How to Eat Less (5 Easy Steps to Lose Weight That Actually Work)
The Iron Pan: Making Weight Loss Easier and Tastier
Take a few deep breaths, sit down, and get ready for some weight loss information you might not have heard before. Are you ready?
Here it is:
If you’re willing to put in the time and effort, you can give yourself a kind of virtual gastric bypass without the surgery.
Okay, hold up – I know what you’re thinking. This is some bull….
Did you know you can do something similar, naturally? It doesn’t involve any surgery, medical risks, and the size of your stomach organ stays the same size. What you can do, however, is eat less food while feeling fuller, longer.
We’ll visit these two methods for eating less by learning more about how the stomach works, and what control you have over it. We’ll talk about my experience with this and, more importantly, what science has to say about it. First, let's get into the mechanics.
How Much Food Can Your Stomach Hold Anyway?
The brilliant folks over at the Institute for Human Anatomy took a deep dive into this topic and posted a video about it for us.
If you’re interested in seeing more of this kind of content, let me know in the comments, and if you’re wanting to take a deeper dive into human anatomy in general, you can follow them on their socials: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook.
If you were too squeamish for the video, here's a bit of what you missed:
- The stomach digests food through muscular contractions that create a back and forth wave of motion that pushes the food back and forth, acting as a kind of blender. That action helps break down the food in addition to the action of the acid in the stomach. This pushing around of the food is called peristalsis.
- A sphincter is located between the stomach and the intestines. This sphincter is also muscular, and its action is to open or close. It only allows a tiny amount of food to pass at a time – about 3ml. That is very small, so the food needs to be processed by the stomach so that it's small enough to pass through that opening.
- A normal stomach can hold about 1.5L, but some scientists have pegged stomach capacity to be up to 6L. Habitual overeating can stretch your stomach over time. That makes your stomach be able to hold a greater amount of food, and it takes more food for you to feel full.
Competitive eaters understand that they can train their stomachs over time to accept unacceptable amounts of food so that they can eat as many hot dogs as fast as they can without vomiting in the middle of their competition.
We can do the exact opposite thing competitive eaters do. We can train our stomach (and our brain) to feel fuller with less food. While our organ doesn’t actually shrink, the capacity of our stomach changes due to how we perceive how full our stomach is.
My Experience
Personally, I have experienced this. I can eat half the amount I used to eat and feel full. This was done over time through eating delicious, nutritious, portion controlled food. I noticed that after two years, I struggle to eat an entire McDonald’s meal, whereas before I would still be hungry after having one, and could easily eat a second burger or order of fries and eat a dessert afterward. If I eat anything close to the same amount as I used to, I get a horrible feeling of being overstuffed, and sometimes even vomit. Just like I would had I had gastric bypass surgery.
So what happened?
IT’S THE VAGUS NERVE!
The connection between the stomach and the brain, specifically the vagus nerve, determines how satisfied you are after a meal. Scientists at the Centre for Neuroscience and Discipline of Human Physiology, at Flinders University in Australia researched the types and functions of different sensory neurons. These cells are a part of the nervous system. They send signals that control the reflexes your body uses to digest your food (those muscle contractions we talked about earlier called peristalsis). These sensory neurons are the reason for feeling full, bloated, nauseous, or simply the feeling of “your tummy hurts” after meals. It is also the reason some people feel a sense of urgency to eat.
That one is important. Here’s why. Feeling a sense of hunger can feel like an emergency to people and trigger the need to rush to eat. That urgency is a big driver in snacking and fast food consumption. We feel the need to eat, and the need to eat right now. Spending half an hour in the kitchen to cook a healthy meal seems like twenty-nine minutes and eight seconds too long. To the drive-thru, we go.
That was never truer than when I was pregnant. The cravings and urgency of them – those middle-of-the-night trips to the store the hapless father-to-be makes in service to his pregnant wife - isn’t just the stuff of television shows joking about hormonal pregnant women. It is the work of the cells of the gut detecting hormones sending signals through the vagus nerve to the brain that create a sense of urgency to eat.
