Everyday Systems

RealAge offers short, readable summaries of research with a link to the actual article. This one really made sense to me in that it echoes my own personal experience.

Here's the key: Stop counting calories. Instead, pack your diet with nutrient-dense foods. Research shows that jamming your diet full of nutritious edibles may be one of the most important steps to weight loss.

Food Withdrawal
In a study, when people switched to a diet full of healthy foods, they experienced hunger far less often and found their hunger much easier to tolerate. Just imagine what a leg up that would be to dieting if you never experienced hunger pangs! Researchers think that when people don't eat enough nutritious foods, it causes a sort of "food withdrawal" phenomenon in the body, characterized by inflammation and the release of toxic metabolic waste products. The result of all this? A more painful kind of hunger that can only be relieved by eating again.

Edited to add: Of course, No-S doesn't require that you eat healthy food - and for new folks, you shouldn't focus on that, just on habits. But I do think there's a natural "drift" in that direction, partly because meal food is generally better than snack food and partly because the "one plate" rule highlights your choices ("oh, I haven't had a single vegetable today...").

I agree, but you knew that!

Here's what I posted about this some time ago.

One thing I've noticed about eating mostly real food is that I get hungry, but getting food isn't an emergency. I can wait, and usually I can wait several hours. My guideline is 80% (or more) real food and 20% (or less) store-bought, ready-made food.

Edit: Dr. Oz is affiliated with RealAge and he's also written the introduction to Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live.

Just to clarify, for many people, getting legitimately hungry is NOT the problem. Many people have strong urges to eat that are not hunger pangs, so just avoiding hunger pangs will not solve the problem. Learning to deal with hunger pangs is a hugely important skill for the long run.

That being said, I discovered several years ago on WW, of all places, that meals that included the equivalent of about my hand's flat size of any rich or processed food, plus whatever vegetables and fruits needed to fill a plate, were the best combination for satisfying the desire for luscious food AND volume. (I was never open to all their or anyone else's artificially sweetened products or low fat products, unless I was going to add some walnuts or olive oil to the mix!) On No S, it's been reduced over the course of this year to about half of that of the rich food at a time. Most N day meals, I choose and prefer simple meats, whole grains, "good" fats, and still plenty of veggies and a fruit--not because someone tells me to eat that way. But you've got to get your yayas out! If you don't go through the phase of freedom, it will be harder to make the choices based on your body's reactions.

There is no way around it; the people on No S who have lost weight have had to create a calorie deficit, but I guarantee that if you told them at the beginning of the day they had to limit themselves to that certain number of calories or certain amounts of food, most of them would have freaked out. Successful losers here gravitate to the ratios of foods that satisfy them. Some of them eat a surprisingly few vegetables, but most aren't eating McDonald's or a WW snack bar. It will just depend on you.