Appetite

Sceletium Tortuosum Being Studied for Appetite Suppression

A new plant, which incidentally I talked about on this blog a few years ago, and I also incidentally found it online and bought some to try, is now being seriously studied as a new natural appetite suppressant and mood booster called sceletium tortuosum.

This natural plant which is found in Africa and used by the San bush people, just like the other infamous natural appetite suppressant Hoodia Gordonii, has been used by the san people for it’s mood boosting and appetite and thirst satisfying qualities for years. They would chew on the plant to get the natural organisms and essence of the plant in their blood stream, and apparently experienced a nice “buzz” and mood boost, and well as a noticeable reduction in their appetite.

That could be a billion dollar marketing idea, for sure, if it works like they say it might. I actually tried a powdered capsule of this sceletium tortuosum years ago when I read an obscure article about it online and I was trying to lose some weight but couldn’t seem to get my appetite under control. It sounded perfect since it may boost mood along with decreasing the appetite. Mood boosts are something we could all use most of the time!  So I tried it.

I did notice a mild suppression of my appetite, but nothing to write home about in my humble opinion. I don’t know if the formula I bought just wasn’t strong enough, but it wasn’t the extreme appetite suppression I was looking for.  I hate the ones with stimulants in them, so this sounded like the perfect idea. Alas, there is probably no magic bullet, but there are definitely some that can help you get through those times when your appetite seems to be on constant raging high.

I’m anxious to see if this is marketed as a product with greater strength, as I have a feeling the one I ordered wasn’t totally on the up and up. When I got the capsules, they were all powdery and they looked as if they’d been sitting forever on a shelf, so I wasn’t sure I was getting them fresh, which could make all the difference in the world since the people who’ve been using them for appetite suppression for years chewed on the raw, fresh leaves of the plant for the therapeutic ways to take effect.

We’ll see, I looked online and only really found one brand offering them thus far. I’m waiting to see what further studies come out and more importantly, if they actually put a good product out there.

Is Portion Control the Hardest Part of Dieting?

In my opinion, the absolute toughest part of dieting for me is the portion control aspect. If I could just get that one down, I’d probably never have so many fluctuations between that 5-10 pound range that I do.

Actually, I dare say that portion control is the most challenging part of dieting for just about everybody.  I think that’s why diets that promise you can eat all you want are so popular, like the Atkins diet which doesn’t focus so much on portion control, but rather the amount of carbs you are taking in at each meal.

I still think though, that weight loss is best achieved by using portion control in conjunction with whatever type of diet you choose – low carb, high carb but low fat, or something like the Zone diet (which is portion controlled, but uses specific combinations of food to rev up your fat burning potential).

We have a lot at our disposal as far as tools to enforce portion control in our meals, but it’s not always easy to actually execute it because you’re often still hungry after consuming a “portion controlled” meal.

It’s really how we’ve become programmed to eat because we were brought up on the super size mentality many times. Some of us are lucky and have a built in “stop” button when we’re full, but most of us have that other button that tells us we’re still hungry when we’re really not needing the extra food.

Natural appetite suppressants can certainly help, but it also take discipline to do it at first, and shrink that stomach so you become accustomed to eating less.  There are even special plates and bowls you can buy that do the portioning for you that have helped a lot of people do it without just eyeballing it.

There are also a lot of portion controlled foods available, like 100 calorie snack packs and prepackaged meals that are a preset amount of calories that can help you start off on the right foot when trying to control portions for the first time, or re-learning it.

I’ve found that for me, the initial first week is the toughest, when I’m trying to reform my portion control and make sure I’m only eating what I have to in order to be “full” and at least satisfied til my next meal.  A lot of it is the idea that we eat as a way to pleasure, instead of eating to “live”.  If you can get over that idea and only eat what you need, then your body will follow and reduce it’s fat content and all that excess baggage it’s been carrying around in response!

Do We Tend to Eat Lighter in the Summer?

I don’t know about you, but there are definitely changes in my appetite and the foods that I crave when summer time comes around. Especially if it’s a summer that’s a real scorcher like this one (who isn’t scorching now, seems like everyone is experiencing a hot one).

