Stop Drinking Calories

Calories are easy enough to get – the hard thing is getting that “full” feeling in your stomach.

Your feeling of hunger is a combination of several factors. At low levels of blood sugar drops and you feel tired, unfocused and may even feel a desperate urge for food – it is at this point that the body really signals: “Give me food NOW”. But other factors contribute too – and at a much earlier stage.

Have you noticed that chewing gum makes you hungry? When you chew, your mouth produces saliva and it also triggers enzyme production in the stomach. (The saliva also helps clean your teeth and tongue, reducing bad breath – but that is different story). When these processes are triggered in the body, our brain associates the feeling with hunger.

The stomach itself measures how much food you take in. I guess every real man has felt the effects of 200-500 gram of red meat in the stomach. That stuff really makes you feel full. But also notice that the TIME you take to eat affects how full you get, if you eat fast, you can eat more than if you eat slow.

These body systems have probably evolved over millions of years to be a reliable indictor of hunger in a hunter gatherer society where the main diet is meat, berries, nuts and water.

The problem: Have you tried comparing 250g portion of lean, Fillet Steak with 100g of Orange juice? If not, here it is:

• Fillet Steak (a good serving): 1800-2000kJ
• Orange Juice (About a glass): 360 kJ

Whau!.. Good argument for being a vegetarian you would think, at least to loose weight? But think about this again. How full do you feel after 1 glass of orange juice? How about 6 glasses? And if you work out – the matter gets worse. You need to proteins, they either burn or become muscle mass (good for you).

Now, have a look at a typical 1L of orange juice. Typically, in a good juice, around 20 oranges are used to make it. How would you compare eating 20 oranges with drinking 1L of juice? Personally, I can easily drink 1L of juice over a few hours, but I would be hard pressed to peel and eat 20 oranges.

Don’t even get me started on soft drinks like Coke (450 KJ) or beer (Comparable to orange juice – unless you drink Guinness, which has about twice the calories).

Drinking calories is simply a bad way to control yout hunger. You are giving your body the wrong signals. Nature did not predict soft drinks or pasteurized, easily available fruit juice.

The solution: Stop drinking calories! Always keep fresh water handy. An air tight container in the fridge, bottles of sparkling water and if you live near a large city: Fresh water that does not taste like chlorine. Remember, calories you drink only makes you feel full very shortly. Get a protein bar if you need that emergency sugar kick.

Low fat milk (especially with protein powder after a training session) is the possible exception. Low fat milk today have almost zero calories from fat and typically contain a few gram of protein for every serving. Not too bad. Also, for some reason, milk makes you feel full (have you ever tried drinking one liter really fast?).

I have tried this experiment the last week, and it works very well for me. I find it easier to control my hungers and I feel more full when I DO take in calories.