SBS-“What’s the right diet for you?”

Who saw the SBS program on “What’s the right diet for you?”

I have popped the link at the bottom so you can watch it, it was really good and gives a pretty good insight to different ways why people overeat and are overweight and the best diets for them. I watched it and typed up a rather long summary, but I didn’t want to miss out too much!

After reading or watching what type of the 3 eaters do you think you are? Can you think of any other groups?

“Genes, hormones, psychology to find out what kind of eater they are”

“People overeat for many reasons and it may be due to our individual make up. The answer could lead us to the perfect diet to lose weight.”

Many people yoyo diet all their lives and you end up going back to their old ways, but why?

“Diets are about habits, you can’t will yourself to lose weight”

What is the right diet for you?

The first of the study was a dinner where they served sushi, the study has already begun, and the experts are watching what is going on.

They wanted to find out if this group overeat for the reasons suggested in their assessment.

The first group were called the feasters

This is the group that when they start eating they can’t stop. Gut hormones were tested and the people who had the smallest rise were in the feasters group. These are the hormones that tell us we have had enough and we should stop eating. This hormone called GLP1 or glucagon-like-peptide 1 is weaker in the feasters group. For the average person 5-6 of these sushi plates would be enough but many of the feasters had eaten 12 or more, one person was up to 17 plates of sushi. This is almost the amount of food you should consume in 1 day for some. The plates varied from 9 plates to as high as 19 plates eaten.

Gut hormones are a fairly new field and is pretty exciting :)

So what we all want to know is why GLP1 is low? And better still can we increase it, what kind of diet is right for the feasters?  Keep reading!

The 2nd group of eaters are the emotional eaters due to psychological issues.

These people turn to food when depressed, stressed or anxious. This test they did here was a driving test to see if this affected the way they ate after, this test has been used to induce high levels of stress. The driver instructors were not friendly and failed everyone, no chit chat etc…it worked, and they were stressed! So they come back from the test and there are 2 groups- the non -emotional eaters and the emotional eaters. They knew they were stressed as cortisol was tested, this is a stress hormone. They compared the plates of food they ate. The emotional eaters ate 4 times as much chocolates, crisps, biscuits (sugary/fatty snacks) as the non-emotional group. People respond in different way to stress and the emotional eaters respond by using food to manage their emotion. So here we can find new ways to manage them. This group is at risk of gaining weight.

The 3rd group are the constant cravers. (K.D Lang group, lol)

This group want to eat all the time. Within the human body there are keys genes which if you have them that make you constantly want to eat. For most people when our fat stores are at a sufficient levels signals are sent to our brains and tell us we don’t need to eat. But in some people they have genes which disrupt these signals and trick their brain into thinking their fat stores need replenishing, they are hungry all the time.

For the constant craving group they were fed a hearty lunch and were then invited back 2 hours later to test their response to different foods. They had a gripforce meter which they had to squeeze to show how much they wanted that food. The higher the number is the amount you desired the food, it was calibrated to represent their different strengths. Despite just eating lunch 2 hours earlier some of the people were pretty keen to have some of the foods. 8 foods were high in fat/sugar which are classic snacking foods. This constant craving group prefer the foods high in sugar and/or fat.

Now none of these people knew at the beginning which group they were in so after these tests 3 groups were revealed as to which group they were placed in.

Now the fun part how to address the issues and which diet is best for each group!

The feasters group with the low levels of the gut hormones that tell you that you are full. This group needed a diet that would fill them for as long as possible. High protein low GI diet, this boosts your gut hormones to you don’t feel as hungry. Meat, beans, lentils, veggies, fruit- most rice, breads and white potato to be limited. This group were split into 2, one team had the low protein high gi group and one had the high protein low gi group with the same number of calories. What do you think happened?

The high protein low gi group held off much longer in their hunger levels than the low protein high gi group. It was discovered that the GLP1 gut hormone continued to rise 3 hours after lunch for the high protein group, the low protein group was half the amount!

The constant craving group were put on an intermittent fasting diet- for 2 days were to eat a small amount of food- no more than 800 calories- no carbs, just meat fish and eggs pretty much and the other 5 days to eat normally but healthy food. This should shock their bodies into burning fat. Some of the group really struggled with this. They did a pee test to test for ketones to see if they were burning fat and therefore losing weight, if they eat carbs they will go back to burning sugars not fat. They revealed how much they lost in 48 hours- minimum was ½ kg lost.

The 3rd emotional eaters group were put on a low calorie diet, they develop habits that can be hard to break. Breaking habits and establish new ones. One way is through group support, email groups, weight loss meetings and comparing food dairies. One hard thing about weight loss is that the goals seem so far away and unattainable. This group were to absail down a really tall structure and the expert wanted to show them how to support each other to get through it. In their brains it shows that when the brain perceives the stress it increases your heart rate, raises blood pressure and releases glucose to your muscles this can make it harder to overcome the challenge you are facing- group support can help you overcome your emotion and feel in control again. The absail was pretty cool, they were freaked out but so happy they did it, when they always told themselves they couldn’t, they now felt they could do anything they wanted! Very cool!

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We can be very hard on ourselves.

http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/473114179533/What'sTheRightDietForYou?S1Ep1