80 percent rule

80 percent rule

I just can’t get behind long-term calorie counting. It’s not a sustain-

able nutrition solution. And counting calories will never teach you

to pay attention to fullness and hunger signs. I have seen thousands

of people freed from counting calories when they instead shift

their focus to understanding fullness and portion sizes.

There is nothing worse than being on a specific regime of

limited calories and knowing that you are going to be hungry. Not

only is this poor practice and sometimes unhealthy, but this can

sometimes lead to weight gain due to the body holding on to fat as

a way of survival. I find the people who have the most success with

nutrition are the ones who take it upon themselves to be educated

and understand what fullness and hunger really feel like.

The most straightforward rule in nutrition if you are trying to

lose weight is to eat until you are 80 percent full. This is a foreign

concept to most of us, but if you are willing to give it a try, you’ll

see it’s easy, it feels good, and you don’t have to starve yourself.

Eating to 80 percent is eating until you feel satisfied, not full. You

should feel like you can get up and walk away.

Start by slowing down your eating. Two hormones control

hunger and fullness. When you eat too fast, the hormone that

makes you feel full, leptin, doesn’t signal that you are full until

it’s too late, and you already overate and feel stuffed. Likewise,

when you eat too fast, the hormone that makes you feel hungry,

ghrelin, doesn’t have time to shut off. Slow it down, chew your

food, set the fork down between bites. Once you know what your

body feels like to be 80 percent full, you can adjust portion sizes

accordingly.

See you in the gym,

Aaron Leventhal CSCS, PN1, ACSM- Cancer Specialist