It is true that we tend to change up what kinds of foods we crave and like to eat in the summer time. I just read an interesting article that pork is in higher demand in the summer time because a lot of families like to eat lighter and eat BLT’s for dinner. Now, I don’t know if I’d consider a BLT to be light on the calories, but it certainly is lighter fare as opposed to traditional winter fare like chili and hearty soups and meat dishes.

Also, foods like fruits and veggie skyrocket in demand in the summer. it’s true that part of the reason is that they are more abundant and in season, but also it’s a showing of the shift in change of appetite and cravings.  I know I myself tend to crave things that are lighter. Like I don’t really want heavy ice cream, instead, something like a slushy or a frozen yogurt berry sundae sounds great.

Even my sweets cravings are lighter. In the winter I typically would crave chocolate and rich desserts all time like cookies and cakes, but in the summer, I’m all about hard candys and fruity flavored candies.  It’s definitely true that your body sort of turns off the same heavy appetite for rich foods and instead instinctively wants foods that will provide instant energy instead of bog you down for hours digesting and processing it.

My craving for carbohydrates even declines in the summer time. While I crave things like mashed potatoes and heavy pastas in creamy sauces in the winter, I crave things like light grilled and marinated meats, accompanied by a nice cool salad and some veggies. It really is like your body turns on it’s more “naturally healthy appetite” during the times when your body needs to be it’s most active and alert and ready for action.

Appetite Suppressing Foods

We tend to focus so much on natural appetite suppressing supplements and dietary aids to help us lower our ravenous appetites, that we don’t really stop too much to think about what foods we can be eating that naturally suppress hunger on their own, or at least suppress your urge to eat more junk.

There are in fact foods that do that very well, and that’s why people who have diets high in foods like this tend to maintain a slimmer physique more easily, while those that load up on appetite fueling foods like chips, pretzels, refined sweets and carbohydrates tend to be heavier and be hungrier a lot of the time, for the wrong kinds of foods.

One of the surprise foods that is on the “good” list in helping to maintain a lower appetite are actually strawberries, which happen to be perfectly in season right now and available on supermarket stores shelves pretty much everywhere.  However, you may want to only purchase organic when it comes to strawberries.

More and more evidence is pointing to strawberries as being major toxin carriers when they are not grown organically, because they are not something that you peel to eat, you just pop the whole thing in your mouth. Sure, you can wash them off for extra precaution to get the pesticides and chemicals used to grow them non organically off, but they still have them to some degree, so it’s best to just be safe and buy organic if you can.

New evidence is showing that strawberries may help control your appetite by helping to regulate your blood sugar. Another food that helps do this is cinnamon, and hot peppers and cayenne pepper.  I have found that adding fresh, raw walnuts to my breakfast in the morning not only adds nutritious protein and omega 3 fatty acids, but the fiber in them as well as they healthy fats found in them helps control my hunger much longer into the morning and early noon than without them.

Almonds are a great food to snack on to keep hunger at bay. Also eating light soups made exclusively with broth and veggies with your meals, and eating a large salad with light dressing or a bit of olive oil and lemon juice and garlic are a great way to help ensure your appetite is gone for a long time.  I know that there is some debate on this one, but I find that a banana holds me over for a long time. Bananas are very filling, and they actually are one of the easiest and most portable forms of fast nutrition out there that help dampen the appetite.

Types of Natural Appetite Suppressants Today

In the past two decades, people have become obsessed with losing weight and reducing their hunger through various artificial (and natural) means. Countless diets, gimmicks and weight loss strategies which existed in the past and remained on the market cost millions of dollars every month.

People have gone to extreme measures, just to have a nice look, such as liposuction and starvation diets to take off their excess weight. Oftentimes, when people diet and lose weight, the only thing that happens is just gaining the weight back.

It is well known that one of the options that people take is the ingestion of different appetite suppressants. The logic behind this is if one takes an appetite suppressant it will not feel hungry for a certain time, and in that way, if there is no hunger, the women/man will ingest less food and it will lose weight.

Appetite suppressants are the most wanted medications for losing weight and I am not very surprised because the obesity is a condition that needs treatment.  Nowadays, the appetite suppressants are very famous and present on markets and their use is growing every day. That is not surprising because the number of people suffering from weight problems is growing tremendously.

It is hard to get rid of those few extra pounds even though those products are made of top quality natural and clinically proven ingredients with very weight control and health benefits.

