SANE Carrie (4 of 4): Get Control of Your Appetite Easily, Here’s How

CARRIE: Hello everyone and welcome to the Calorie Myth show, where I have a laughing Mr. Bailor joining me and my name’s Carrie Brown.

JONATHAN: Carrie, really that was like a gusto intro there, she was like boom – turbo Carrie, I like it because you are excited because this is another week where we get to put your life under the microscope, so that’s exciting.

CARRIE: Yes, four episodes, who knew?

JONATHAN: So, yes, folks if you haven’t listened to the previous three episodes please do so because they reflect upon an awesome experience I recently had which is Carrie and I have spent some time apart because we had quite the backlog of recordings and the holidays and many other things happened and then I saw Carrie, she burst on to the scene and it was like ba-ba-ba-boom – even SANEer Carrie, it was shocking and it was delightful and I was very proud of her, so we have been talking about the things she’s been doing to really amplify her sanity and this week we are going to cover the final component which are some observations she’s made and some research I’ve done around the A-word, appetite.

CARRIE: Appetite.

JONATHAN: Today’s episode is brought to you by the letter A – for appetite. So, Carrie, what’s been going on with your appetite?

CARRIE: Well, everyone that’s been listening to this show for any amount of time will know that my appetite is legendary –

JONATHAN: Legendary.

CARRIE: For the last whatever, how long we’ve been doing this, 20 months, I have been able to eat Jonathan under the table – and pretty much anyone else around me and then if you listen to the last three shows you’ll know that I’ve been having a metamorphosis and I have transformed myself into a much SANEr version in various ways and one of the things I noticed was that my appetite has absolutely tanked.

JONATHAN: And this has been — not necessarily like you’re – correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not like oh, my god, ah – catastrophic my appetite is tanking, it’s just a neutral perception like hm…I’m just not hungry.

CARRIE: Well, originally, first out of the gate I was like, I was ah – what is happening to me, I’m not hungry anymore, I can’t eat very much food anymore, what’s happening, am I sick, is this bad, oh my goodness this is terrible, where’s Jonathan, Jonathan help me I’m on email going Jonathan – ahhhh – and of course Jonathan came back with a typical Jonathan S-response –

JONATHAN: Which was what?

CARRIE: Which was – was eventually was don’t worry about it – that was the email response, but then when we got together and I asked the same question, should I be worried because I just can’t consume the amount of food that I used to and should I be worried about this and he said, no, you shouldn’t because here’s what’s happening. You have by all the other things you’re doing, you’ve switched on your fat burning hormones so you are now burning body fat and because of that you now don’t need to consume the same amount of food to provide that energy because your body’s going ooh – look there’s no fat there, I’ll just take that – so I now don’t need to consume as much food and so my appetite has automatically regulated itself so that I’m only eating the amount of food I need to supplement the fat burning that’s going on within my body.

JONATHAN: Amazingly well stated Carrie and this is a – if you have a conversation with a person who still thinks that obesity is a moral failing and that people just need to eat less and exercise more I would encourage you to tell them the following: Imagine you have a person – this is not hard to imagine in our culture today. Let’s call this person Tom. Tom has a 100 pounds of excess body fat, on his body, so Tom weighs 400 lbs. Tom’s ideal body weight is not 400 lbs. So, there’s lots of extra fat, 125 extra pounds of fat on his body. We assume that a pound of fat has about 3,500 calories in it. Tom, who’s got let’s say 125 pound of excess fat on his body, is carrying around a half a million calories in his body. There are already a half a million calories in his body. Why does Tom’s brain ever make him hungry? He is drowning in calories, yet his body is saying you don’t have enough and need to eat more. So, that is not Tom being weak, that is Tom having his brain tied behind his back because of inflammation and all the kinds of things we talked about here on the show and what Tom experienced or will experience and what Carrie experienced and what we can all experience is once we heal the system itself, heal our gut, heal our hormones and heal our brain, we can just supplement the calories we’re taking in through our lips from calories that are already stored on our hips and when we maximize the nutrition of the food we’re eating, this is why non-starchy vegetables are so important as well as nutrient and dense protein, we don’t have a bunch of stored vitamins and minerals on our bodies, so we have to get those through our diet, but when we eat concentrated sources of essential proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals,which is what exactly would a SANE lifestyle does, when it comes to getting calories, you’ve already got them so you experience what Carrie experienced and what the research literature calls a spontaneous reduction of caloric intake, meaning you are not hungry, you are not low on energy, your sex drive does not diminish, you’re not preoccupied with food, but often in clinical settings, individuals will spontaneously consume 1,000 fewer calories per day. So, they’re not trying, they don’t feel bad, they’re not cold, they’re not tired, they’re not hungry, on 1,000 fewer calories per day, how’s that possible, because they’re just supplementing what’s going through their lips with what’s coming off their hips.

