Ever wonder why it’s so hard to avoid those extra
bites that pad our waistlines?
Or why it is so easy to overeat even when we
know it’s bad for us?
Shouldn’t our bodies be telling us to stop?
They do...
just not right away.
ghrelin
Feeling hungry is the result of a hormone called ghrelin. That familiar rumble in your stomach is your body’s way of letting you know you haven’t eaten in a while, and it’s time to refuel. Ghrelin turns your body’s satiety switch from on to off – it’s the biological equivalent of the gas light coming on in your car.
peptide yy
As you eat, ghrelin levels go down – but your body’s satiety switch is still off. Your stomach is slowly filling up, but you don’t feel full just yet. In fact, you won’t feel full for another 20 minutes, because there’s another hormone whose job it is to turn your satiety switch back on – peptide yy. It takes about 20 minutes for the food you’ve just eaten to travel from your stomach to your colon, where peptide yy is released. Only then does your brain receive the signal that it’s time to stop eating.
Training our bodies to recognize this 20-minute trap in a world of food abundance and super-sized portions is difficult. It is hard to say no! Even when you know you should. We live busy, distracted, stressful lives and it’s easy to miss our body’s subtle cues to stop eating.
Continuing to snack or eat more of your meal during the 20-minute Overeating Zone may seem insignificant, but those extra calories add up(1)! The average person consumes more than 1,000 unnecessary calories every day(2). Cutting 500 calories from your daily diet can result in losing one pound per week(3)(4).