At the other hand, other, more serious problems than obesity exists. When people put themselves on a few-day hunger, than, the blood does not carry enough oxygen to the rest of the body. For that reason, the people who are on a diet for a long time feel tired and do not have the required level of hemoglobin.

From all these we can see that the use of those appetite suppressants can be very good but in the same time very bad for the health of the people, sometimes for their heart and other organs with fatal damage to the body.

If you do not want to face all these problems, use natural appetite suppressants that really work, for example the water which makes your appetite completely reduced or gone if you drink a glass of water when you fell hungry.   Also this group of natural appetite suppressants contain: green tea, apples, green vegetables etc. All those are safe, effective and affordable, which on the other hand can give you energy and a long term weight loss.

Namely, you can achieve best results when you combine these products with a reduced calorie diet and appropriate physical exercise.  As I mentioned before, the top five natural appetite suppressants on the market today are: water, vegetables, apples, green tea and guarana.  Try these natural suppressants which will improve your blood circulation and make you feel healthier.

Adderall Frequently Abused as Appetite Suppressant

Adderall is a drug that is commonly prescribed for both ADD and ADHD (ADD in adults).  It is a controversial drug of course, because it is really chemically identical to drugs that are highly addictive and habit forming.  This means that people who take Adderall for legitimate or non legitimate reasons may soon find they are looking to tame the beast of addiction without even knowing it.  Because it suppresses hunger so well in most people, it has become the subject of abuse by many adults.

Adderall has also found it’s way into the center of drugs that are used as appetite suppressants, even though that is not their intended purpose.  Most patients who abuse this drug for the purpose of controlling their weight are admittedly women. There have been hints that it is behind many a thin actresses’ weight loss or seemingly impossible thin weight maintenance too, but that’s all really hearsay thus far.

Adderall is such a powerful appetite suppressant that women will reportedly doctor shop and try to convince doctors they have ADHD, but miraculously, that they can only or will only take Adderall for it, since other ADHD drugs don’t have the appetite suppression benefits. However, this drug does have some seriously undesirable side effects. First off, when you start taking it, it works as an appetite suppressant in most people, however, the effects wear off and people build a tolerance to it, forcing them to increase their dosage dangerously.

Many patients find that Adderall makes their skin break out as well.  Because it acts as a central nervous system stimulant, it also happens to throw crucial hormones off balance leaving some patients with acne ridden skin as well.  Adderall has also developed a somewhat high street value for illegal use because of it’s frequent abuse by adults and even college kids to help them study since it is a brain stimulant.

Hmm, sounds almost like cocaine, and yet it’s legal. I’ll never get that about some of these FDA approved drugs….

Microbes Related to Appetite Control?

New research is suggesting that appetites that are in overdrive may be linked to not only the processed foods we eat and the availability of easy, cheap food, but also the bacteria that inhabit the intestines and the digestive tract.  The studies that show this link were actually done on mice. Intestinal bacteria from the obese mice were actually extracted and then implanted in the thin mice (I know, yuck).

They found that after this lovely surgical procedure, the thin mice actually started to eat a lot more and gain weight.  This concludes that there may be a link between the microbes found in the guts of fat mice and the fact that their appetites seem to be in overdrive.

But isn’t this putting the cart before the horse?  It seems almost like this could be one very small reason behind obesity and the need to over eat, and they are overlooking the fact that there could be several other factors in the transplanted material, not just the microbes.

The bacteria also is linked to low grade inflammation, which is linked to obesity in the first place.  The suggestion here is that people are over eating because of this type of microbe growing in their intestinal tract.

How Long Before Your Appetite Switches Off?

When you are eating your food, you’ve probably heard this advice before, you should know that it’s always better to try to eat your food slowly and chew your food thoroughly.  Why is it though, that this sage dieting and weightloss advice has been given for decades now? Well, it’s not just so that you can savor every moment of your eating and enjoy the savory nuances that your delish cooking has to offer, although that is definitely a side benefit of chewing your food thoroughly and making it last.

The reason behind this advice in dieting and weight loss is that your brain actually switches the appetite switch to “off” after about ten minutes of eating.  This means that if you prolong your eating by chewing more thoroughly and consciously slowing down when swallowing, especially if you happen to be a naturally faster eater, you will eat less because your appetite will have switched to “off” and you will have consumed less food by that point and feel satisfied so that you don’t feel you have to shove more calorie laden food down your gullet to reach that point of satiation.