CARRIE: And so if this has happened to anyone else or if this happens to you, you don’t need to worry about it. And the other – apart from the fact that I’ve been spontaneously eating a whole ton of calories less because I haven’t been hungry it’s also laser-focused me on what I do eat because if you have a very small appetite it’s critical that what you do eat is super SANE.

JONATHAN: Absolutely. Probably a year ago, if not more Carrie, we were recording and I remember saying that one of the things I was struggling with was because I consciously ate as many calories as I could historically because I wanted to be bigger and build muscle, I was trying to do the same thing, but on SANE foods and I was uncomfortable — I couldn’t, you can’t do it because these foods are so nutritionally dense and they’re so satisfying that that is why focusing on really eating SANE foods like, are grains going to kill you the second you eat them? No, but if you’re eating grains, you’re not eating non-starchy vegetables and if your body is going to get full extremely quickly because it is running properly, you’re now going to be nutritionally you’re going to have a nutrient deficiency, because you get full really fast and you just crowded out the vegetables off your plate.

CARRIE: Right. So, for me, yes, I’m eating way less calories, but that’s just happened by default and I have become – it has become critical to me in what I’m doing because I have such a small appetite now, is that I’m very, very careful about what I put in it.

JONATHAN: Yes, so you are more precise because you have essentially less – at bats – you’re eating less and again it’s not the point here folks — like this is a really critical distinction, so if you are listening to this while doing something else, like really dial in here for a second and obviously we talked about this in detail in the Calorie Myth book. There is an enormous, enormous difference from having a healthy body and such a SANE nutrient dense diet, that you automatically consume an appropriate number of calories that is completely different from taking a nutritionally deficient diet and a broken mind, gut and hormones and saying, I am going to consciously deprive you and be hungry, tired and sad as a result. They are complete, yes fewer calories are being consumed in both situations, but actually you could argue that even that’s not true because in the situation of starvation, you’re consuming fewer calories, but your body is responding by burning fewer calories. In the situation where you’re adapted to burning your own fat and you’re taking in sufficient nutrition, you take in fewer calories — you take in fewer calories because you are burning more of your own calories. So, instead of taking in fewer calories and causing it to drop the number of your own calories you’re burning, you are taking in fewer calories because you’re burning more of your own stored calories. Does that distinction make sense?

CARRIE: Uh-huh. So for me, it was the actual reduction in my appetite has been one of the best signs that my fat burning hormones had been switched on so that if you’re looking for signs to see that things are changing for you, your weight is not necessarily going down. If you’re looking for signs to know that you’re changing that was a huge one for me, but I actually feel different. I mean on so many levels since this has happened. So, switching on my fat burning hormones has just, it has proven to me from my own experience that your body, when it’s working correctly, the calories — everything happens automatically. Your body regulates these things automatically once you’ve turned on those fat burning hormones. Just like Jonathan says in his book, just like the research says, I have actually now experienced that in my own life.

