For all you MGTOWs wanting to lose fat.

How do you reduce your appetite? If you’re new to intermittent fasting, ketogenic diets or just becoming healthier and loosing weight, it’s important to understand how to control and deal with changes in your appetite. There’s no escaping at least some discomfort when you change your habits but it doesn’t have to be a painful process.

Be patient

The first method to consider is simply giving your body time to adjust. No further explanation is needed, just don’t expect appetite reduction to naturally adjust over night.

Peptide YY (PYY)

Wide empirical evidence has long suggested that drinking coffee reduces your appetite; and this isn’t wrong. An interesting study (cited below) shows us that PYY (the hormone responsible for hunger reduction when increased) increases with coffee consumption - but even more with decaffeinated coffee. You can use this to your advantage to extend a fasting window or just in general when you want to avoid splurging out on sweets and treats.

Distracted eating

Many of us watch television, watch videos, or even play computer games while we eat. This is called distracted eating. It’s a bit idea, simply because we are surrounding ourselves with so many stimuli, eating should be done by itself. When you eat, just eat. When you read, just read, etc…Train yourself to be mindful and attentive to the task you’re doing, eating is no exception to this. Also with this non-distracts eating make sure to eat SLOW, eating slow is important to controlling 1. our temperance and self-control and 2. to allow the brief moments for your stomach to signal to your brain that you are full.

Eating versus drinking calories

Another point is to eat your calories. A simple, example is the calorie from an orange (whole fruit) versus orange juice. Both are symbolic of being “healthy” but the orange juice is made from 5,10,15 oranges (which are very difficult to eat on their own because of the fibre content). Even though orange juice may be “healthy” the abundant amount of calories can still cause weight gain. So eat, but don’t drink your calories (as a rule of thumb).

Not as relevant for everyday Keto.

What are you compensating for?

The most important idea is that we must be critically self-aware of the reason WHY we are hungry in the first place. Are you hungry because you are physiologically hungry or are you “hungry” in order to compensate for being anxious, or stressed, or worried? Practice mindfulness through meditative practices to understand the “space between stimulus and response”. This is why fasting is so powerful psychologically because it forces you to confront what is “creating hunger” rather than giving you the opportunity to compensate for X variable through stimulating yourself with food.

Do you think there are other variables more important? I see the last point as the foundation and the others simply as tools to supplement this mindset.

Here's the video


Further reading:

Eating attentively - The effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23446890

Coffee, hunger, and peptide YY

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23204152