WEEK 12: AD LIBITUM DIETING

Ad libitum energy balance formula

Ad libitum energy balance = f (appetite, diet satiety index) (p.4, Ad libitum)

Availability of food effect

Another cue your brain uses to determine how much to eat is the availability of food. Your brain is constantly estimating the availability of food. Evolutionarily speaking, if there is no food around, there is little point in being hungry. You may have experienced this yourself at a restaurant sometime. Even though the serving size was that of someone who doesn't (even) lift, it still satiated because you knew that was all you were going to get. (p.37, Ad libitum)

How can dietary fiber increases satiety?

Dietary fiber increases satiety via multiple mechanisms: 1) Fiber has few calories, generally less than 2 kcal per gram, so it lowers the energy density of food compared to other carbohydrate. 2) Fiber slows down gastric emptying and the passage of food through your intestines, prolonging literal fullness. 3) Fiber has a relatively tough texture that stimulates chewing, which can enhance satiety signaling. 4) When fiber reaches the large intestine, colonic microflora ferment it. The fermentation produces short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These SCFAs are taken up by the brain and trigger the sensation of fullness. (p.21, Ad libitum)

True or False? Nuts have great satiety index.

False. Nuts are another example of a food with a terrible satiety index because of their extremely high energy density. Most nuts have around 600 kcal per 100 g, yet they are no more satiating than baked goods with the same macronutrient content. Just because a food is 'healthy' does not mean its conducive to fat loss. Another study found that nuts have the same satiety index as chocolate and rice cakes. (p.10, Ad libitum)

The Clean-plate effect

The "serving size" effect is largest when your food is served for you on a plate or you serve it yourself, as the size of the plate serves as a mental reference of how much food to serve and most people's food intake increases almost linearly with serving size when we serve it ourselves: we eat on average 92% of the food we serve. (p.32, Ad libitum)

What is executive functioning? How is it related to your appetite and hunger?

'Executive function' is your ability to intentionally override what your instincts tell you to do, amongst other higher-level brain functions. Not giving in to your hunger requires executive function. Your rational system has to override the decision-making process of your emotional system. Executive functioning is an intensive process that seems to 'fatigue' with use. This decision fatigue is why people generally experience willpower failure at night. Throughout the day, they have accumulated 'decision fatigue' by mostly attending to things, often their work, that didn't result in a lot of immediate pleasure. So when they get home, the brain is yearning for immediate gratification and you are prone to nighttime binging as a form of dietary self-medication. (p.57, Ad libitum)

Viscosity

A liquid's resistance to flowing. Though not the chemical definition, you can think of this as how solid a food is. The same nutrients consumed in solid form are generally more satiating than in liquid form. For example: water < milk < yoghurt < cottage cheese < hard cheese. The more viscous the food, the more satiating it is. Another example: whole apples > applesauce > apple juice > water. (p.23, Ad libitum)

Protein leverage theory

A much more plausible theory to explain why high protein diets are more satiating than low protein diets is protein leverage theory. Put simply, protein leverage theory states that the body monitors protein consumption to ensure we consume enough of it. Since the body doesn't have an efficient storage mechanism for amino acids like it does for carbohydrate (glycogen) and fat (adipose tissue), it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that the body has adapted mechanisms to ensure we consume enough of this vital macronutrient. Specifically, our appetite stays up until protein requirements have been met. We have a 'Protein-Stat'. In other words, protein leverage theory says protein is more satiating than carbs or fats until we've consumed enough protein for our bodily needs. (p.13, Ad libitum) After low protein diets, people's preference for higher protein foods increases compared to after high protein diets. We also have a low drive to eat protein sources with an incomplete amino acid profile lacking in essential amino acids, as we cannot meet protein requirements with those foods. (p.14, Ad libitum) The satiating effect of high protein meals decreases after high protein diets and comes back after low protein intakes. In other words, if you consume a diet higher in protein than you need, protein will lose some of its satiating effect. The body can sense excess protein intake in the form of increased protein oxidation rates. Habituation to protein's satiation again makes evolutionary sense. If we only have access to low-protein foods, we should keep eating until we've consumed enough protein so we can survive. But if we only have access to high protein foods, we should not stop eating before we've consumed enough other nutrients. Otherwise high protein environments would cause us to starve ourselves. In this scenario, protein is abundant and high protein foods are just an energy source like carbs or fats. So the body should treat them as such in terms of how much we need of them. (p.14, Ad libitum)