JONATHAN: It makes sense from a historical perspective as well Carrie, because could you imagine a lot of us, a lot of us who may be have not gone completely SANE are probably familiar feeling hungry every two hours. Eat breakfast, hungry in two hours, hungry in two hours, hungry in two hours, could you imagine back before we had all this industrialization and food and we were just hunting and gathering. If we were hungry, like hungry, hungry, every two hours — we’re not supposed to be hungry all the time. Unless you’re very, very thin, because if you’re very, very thin, you don’t have any supplementary fat on your body, so this is often why now people who are thin — this is another brain exploding statements so hopefully it makes sense. People who are thin, are often going to be hungry frequently because they don’t have any other source of calories to burn. Whereas, if you are heavier and you are in the process of thinning out, you’re probably going to eat dramatically less because I’m sorry, you’re going to consume fewer calories. You’re probably going to be consuming an incredible volume of food because vegetables and proteins are very large and what you might find is that once you do achieve your ideal body weight, your appetite comes back a bit because you’ve achieved your ideal body weight and you now are not so much relying on stored body fat because your body has reached a new state of homeostasis and you’ve got a healthy appetite and you’ve got a healthy body composition, which is lovely.

CARRIE: So, a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about routine we noted that my routine is different to yours in that I’m eating at 7:00 a.m. and noon, and 6:00 p.m. that’s really helped me and Jonathan said that he just eats when he’s hungry and stops when he’s full and he might eat eight times a day – the difference between Jonathan and I in that regard is his appetite is much bigger now than mine is because I am supplementing with food whereas Jonathan doesn’t have any stored body fat. So, he needs to eat more so his appetite is naturally bigger than mine because he needs to get all his calories from food, whereas right now, because I’m heavily into fat burning mode, I have calories stored, I don’t need to eat as much food so I’m not, but I expect that when I reach my ideal body weight that my appetite is going to up again and then I may not have to be so routine about when I eat because my appetite has changed.

JONATHAN: And this is a very easy thing to misinterpret because we alwaystalk about eat more, exercise less, do it smarter and that is very true. The average American is not consuming the appropriate volume of food. The volume of food we need to consume when we eat things like vegetables and protein is dramatically higher. Between two and four pounds of food per day to heal our body, but once our body is healed that’s again when you get to the state Carrie is describing here and a great way to tell whether or not you’re in the safe and healthy mode of your body is healing itself and is therefore, burning stored body fat which causes your appetite to fall – if that’s happening – a couple of things. You won’t be hungry, which I know sounds obvious so you’re not hungry, you are not tired, you are not cold, you are not moody and your sex drive hasn’t gone away. That means this reduction of calories is caused by your brain appropriately because it is supplementing the calories you are eating with the calories you’re burning. Now, contrast that to the mainstream starvation approach. You eat less, but it results in hunger, crabbiness, you’re cold, your brain is foggy and often your sex drive goes away. So, it’s very easy to detect which of those things you’re doing. If you’re hungry, tired, crabby and cold, that is you trying to force your body to eat less, which will not work if you’re happy, energetic, virile, and firing on all cylinders, your body is in the process of healing itself, so keep on going.

CARRIE: And it feels amazing.

JONATHAN: And this whole people want to get amp’d up, the calorie this, the calorie that, whatever, again, Vitamin C, you don’t have to count Vitamin C in, Vitamin C out, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Riboflavin, what about water? None of these thing require conscious regulation so what you’ll find is that once you heal the system itself, it will regulate you automatically and of course if there’s an over-abundance of calories on your body you would expect that that automatic regulation would decrease the amount of calories you’re consuming, but again, not because you’re stupid and lazy and a glutton, but because it’s already got them and then once it burns them off it just re-regulates that back up – makes sense.

CARRIE: That has been exactly my experience and just to reiterate it really worried me at first. I was panicked there was something wrong with me because it was so sudden, so dramatic, so if you are one of those people that has found that has happened, don’t worry about it and still we all live the same way. Eat non-starchy vegetables first, then proteins, then your fats and just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full and don’t worry so much about the total volume of food you’re eating. Don’t make yourself uncomfortable.

