that it will happen and anata ga shiawase ni narimasu*.
Be seeing you.
-gary
* "you will be happy" in Japanese, if Google Translate is to be trusted.
One of the most important values we measure using nutrition tracking programs is calories.
In physics, a calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat one gram of water one degree Celsius (about 4.2 joules). The “dietary calorie” (or “large” or “food” calorie) is 1000 times that amount, or the amount of energy needed to heat one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. (Technically, the calorie is written with the lowercase “c” while the dietary Calorie is written with the uppercase “C.” On food labels from some metric system countries, calories are listed as “kcals.”
Calories are indeed a measure of energy, and without enough of them we starve. Even a couch potato burns calories all day as the body performs basic functions like pumping blood, digesting food, regulating temperature, and thinking about getting off the darn couch. This minimum caloric requirement is your “basal metabolic rate” (or BMR) and in a typical five-foot five-inch, 140 pound, 30-year old female is estimated to be about 1400 calories per day.
True BMR is notoriously hard to measure due to all the possible variables (e.g., movement, temperature, etc.), so it’s usually just estimated using a simple calculation based on weight, height, age, and gender. (You can find lots of thesecalculators online.)
Daily activity adds to that, of course. The Harris-Benedict equation attempts to estimate caloric needs based on the BMR and activity level from sedentary to extremely active. This, or some variation of it, is how tracking programs estimate the number of calories you should be consuming to reach your weight loss (or gain) goals.
But it's just that: an estimate. The human body is extremely complex and the calories we burn can vary significantly from day to day, even those associated with the BMR (as opposed to physical activity).
Nonetheless, the conventional approach is to recommend cutting calories consumed by a fixed amount in order to create an "energy deficit" so the body burns more calories than it takes in and thus has to use itself for fuel. (This approach usually assumes this will be fat, but it doesn't have to be and often is not.)
In any case, calories matter and an energy deficit is important. So knowing how many calories are in the foods we eat is very useful. This will be one of the key takeaways from nutritional tracking. You might be surprised how many calories your diet provides from unexpected sources! This is one of the reasons it's so important to be thorough and accurate in your reporting.
For most people, counting calories is not a successful long-term strategy. But knowing how many you're consuming from your regular diet can be very helpful in reaching your goals.
If you read the post in The StrongFast Planet called Putting the Kibosh on Calorie Counting you know that we're not fans of all the measuring and counting that goes into keeping careful and continued track of what you eat. But...
It is useful to do this occasionally to get a clear picture of your diet. (And we use the word as intended; i.e., the usual food and drinks consumed by a person or animal. We all have a diet, but are hopefully not on a diet.) In particular we're interested in the calories and nutrient profiles of the foods we consume. We'll look at calories and nutrients in more detail in a future module. For now, we just want to learn how to track them.
Don't worry: this won't be an ongoing activity. It will only be for a few days, and then periodically to check on how things have changed.
The first step is to find a tool for tracking what you eat in detail. Since you're obviously online (assuming no one printed this out for you to read), the best options are online tracking tools, and there are lots of them! A couple we like are:
These, and many like them, are free and have smartphone apps as well. (Note that we don't care about any activity tracking on these sites; only food.) Have another you like? Post a Blitz comment about it to let us all know!
Make sure the tool you choose can remember sets of foods (better known as "meals") to make entering faster and easier once you get them set up. Because we tend to eat a lot of the same meals.
The second step will be to actually record what you eat. When this is called for in the Blitz, you'll need to record everything you eat during the day. It's best if you can record a meal or snack shortly after you complete it, as our memories for these things tends to be suspect.
You should also measure foods when the amount is not fixed (e.g., one medium apple). This includes small quantities, such as any creamer you put in your coffee. (You might be surprised how much you're putting in.) You don't have to measure every time; after measuring once, just be consistent in using that amount.
It's particularly important to measure high-fat foods like olive oil, butter, and coconut oil...not because fat is bad, but because it has more calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein so a small difference in quantity can make a meaningful difference in calories.
Also keep in mind that a "serving" of a food is not always what you might think it is. For example, a bowl of cereal is probably not one serving as defined on the nutrition label. (This is also an opportunity to find out how big your bowls are!)
Be as complete and accurate as possible with your entries. This is important stuff! You may find that calories are piling in where you didn't expect, and that even your healthy meals have more calories than you might have thought. Again, we won't be doing this all the time, or even a lot, so when we do it, do it well.
So far we've had The Introduction and The Jab. Now it's on to the next move in The Walking Wapping Warm-up: the cross. This is the straight punch with the rear hand. It comes across your body (get it?). For most people it's also the hardest punch, as in having the hardest impact. But this is just a warm-up, so that's not important. What is important is getting the mechanics right to get more of your body involved while staying efficient.
No, not from this module (I hope!). But how well and how much you sleep can have a profound effect on your weight, body composition, and more. We'll look at the "why" of getting more and better sleep in another module. (Take my word for it: it matters.) For now, let's get started on the "how."