General guidelines for implementing ad libitum diet

A person with a certain appetite will have an energy intake that is determined solely by the diet's satiety index. So instead of setting energy intake directly, you can set it indirectly by setting the diet's satiety index, which is roughly the average of the satiety index of all individual foods in the diet. To create an ad lib diet, you thus set caloric intake indirectly by prescribing the selection of foods someone is allowed (or not allowed) to eat based on their satiety index. Instead of macros for each meal, you have a list of recommended foods. If you have no idea where to start with this, it's good to know that most trainees will need to have an average diet satiety index above 200 to lose a significant amount of fat and generally only overweight people will lose any fat on a diet with a satiety index of 150 or less. It is crucial that you track body composition over time with objective metrics and adjust the diet's satiety index based on progress. See the course topic on monitoring progress. If a fat loss diet does not result in weekly quantifiable fat loss, it's a bad diet. In fact, with ad lib dieting even more so than macro tracking, the starting point of the diet is not nearly as important as how you adjust it. You can create a very meticulously calculated starting point with an exact satiety index, but since you don't know how much of each food someone ends up eating and which foods they pick from the allowed options, your estimate is really more of a rough guess. From a lifestyle point of view, it often works just as well, if not better, to simply start with however someone is currently eating. (p.26, Ad libitum)

Should we use artificial sweeteners for weight loss?

Artificial sweeteners are clearly a viable weight loss tool. They generally do not increase your appetite compared to water and can be a successful replacement for other sweet foods that have many more calories. Not allowing artificial sweetener consumption may needlessly increase the difficulty of complying with the diet and increase the likelihood of consuming sweet cheat foods, resulting in poorer fat loss. (p.61, Ad libitum)

Recommended intake of fiber daily

As a guideline, women should consume over 25 grams of fiber per day and men should consume over 38 grams per day. Those are the recommended daily intakes for sedentary individuals, so you should think of these as bare minima as a strength trainee. Don't skimp on your fiber intake and get it from whole foods. Supplements aren't as effective and often upset your digestion. (p.4, Hunger Management)

Example of the effect of energy density

As an illustration of the effect of energy density, when eating ad libitum, people eat just as much pasta or rice as potato. Since potatoes in most forms have less than half the energy density of grains, potatoes have a much better satiety index than starches. You can literally cut a meal's carbohydrate-derived energy intake in half by switching from bread to potatoes. (p.10, Ad libitum)

Why switching your dietary pattern is always difficult?

As you know, basically every system in the body has a circadian rhythm. Hunger is no exception. Not only that, but food itself sets hunger's circadian rhythm. Insulin has a particularly strong effect on your hunger's circadian rhythm. This means that you become hungry when you normally eat. When you measure someone's hunger hormones, you can see they go up and down in line with someone's habitual eating frequency: people that eat more often experience more but smaller spikes in ghrelin across the day than people that only eat a few meals, who experience fewer but bigger spikes in ghrelin. Switching your dietary pattern is always difficult, because it disrupts your body's entrained meal pattern. You eat at different times, so you have to cope with hunger while your hunger's circadian rhythm adjusts. (p.47, Ad libitum)

Chewing effect on satiety

Chewing does have a direct link with satiety independent of palatability. The very act of chewing is registered by the brain as a signal to desensitize food cues and promote satiety. Chewing gum also significantly increases satiety and lowers energy intake. As such, it's advisable to properly chew your food, but it's not necessary or sustainable for most people to chew their food to the point of unpleasantness. Eating rate per se may not matter, but mindfulness certainly does and these two strongly correlate. If you're distracted and you're just shoving down your food in front of the TV, you will tend to overeat compared to if you sit down in a relaxed environment and you focus on enjoying your food. Especially if the meal size is unlimited: then being distracted will generally cause you to continue eating for much longer. (p.41, 42, 43, Ad libitum)

Does exercise stimulate or suppress appetite?