JONATHAN: Speaking of appetite, Carrie, I wanted to bring up something that has really impacted me recently in terms of my own appetite and I’ve been digging into the research a little bit and is not in any of the calorie myths, it’s in none of my books, cause it’s relatively cutting edge and that is the impact that certain things that you would not necessarily think influence your appetite do influence your appetite, such as visual cues and things like that, so what I mean specifically here is and this is a very concrete example that all of our listeners can try. Scramble two eggs and eat them and then wait to you are about the same level of hunger, soft boil two eggs, and when I say soft boil I mean that when you crack and peel them, the yolk is liquidy and then eat those. I bet you, you will feel way more satisfied after eating two soft boiled eggs, than you do eating two scrambled eggs, despite the fact that in both cases you ate the exact same thing. Now –

CARRIE: Okay…curious?

JONATHAN: Curious, try it. Literally try it because here’s what’s going on. There’s been a lot of studies done where the perceived — like how satisfying we think something is going to be and how rich it tastes – influences our satiety signals in addition to the nutrition and calories in the food, so often times if you eat just scrambled eggs, you don’t so much like the yolk of an egg when you eat it in more of its raw liquid form, it tastes extremely decadent and rich – like it has this, if you’ve ever had eggs benedict or anything — custard that’s made with egg yolks, it’s got really decadent taste to it, but that decadent is sometimes hidden when you eat scrambled eggs, whereas when you eat a hard- boiled egg, that when you bite into the egg and the yolk is creamy and you taste it as a distinct flavor, it causes something different to happen in your brain that causes something different to happen with your satiety signals and because of that by making our food look more decadent or by enjoying things that we might think are decadent, but are actually relatively healthy for us — a great example is a baked or microwaved pork rind. Pork rinds are thought of as this very negative thing that we should never eat, whereas, in reality if you compare them to other snack foods they are way SANEr they are about 50 percent fat and 50 percent protein from where they get their calories from perspective and they taste extremely decadent and they almost seem like something you shouldn’t be eating, so what I found is if you eat a very small amount of microwave pork rinds and again the pork rinds should just be pork rinds, maybe with some salts, not with a bunch of other garbage, not fried, you’ll find that in so much a limited amount of calories, these pork rinds make you feel more satisfied then if you ate an entire bag of potato chips because just the way they taste, you can actually delineate the taste of the fat, it feels and tastes more decadent and therefore, it’s more satisfying. So, there are these interesting triggers in terms of how we perceive food and how the food actually tastes, that influences our appetite and satiety as well.

CARRIE: Language update. Pork scratchings if you’re in the UK.

JONATHAN: That sounds horrible. Pork scratchings, don’t do that, but (Inaudible 00:21:15)

CARRIE: Favorite pop food.

JONATHAN: And do be – like when I say pork rinds there’s of course, I forget the ones, I get mine on Amazon and you just stick them in the microwave, there’s no frying going on, there’s no industrial oils going on, the ingredients are pork rinds or whatever horrible term Carrie just used.

CARRIE: Scratchings.

JONATHAN: There you go.

CARRIE: Pork scratchings.

JONATHAN: So, and another more concrete example of this is if you had a roll which was made with butter actually in the recipe and if you had a roll which was maybe not made with butter, but people put butter on top of the roll, the roll with the butter on top if it would be more satiating, more satisfying because it would be perceived as more decadent because you can see the butter. So, doing, just – yeah, I don’t know —

CARRIE: We do not recommend eating rolls.

JONATHAN: Of course. If you’re going to use butter though maybe the take-away is like watch yourself put the butter on the food versus someone else doing it and you might actually experience a different type of satiety and satisfaction based on how decadent you perceive something to be or how decadent is consciously tastes.

CARRIE: Fascinating.

JONATHAN: Boom — so all kind of ways our appetite may change based on things other than like taking an appetite suppressant or willpower or these other non-sensible things which we are going to be much smarter than and embrace the awesomeness that is our bodies automatic regulation of things. Boom —

CARRIE: Appetite. Appetite is a great sign.

JONATHAN: And I love it and Carrie, this is the final episode which we are going to put you under the microscope so I’m going to give you the little golf clap here for your wonderful success and again I thank you for sharing that success with the listeners. I’m sure it’s helped them.

CARRIE: I hope – my only hope is that something from my experience will help them to get some better results for themselves.

JONATHAN: Love it. Folks, this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter, and live better. We’ll chat with you soon.

CARRIE: See ya.