Again, it works in the opposite direction. We all know those people, those irritating, aggravating people who seem to be completely unaffected by this urgency. They are the people who say those words “I forgot to eat.”
WHO FORGETS TO EAT?!
It’s the people whose vagus nerve (and the cascade of hormones that regulate appetite) isn't screaming at them to eat. I’m one of those annoying people who looks up and wonders why their stomach is growling and noticed they missed lunch by a few hours, or made breakfast, got distracted, and forgot to eat it.
I was also one of those pregnant women who felt like if I didn’t eat right away something would... happen. Who am I kidding - I was once one of those people who, even when NOT pregnant, felt like if I didn't eat at the first pang of hunger something would happen!
I’m living proof you can change the way you perceive fullness and not feel like you’re constantly dieting just because you eat half the amount you used to.
My vagus nerve doesn’t scream at me anymore. Through portion control and better food choices over a while, I told it to
That's Great News, But How?
The function of the vagus nerve is to make sure you breathe, your heart beats and your food digests with no help from your conscious self (and thank goodness for that – imagine the consistency needed for that type of task). Our most productive productivity experts could never.
I digress.
Researchers over at Harvard gave some amazing insight into how. They took this information on visceral sensory neurons and ran with it. They did an extensive experiment to determine how the vagus nerve works with the digestive system. They were able to genetically map the different neurons and use imaging to see what types of neurons were doing what.
They found that some neurons control peristalsis, that contracting of the muscles of the digestive system to move the contents along your digestive tract. That neuron also detects which nutrients are in your food, while another type of neuron detects the stretching of your stomach and intestines. They examined the role of hormones and how neurons detect these hormones. The team also studied how the interplay between them work together to digest food and control appetite. Check out this cool graphic summary of their work:
The graph shows how the vagus nerve is connected to your internal organs. The part in red is how the vagus nerve connects to the digestive system. The green and purple are the different types of nerve cells and the different jobs they do in controlling how full you feel.
I reached out to Stephen Liberles, one of the researchers, to get his opinion on how all this vagus nerve stuff we just learned can be used in the service of us regular folk to get less fat. He was kind enough to bless us with his thoughts for those of us who aren't the type to scour the latest scientific literature for diet advice.
“Most studies into body weight control have focused on long-acting signals like leptin that reflect levels of internally stored nutrients. Gut mechanoreceptors play a shorter term role in the control of meal size, and contribute to the sense of fullness after a meal. We do not yet know whether manipulating these signals might be beneficial for body weight control, and understanding basic sensory mechanisms will be a critical first step.”
- Stephen Liberles, Neuroscientist, Principle Investigator and Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard University
Stephen is a lot more conservative in his assessment of the potential of this information than I am, as a true scientist such as himself should be. That said, I appreciate the work he and his team did to expand our understanding of how our bodies work and what we can do to make them healthier.
Namely, this gem is hidden deep in the paper like an Easter egg you found four hours into playing a video game: that gut hormones send information about nutrients to adjust the sensitivity of the stretch sensors in your stomach.
In other words, what you eat can affect how much you can eat. The more nutritious your meal is, the more sensitive your stretch receptors will be.
This is exceptionally important information for those of us who are just trying to fit into the high school clothes we are weirdly hanging on to. The key takeaway is that your gastric stretch sensors can change how sensitive they are and that you can manipulate this consciously. Just like you breathe automatically, yet you can consciously hold your breath or take deep breaths, you have a certain level of control over your digestive system!
Competitive eaters already know this and use it to their advantage. They decrease the sensitivity of these stretch receptors over time, and people who portion control their food and those who eat more nutritious meals can increase the sensitivity of these receptors over time, making you feel full with less food. This idea of nutritional density can also help explain why you can physically eat more junk food than, say, a plate of chicken breast and broccoli.
According to the Institute of Human Anatomy, our stomach takes about 2-4 hours to empty. The time it takes depends on the nutritional content of the food. Carbohydrates take the least amount of time to digest, which is why many long-distance athletes eat junk food during their events. Proteins stay in the stomach longer and fats the longest.