Contrary to popular belief, exercise does not generally stimulate your appetite. On the contrary in fact: it generally suppresses it. If exercise does increase your appetite, this is generally offset by greater food-induced satiety and the energy expenditure from the training, so that exercise retains a net negative effect on energy balance. You may experience a slight increase in your appetite, but you are also satiated easier and therefore do not end up eating more. The reason some people experience hunger after training is because they always eat a post-workout meal. So the post-workout hunger is entrained in their biorhythm, not stimulated by exercise. (p.51, Ad libitum)

The satiety cascade

Eating results in the stimulation of gastric and neural processes that signal to your brain that you're satiated, causing your brain to reduce your appetite. (p.6, Ad libitum) When we consume food, this triggers a series of processes known as the satiety cascade which consists of a negative feedback loop to your appetite. Simply put: when we consume food, we get full (satiated). Sensory factors like chewing and taste start the satiety cascade. When food enters your stomach, pressure receptors are activated that signal how much you've eaten to the brain. Later, nutrient receptors in your gut trigger the release of several peptides, notably cholecystokinin (CCK), glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), peptide YY and ghrelin. These satiety hormones activate local sensory nerves travelling to the hindbrain to tell the brain roughly what you've consumed, such as glucose or fatty acids. When the brain believes your body is amply nourished, it reduces your appetite so that you stop feeling the need to eat. (p.5, Ad libitum)

True or False? Higher protein diets are more satiating than low protein diets.

False. An abundance of research shows high protein diets are more satiating than low protein diets. This has led many people to conclude 'protein is more satiating than carbohydrates and fats'. However, this is a gross simplification that is often flat-out incorrect. (p.12, Ad libitum) The theory of protein's extra satiating effect is based on hormonal effects. In the gut, amino acids stimulate the release of several hormones that activate satiety centers in the brain, namely glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) and glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1). There is also mixed evidence for hunger suppression by cholecystokinin (CCK) stimulation and for suppression of ghrelin release, 'the hunger hormone'. This looks like a simple and convincing theory: more protein → more appetite suppressing hormones → less appetite. However, the theory breaks down on all 3 levels in several studies. High protein meals do not always stimulate more appetite- mediating hormone release or suppression than high carb or high fat meals. On the flip side, different meals with the same macros can result in major differences in gut hormone production. Higher protein intakes also do not always result in greater appetite suppressing hormone levels nor lower hunger hormone levels than lower protein meals, even when the high protein meals have a higher total energy content. The response of gut hormone levels to protein also seems to depend on whether someone is lean or overweight. (p.12, Ad libitum)

True or False? The higher the Glycemic index of a food, the higher their satiety is.

False. In contrast to popular belief, a food's GI does not seem to affect satiety in most studies. The impact of your diet's GI on your appetite is therefore non-existent or at best very weak. In practice, foods with a lower glycemic index do tend to be more satiating, but that is because of their lower energy density, lower palatability and higher fiber content, not their GI. In other words, you may eat more of higher GI foods simply because they taste better, not because of their effect on your blood sugar. (p.24, Ad libitum)

True or False? All paleo diet foods score well on the satiety index.

False. Most paleo foods score well on the satiety index. Grains score very poorly. As a result, Paleolithic diets tend to be more satiating per calorie than the Mediterranean diet and diabetes diets based on official guidelines. Note that the satiating power of paleo diets has nothing to do with the foods being paleo per se. Nuts, for example, are paleo but highly caloric and unsatiating. (p.25, Ad libitum)

True or False? Your appetite increases when blood sugar levels drop below baseline.

