Vacation Diet : More food & hunger

[Guest guest]

Late Saturday I returned from a week-long

driving-based vacation during which I cast my dietary

fate to what the road would yield. Interestingly I had

to eat more and yet found myself getting extremely

hungry. I also put on at least three pounds and my

pants fit a little tighter. Normally I eat two meals a

day and never experience much in the way of hunger,

but during the trip I experienced ravenous " bottomless

pit " hunger at times per day even as I was eating more

and putting on weight! I was not doing more physical

activity than normal, indeed more often than not I was

doing less physical activity than normal.

During the trip I was usually able to find reasonably

healthy vegetarian meals (by common standards), but my

road diet included a lot of bad things like home fries

and " wheat bread " (ie, fake whole wheat or just plan

white bread) and did not include the large amounts of

nutrient-dense vegetables found in my regular diet. I

also didn't bring along my protein powder, and high

protein reduces hunger. [*] It's likely that omitting

supplemental protein was the single biggest factor

accounting for my brief foray into a world of more

eating, more weight, and ironically more hunger.

The experience was valuable in that it highlights how

successful my normal diet is for minimizing both

calories and hunger and how a more common diet leads

to a vicious cycle of more hunger -> more eating ->

more weight. This experience also suggests that my

normal low hunger is a function of the structure of my

diet more than a general physiological adaptation to

lower calorie intake. Upon my return home I fit

immediately back into my normal diet, ie, my food

intake and hunger both dropped to their normal lower

levels. It's interesting how making changes can serve

to highlight the nature of things.

~Ian

http://IanGoddard.net

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[*]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=pubmed & dopt=Abstra\

ct & list_uids=15950318

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