It’s literally been proven that the appetite signals shut off in tests that do a brain scan when people are eating. The centers that control the appetite go dormant after about ten minutes, signaling the stomach and the rest of the body that you’ve had plenty to eat and you should stop now. It’s your body’s own natural weight control mechanism, if you want to look at it that way.

You can also help your own natural appetite control by taking things like Hoodia diet aids which help to shut down this part of the appetite control center as well, and you can make sure that you are consuming water in between each bite to not only help expand the stomach so that it feels fuller, but also to help prolong the eating experience so that your appeitte can shut itself off. These have always been great ways to restrict calories in the diet, and you don’t even feel deprived which is the best part about it.

Sugar Substitutes Curb Hunger?

In a turn of information that I thought was the real truth, that artificial sweeteners are actually bad for your appetite and even worse for your sugar cravings, newer studies are suggesting – and I do mean merely suggesting – that artificial sweeteners may actually help to curb one’s appetite.  It was found the when carbonated water laced with artificial sweeteners, it was not said which one it was in particular, it looked like it made the stomach release a lot more of a certain chemical in the body which is closely related to the curbing of hunger and satiety.

Artificial sweeteners like aspartame have long been criticized for actually helping to increase cravings for sugar, and of course also they are criticized heavily for their suspected link to causing cancers of different sorts in the human body.  They have been shown many times to have links to cancer development in animals that have been tested, but supposedly this link has never been conclusively proven in the human body from their consumption.  So, what does this supposed new finding mean to the average diet soda drinker?

Well, it’s not exactly clear yet, since what I read indicated that the study suggested it was only a hunger suppressant when it was paired with carbohydrates. I don’t see how that’s possible if it’s just soda water and aspartame or splenda or something like that, because then there would not be any carbs to speak of in the drink.  Plus, I thought about when I drink diet soda.  I’m not sure if it really makes me feel fuller, but I can tell you that soda seems to make me feel fuller faster. I had always thought that was just because it was the carbonation and fizz though, and had nothing to do with the sugar substitute.

I still think that the reason it helps fill me up is the carbonation though, since it seems like I could eat something with artificial sweetener in it and be starving an hour later.  I guess we’ll see if there is anything to this study, but honestly, I wouldn’t increase my intake of sugar substitutes unless it’s something healthier like stevia, just for the sake of decreasing the appetite, there are far too many other potential health implications, and much better ways to suppress your hunger naturally to bother with this one!

Stress Levels and Eating

Your levels of stress and stress hormones, the most notable and widely known of these “stress hormones” or chemicals being one called cortisol, definitely play a role in your appetite, there’s no doubt about that. However, research on how it impacts the appetite of different individuals varies.

While one person, like myself, will resort to eating more of the wrong food choices as a sort of comfort to help ward stress off (oh how wrong I am though), I choose to stuff my face a lot more during the day, and because I’m so preoccupied about other things other than what I’m eating or how my health is, I am much more likely to make the most wrong food choices I can.

Case in point, I had Five Guys Burgers and Fries one day for lunch when I was uber stressed ot the max.  While I may go to the end of the spectrum where my caloric intake goes through the roof when I’m stressed out, some people are the polar opposite, and they lose their appetite, or they almost “forget” to eat.  I know people like this too. On of my good girlfriends is like this. You can tell when she’s mega stressed because she drops pant sizes in a matter of a weeks.  It just depends on your body and how you personally handle being under a lot of stress.

While stress and grief or heartbreak might rank closely on the emotions scale, however, I am completely opposite with my eating patterns with these two emotions.  When I am either grieving or I’m heartbroken (this hasn’t happened in a while, thanks to me being married to a great guy now), or maybe even heartbroken about a family member or friend who has really let me down, I tend to subconsciously starve myself.

I have experienced this a few times, and it’s very unusual for me, because my appetite is usually extremely healthy, in fact I almost always want to eat everything but the kitchen table most of the time.  However, when I’m grieving or have had a big disappointment, I tend to lose my appetite, big time.  You have to figure out what emotions lead you to eat and not eat, and try to harness them better and figure out why they do this to you to be able to master your eating habits.  I think if you can do this, you can more artfully manipulate your body and your health.