Hint – this is not a good idea:

(part 1 of this article)(part 2)(part 3)(part 4)(part 5)

10. Under-Eating

For obvious reasons, your appetite will increase if you don’t eat enough calories. Your body needs what it needs and it will fight for it. Eating enough food that’s nutritious will help you to control your appetite and therefore, eat less of the foods that are less nutritious. Under-eating will make you crave foods that are high in sugar and fat – the foods that your body knows will give you the most energy the most quickly.

Under-eating causes other issues such as depression, loss of concentration, sex hormone disfunction, bone degeneration, hair loss, and sleep issues. Any one of these issues can lead to excess stress, which also has an effect on appetite control.

11. Over-Eating

Overeating takes you up the blood sugar roller coaster and when your body brings you back down, it will make you rabid for more food. This is especially true if you’re eating a lot of unhealthy foods containing sugars, unhealthy fats, and refined grains.

It’s easy to test this idea yourself. On the first day, eat a modest breakfast of three eggs and a grapefruit. On the second, eat 2000 calories worth of cereal or pancakes. Yes, the type of food you eat will influence the experiment (more on that later), but so will the amount.

12. Consuming High Fructose Corn Syrup

Numerous studies have linked HFCS with inability to control appetite and with increased caloric intake.

Sadly, HFCS seems to have effects on top of its appetite stimulating properties. This Princeton research team was able to show that rats who were given HFCS gained a lot more weight than rats who were given straight table sugar. In a second experiment, it was shown that many rats who were fed HFCS for a period of six months developed metabolic syndrome (a precursory disorder to type-2 diabetes) and gained 48% more weight than those given standard rat chow.

13. Consuming Hydrogenated and Partially Hydrogenated Oils

These oils contain very little of the essential fatty acids that your body needs to survive and produce hormones. That means you have to consume a lot more of them to get these fatty acids. When you aren’t eating enough of them, your body will try to get you to consume more by creating cravings for fatty foods.

On the flip side, consuming healthy fats from sources such as avocado, olive oil, egg yolks, and fish will help you to control your appetite.

Hydrogenated oils have also been linked to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, weight gain, liver disease, and a lot of other health issues.

Vegetable oil is the main source of hydrogenated oil in our diets. However, lots of other foods contain hydrogenated and/or partially hydrogenated oils: Cake mixes, pancake mixes, most peanut butters, microwave popcorn, frostings, margarine, shortening, etc. You may be shocked if you start looking at food labels for bad oils.

14. Skipping Breakfast

A research team from Imperial College London studied the effects of skipping breakfast on appetite for low and high calorie foods. The team showed with functional MRI scans that the brain’s reward center is significantly more active when seeing pictures of high calorie foods, after skipping breakfast. The team subsequently showed that the same scans performed 90 minutes after eating breakfast did not show a significant difference in the activity of the brain’s reward center.

Skipping breakfast can also increase the body’s insulin response when you do eat, increasing fat storage and weight gain. This study showed that breakfast skippers end up with higher amounts of belly fat. This study showed the same and also showed that participants who skipped breakfast had higher fasting levels of insulin, total cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol than participants who ate breakfast. The Mayo Clinic agrees. Yikes.

15. Eating a Grain-Based Breakfast

One of my biggest breakthroughs in gaining control of my body was ditching the grain-based breakfast. I ate cereal, pancakes, and toast for breakfast for years. When I tried to lose weight I would switch to healthier, whole grain versions of the same foods. Unfortunately, my appetite was always out of control, even after switching to the whole grain versions.

I was really resistant to the idea that eating grains for breakfast was contributing to my appetite control issues. Eventually I was willing to try out eating different foods for breakfast. I was shocked at the difference.

Science backs this up. This study shows that our bodies react negatively to a high carbohydrate breakfast:

“The first meal you have appears to program your metabolism for the rest of the day,” said study senior author Martin Young, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine in the UAB Division of Cardiovascular Disease. “This study suggests that if you ate a carbohydrate-rich breakfast it would promote carbohydrate utilization throughout the rest of the day, whereas, if you have a fat-rich breakfast, you have metabolic plasticity to transfer your energy utilization between carbohydrate and fat.”

When you aren’t able to transfer your energy use between carbs and fats, your body will make you crave carbs. If your body can use either carbs or fats as fuel, it can more easily burn YOUR fat as fuel. This has a tremendous impact on your cravings for bad foods.

According to the study, mice fed a high-carbohydrate diet also gained weight and developed glucose intolerance and had other markers of metabolic syndrome.

This study showed that eating eggs for breakfast instead of bagels (grain) results in significantly more weight loss.

My solution? Three eggs, some protein (lean meat such at 96% lean ground beef or chicken breast), and water for breakfast. Sometimes I’ll add half a grapefruit (without sugar) or some strawberries. The results are honestly incredible.

16. Eating a High Sugar Breakfast

Physiologically, your body won’t notice much difference between high-grain and high-sugar breakfasts. Both of these meals will end up as glucose in the blood stream so you can expect similar effects from the two lifestyle choices.

17. Eating a High Fat, High Sugar Breakfast

In one study, the participants were given a high sugar, high fat snack food (think doughnuts) every morning for five consecutive days. The study found that the participants of the study craved sweet snacks at that time of day for days afterward.

Our bodies and minds adapt quickly to stimuli and mini-addictions and full blown addictions can happen surprisingly fast.

This study is really interesting because it shows the psychological affects of foods. In these participants, an actual bad habit was established. Mental cravings were created on top of physiological ones.

(part 1 of this article)(part 2)(part 3)(part 4)(part 5)

Related posts:

1. 101 Lifestyle Choices That Make You Crave Bad Food (part 4)
2. 101 Lifestyle Choices That Make You Crave Bad Food (part 5)
3. 101 Lifestyle Choices That Make You Crave Bad Food (part 3)
4. 101 Lifestyle Choices That Make You Crave Bad Food
5. How To Make Healthy Meal Plans To Lose Weight

Tags: bad food, diet, HFCS, high carbohydrate diets, hydrogenated oils