Diet trends now outnumber actual atoms in the universe as everyone in the developed world looks at their belly and goes “oh dear god, what fresh nightmare is this?”
And now science (science!) has the definitive answer as to how you can slim down, and what’s more it’s wonderfully simple.
Also, it’s largely the exact same advice it’s always given.
The short answer is this: you eat too much, and if you eat less you’ll lose weight. Simple!
The problem is knowing exactly what you eat, because most meals are loads bigger than you actually need.
The problem is that evolution trained us to eat when food was available, the idea being that a bit extra when it was on offer would help us get through the bits where there wasn’t enough. And now that you live in a time when food is plentiful – like, to a ridiculous degree – your body doesn’t automatically go “nah, you’re good” when you absorb adequate sustenance.
This was the finding of a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition, with the catchy title “A single day of mixed-macronutrient overfeeding does not elicit compensatory appetite or energy intake responses but exaggerates postprandial lipemia during the next day in healthy young men“. Which is also a Fiona Apple album title.
Everyone loves crap jokes which rely on 90s music references, right?
The other interesting finding was that intense exercise also reduces food cravings, which is somewhat counterintuitive.
There’s been a bit of an assumption that exercise makes us hungrier – after all, you’re using more energy so you’d think you’d want to top the tank up – and that seems true of moderate exercise but not when you totally smash it to a pec-kissing degree.
MAKE OUT WITH YOURSELF, HAIRCUT.
So yes: as long as you do hardcore exercise and keep an accurate assessment of how much you’re shovelling down your gullet and actively say “nope, that’s going to have to do me” then you can shed those extra kilograms of your. Simple, huh?
Yeah. Anyway, who fancies some cake?