How to Eat Less in 5 Easy Steps
Our task here at The Iron Pan is to help make weight loss easier and tastier. Habitually eating smaller portions of healthy food can sound like an insurmountable mountain to climb for people who are used to eating very large portions of delicious highly processed high-calorie foods.
First, let's make it easier. People don't climb Mt. Everest their first time hiking. That is ridiculous, yet we always think the way to weight loss is to give up sugar and eat kale salads out of the gate. It lasts as long as a new hiker would last climbing Everest. So, let's take the hill first. Take your before picture and weight before step one.
Step 1:
Reduce your portion size a little. If you always order the large fries and a Coke, order the Medium. If you ordered pizza, take one less slice than you normally would. If you cooked dinner, set up your plate as usual, then remove a few tablespoons of the highest calorie side dish. Add something nutritious that is low in calories to your meal to train your stomach, your mind and your taste buds.
This isn't pleasant, but it isn't impossible. You'll miss it, it won't feel like you're full, you won't be as happy about it, but you won't feel like crying in a heap like you do when you fail a diet because it was just...too...hard. This is actually doable.
Step 2:
When you fail at Step 1, continue with Step 1 at your next meal. Do not try to make up for your mistake by eating even less at the next meal or compensating with extra exercise. Just get back to Step 1 the very next time you eat.
Wash, rinse and repeat. Think of it like a toddler learning to walk. They don't sit down and cry and quit because they fell. They don't punish themselves and tell themselves they'll make it up by going for an extra long walk next time. They just haul themselves right back up and wobble around until they fall again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Soon enough, they run faster than their parents.
Step 3:
You have become accustomed to less food, you feel fuller on less than you used to. Great! Now start over. Get the small fries. Portion out those 17 potato chips the bag says is a single serving. Learn how many calories you're actually putting on that peanut butter sandwich. Go through Steps 1 and 2 until you reach Step 3 again. Move on to Step 4.
Step 4:
Stop consuming so much junk food, sodas and fruit juice. Get a quick, easy to cook, low calorie (this is key), roll your eyeballs, and moan in delight (second key) healthy meal you can make and have ready in your fridge at all times. Swap one of these meals for your usual meals three times a week.
Step 5:
Go through step 4 until you have three different easy to cook, low calorie, roll your eyeballs, and moan in delight delicious nutrient-dense meals ready in your fridge at all times. Swap three of these meals for your usual meals nine times a week. Make sure you're getting the right amount of calories. If you eat too many calories, you won't lose weight, and if you eat too little, you might get too tired to keep climbing. If you don't know what calories you should be eating, you can use this handy calculator:
Once you're done with step 5, take a picture. Look back at the view from the top of your hill. Your progress has been beautiful. It took longer than you thought it would, but it was easier than it's ever been and you've gotten further than you ever have. Now rest a bit, because the training isn't over.
You have a higher hill to climb. Soon enough, you'll get to conquer those mountains. (That's 6-pack abs, Mt. Everest territory, if you want to climb that high).
If you've made it this far, you believe it can be done, are willing to learn how it can be done, and are now thinking about the steps you need to get it done.
Conclusion
Your stomach can hold a lot, and you can stretch your stomach over time through binge-eating or habitually overeating. Since the nervous system controls how full you feel after meals, you can increase the sensitivity of these nerves over time, to feel full and satisfied with smaller meals. You can also feel satisfied longer by making sure your meals have the nutrients that take longer to empty out of the stomach. These two combinations – the ability to eat smaller meals and feel full – and feeling fuller longer – can contribute greatly to weight loss, provided you keep an eye on your calories. While this is done instantly through invasive and expensive surgery, you can do this slowly over time through portion control and nutrient-dense meals.
If you liked this content, or found it informative, please share on your socials.
Now I want you to tell me your thoughts on the topic. Leave in the comments below the meal you thought of when you read step 4 - healthy, low calorie, roll your eyes in the back of your head delicious meal to make this process easier and tastier?