Join A Souper-Group!
You may occasionally watch a film and are utterly willing to immerse yourself and ride along with the stereotypical, typecast performance. You know its utter garbage when James Bond comes out with his ridiculous one-liners; or you may have seen the joke coming a mile off in an old ‘Friends’ re-run, but you go with it anyway. It’s all-good, 100% corny and is meant to be that way. However, it’s different when it comes to things that affect your life directly. I am inquisitive by nature and always want to know facts. Thus, societal oxymoronic norms such as relationship or life advice from a celibate religious leader who hasn’t lived a life remotely like yours; or fitness advice from a steroid-user who would have a harder time trying to get fat than thin isn’t going to cut it...but that IS what fitness advice is. Especially in the online world, most of what you read is BS.
Like many of you out there who have a constant battle with hunger, the advice from the chemically enhanced gurus isn’t going to work. The issue is this: leptin controls how full you feel, and those with chunkier body types have a certain degree of resistance to this hormone. That means if there is resistance, there will be a greater portion of the day and night where you will be susceptible to physical and mental stress associated with hunger. It’s the cards you were dealt, but you can affect it to a certain degree. The way to combat this is to eat of course, but we want to be as smart as we can so we don’t gain weight; use the science and face it head on.
Now, I’m well aware that I could get a name for myself here as ‘That Soup Guy’, but this is the simplest way to beat hunger for the least amount of calories. Most importantly, this is proven by scientific research. Imagine, you take a meal, the control group eats with a chopstick/knife and fork and the study group blends the same food with water into a thick soup. The result is this: The study group feels full sooner, and for longer.
Therefore the souper group eats less and needs to eat less again that day. It’s as simple as that. The soup must be thick though, which means the obvious choices are vegetable, pumpkin, pea, lentil... that type of thing. The hardest part of any change in eating habits is the first 2-3 days. After this time, the body becomes able to use leptin better. Many attribute this to a shrinking of the stomach (it isn’t but the result is the same)... you need to eat less than you did before without the feelings of hunger. Make a big pan, put it in individual portion containers and throw them in the freezer. A regular sized pumpkin is around 300 calories and it makes a whole lot of soup!
Jon Robinson is an Exercise Physiologist (not Personal Trainer) and co-owner of Spinback Fitness. www.spinbackfitness.com
