Cornerstone #3: Eating to satiety

The first two cornerstones have focused on what to eat and when to eat.  Now we focus on the obvious next question: How much to eat?  As I previously talked about our body has an incredible ability to regulate its energy intake all by itself.  Without conscience effort of what, and when to eat, humans should be able to regulate their energy balance on a completely unconscious level.  This process is regulated in many ways throughout the body, but I think one of the key ways to maintain this balance is to always eat to satiety, or fullness.

If we are going to talk about how fullness affects our energy balance, we should first discuss why we get hungry at all.  Our bodies get hungry because they have a need to fill.  This could either be just straight energy or it could be a variety of micronutrients that we are low in that stimulate us to want to eat. In fact, when obese women were given a multivitamin supplement they were able to significantly reduce their body weight (1).  While this study doesn’t tell us much about their satiety while on the intervention, I would assume that the reduction in weight was caused by them consuming less calories since they were on a more micronutrient rich diet.  If we are eating a whole food diet of all our favorite plants and animals we should be able to attain proper micronutrient status through food alone, and our bodies will naturally eat enough food to facilitate this. Another study shows that a whole food paleo diet is more satiating than a less nutrient dense, cereal based Mediterranean diet (2).

Other than consuming a proper amount of nutrients naturally through eating to fullness how else could this eating strategy benefit us?  Well one of the main hormones controlling energy regulation is leptin.  Leptin is a very unique hormone in that it is secreted by fat tissue, and it plays a big part in the long term control of energy balance.  Not only that, but it consistently found to be elevated in obese people (3).  This elevation of leptin can quickly turn in to leptin resistance, which is also found in most obese people.  Leptin resistance, similar to insulin resistance, is caused by the over activation of leptin receptors from the elevated level of leptin.  Once the body starts to sense there is too much leptin starts to decrease its receptor sites, to lower activation, but the body also continues to pump out high levels of leptin still.  This causes our bodies to be unresponsive to leptin, to act like it isn’t there, even when we have high levels of it throughout our bodies.  When researchers simulate this leptin resistance in mice they induce low levels of leptin through clever genetic engineering.  These low levels of levels of leptin lead to obesity and diabetes in the mice, similar to how leptin resistant humans become obese.  However, when leptin is injected into the mice they are rescued from these metabolic derangements, and lose the weight and improve many other metabolic parameters (4).

A whole food paleo diet is strongly associated with a decrease in leptin levels, by as much as 31% (2)!  Decreasing leptin like this through eating a satiating whole food diet will help reduce leptin resistance and maintain a healthy body weight.  Not only that but leptin resistance has also been shown to reduce the satiating effect of one of the gut hormones CCK (5).  CCK is extremely important for the satiation response, and helps to decrease food intake in response to food entering the gut.  So, eating a satiating diet can help to positively reinforce the very act of eating satiating diet by its effects on leptin.  This is a very powerful tool for any trying to maintain a healthy weight.

Eating to satiety should be a very important part of anyone’s eating strategy.  It can help to control leptin levels, and is an integral part of maintaining good micronutrient status naturally.  If we combine it with eating a whole food, nutrient rich diet, and eat within hunger signals we can naturally control our weight and never feel bad.  What do I mean by never feel bad?  Well when we combine these three eating strategies eating just becomes something that happens, we feel hungry, we eat good food we like, we get full and stop eating.  This just happens naturally and it takes away that ravenous starvation many people experience from other eating strategies and diets.  It also helps to decrease the value and attachment to food many experience on a traditional SAD style diet. 

Well, there you have it folks, my three cornerstones for healthy eating!  I think if you follow these three eating strategies you will have 90% of your bases covered in terms of nutrition.  There are still other things that need to be looked at, like sleep and exercise, but this is a very effective system for what you put into your body.  Since I have switched over this type of eating I have really enjoyed the freedom it gives me.  I am no longer tied down by meal times or needing to eat snacks ever.  I just eat really big, great tasting food whenever I feel like it. I urge you to try these eating strategies for a few weeks and see how they affect your health and well being during that period.  I guarantee you will find some benefit from it!