Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm? - PaleoHacks.com

Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-01-30T22:12:31Z

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938401006199

If a person's normal practice is to eat as much as can possibly fit in their stomach, it stands to reason that the stomach would stretch over time to accommodate the expected food volume, which would be a moving target of ever-increasing size. Since satiety is influenced in part by the stretch-receptors of the stomach, do you think that regularly taking your meals "to the limit" would increase appetite overall and thus increase, say, yearly energy intake?

Answer by JayJay for Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-01-31T01:39:09Z

I mean this is a logical "of course". Much of the oriental supposed longevity is partially attributed to their ability to stop at 60% full (or something like that). So when you IF do you eat till you burst? Depends on your particular reasons for IFing. There are reasons to induce certain hormonal responses through the fast and intentional overfeed following, but if you are simply using it to be healthy and lose weight then you would not have to go till "burst" statis. All comes back to context of the overfeed I suppose, not to mention nutrient quality.

To simply answer the question ask yes....yes it would, but with some frequency. For instance fasting for 2 days followed by a binge is obviously not going to produce the same results as eating to the limit 5x a day. I'm not sure if there is data on how frequently you have to induce that "stretch" response in the stomache to cause stretch resistance inhibition (or whatever you might decide to call the reduced amount of neurological input to the brain from the physical enlargement of the stomachs muscular strata)....

Answer by Nance for Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-01-31T01:49:28Z

As a 50-year binge eater, my stomach was certainly stretched--as documented by the photo of my large hiatal hernia.

I don't think my stomach ever shrank during my down-yo-yo cycles; I always needed large salads and lots of whole fruit to delay relapses to binge behavior.

I think IF has worked for me precisely because it allows me to eat to satiation if my (80% of daily food) main meal has a fruit-salad-meat/veg structure. Eating more but smaller meals literally drives me nuts.

One difference I've noticed on whole foods and IF is that I do notice satiation signals now, which I never noticed before no matter how much I ate. In fact, in the past my "hunger" signals were probably GI discomfort from SAD foods recently eaten. Now that I have no GI discomfort overnight or when I wake up, it's easy to delay eating until it's convenient and I get "enough" signals on each course--by that I mean I may not finish my salad but still want meat. In the past month or two I may have experienced earlier satiation signals, since if I started with meat I canceled the salad a few times.

EDIT: I don't think I made my point clear enough--I don't think meal volume itself determines body fat because my meal volume was consistent while the mix of foods changed and I ate meals more frequently.

Answer by sage_ for Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-01-31T03:45:57Z

i am a binge eater and i find that it takes less food to give me the full stomach feel at 130lbs than when i weighed 180lbs. i could eat a lot more before the weight loss. and yes i still binge. paleo did not fix that.

Answer by Sunny Beaches for Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-04-13T00:25:51Z

There is no doubt that my stomach has stretched due to binging. I don't know if it will ever shrink back to normal, and if it does, I'm not even sure what that would feel like. "Satiety" for is being physically unable to eat more. It's not just overeating or a little indulging...it's being physically sick.

I find that I don't really have "hunger" cues, or even know what they are so I don't think it really matters. I just have to pre-plan with my meals and try to distract myself afterwards to not keep eating. It's not an issue of feeling hungry at all, it's just a very ingrained habit. I think IF actually helps me because every time I sit down to eat, it is a battle to just eat and stop. With IF, there are fewer meals and no snacks for me to think about...so I only have two meals a day in where I have to expose myself to something I'm afraid of because I often lose control. I had previously thought about leptin resetting or whatnot, but breakfast scares the heck out of me because previous attempts impacted my work in a negative way.

Answer by Joshua for Could Meal Volume Itself Impact Bodyfat Levels in the Longterm?

2012-04-13T02:13:55Z

For awhile while experimenting with a liquid PSMF (kinda like a Lyle McD + Velocity Diet hybrid) that had whole food re-feeds on the weekends (add some Dave Palumbo), I learned that stomachs do seem to shrink.

I remember my first re-feed and eating a half a pizza and about 2 liters of beer.

The next week, I think I had three slices and 2 pints.

Finally, I got down to two slices and a pint... but by the end I was almost forcing those slices to go down.

I attribute this to subsisting on mostly liquid meals for 4 meals a day, only eating about 1700 calories daily (85% protein, 15% fat via fish oil, mct, and flax seeds), then doing everything I could to get in 4k on a re-feed day. By the end, I could not re-feed half of that...

That being said, it did work, it was the fastest 60lbs I ever lost (3 months or so), but I still have nightmares about egg white + ham omelettes with fat-free "cheese", canned chicken, every flavor of protein powder under the sun, and those damn ostra-lean ostrich slim-jim jobbies... not to mention my guts were absolutely WRECKED. Oh, and I gained every pound back, rather quickly once I started lifting and eating like a hoss again (I had decided to lose the weight quickly prior to a shoulder reconstruction surgery).

These days, I seem to go between Paleo IF/CRON and "classic" Paleo 1.0. I've been fairly sated with meals that are only around 400 calories... and I'm finding it hard to get more than 1800 cals a day. Compare that to when I was competing as a strongman and eating 6,000/day. I would say my stomach has shrunk. IF I need calories now I have to make sure everything I eat is as calorically dense as possible.