False. The common idea that blood sugar levels affect your appetite in the first place is largely a myth. When people are intravenously injected glucose without their knowledge (placebo blinded), their hunger doesn't decrease. Nor does their appetite increase afterwards when blood sugar levels fall below baseline. It's only when you go truly hypoglycemic that your appetite increases. (p.24, Ad libitum)

True or False? Eating more at one meal will help you eat less at another meal.

False. You may think that eating more at one meal balances out, as you'll eat less at another meal. However, this is not generally the case because your body uses so many other cues than energy intake to regulate satiety. Moreover, subjective appetite isn't even related to actual energy intake that well, which is why you typically finish your plate regardless of how hungry you were beforehand. For example, we previously discussed how potatoes are far more satiating than grains like rice and wheat. However, if you eat a fixed-calorie portion of potatoes, rice, pasta or bread at breakfast, you eat the same amount afterwards at lunch even though the potatoes were subjectively more satiating than the rice and pasta. (p.32, Ad libitum)

How is fat mass related to your appetite?

Fat mass has a negative feedback loop to your appetite via various mechanisms, including directly by secreting leptin. Leptin is an appetite suppressing hormone. So in general, the less fat mass you have, the greater your appetite. This is most evident at very low body fat percentages. In contest prep, almost everyone notices the increase in appetite. At very high body fat percentages, the relation between leptin and appetite weakens, since obesity can disrupt the hormonal regulation of satiety, resulting in leptin resistance and an increase in your appetite. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do about this. It simply means we have to use more appetite suppressive strategies the leaner you get. (p.54, Ad libitum)

Why dieting is hard?

If people were rational, dieting would be easy. It would purely be a matter of setting your calories at the optimal deficit and having patience. But the mind is weaker than the flesh. The older systems of the brain, specifically the limbic system, located below the rational systems, namely the prefrontal cortex, have evolved to resist weight loss. And they do not differentiate between trying to get a sixpack for the beach and starving in the desert. In the fight for domination of your body's primitive emotional system, the chief villain is hunger. Your deliberate mind may want to put your body in a state of negative energy balance, but hunger will trigger the desire to indulge yourself. (p.30, Ad libitum)

How to implement ad libitum diet by lifestyle correction?

Implement ad libitum dieting by lifestyle correction: 1) Determine your client's current eating pattern by assessing their food logs and macronutrient intake; measure their body composition change. 2) Stop measuring macronutrient intake accurately: only keep estimating protein intake from high quality sources and total energy intake. 3) When you've established that body composition is still changing as planned, stop measuring energy and protein intake altogether and switch to a set of guidelines to sustain the current eating pattern. 4) When body composition is no longer changing as planned, suggest changes to the client's food choices based on their satiety index accordingly. Example: You see they start gaining rather than losing fat. After asking about the client's food choices, you've determined the client's consuming many more starches and fewer vegetables. So you advise to consume more vegetables. It's typically more effective for fat loss adherence to add low-calorie foods than to restrict high-calorie foods. Recommending people to consume more micronutrients or fiber, for example, is a positive message aimed at improving the diet. Telling people they cannot consume food X, on the other hand, is a negative message that makes people feel deprived and can instill cravings because of the forbidden fruit effect. (p.27, Ad libitum)

How to implement ad libitum diet by satiety index?

Implement ad libitum dieting by satiety index: 1) Estimate the satiety index required for the required body composition change. 2) Prescribe a list of foods that average out to that satiety index. 3) Monitor body composition change and repeat these steps accordingly. (p.27, Ad libitum)

What is the optimum meal frequency for ad libitum diets?

In conclusion, ad libitum diets can be successful on practically any meal frequency. However, several studies suggest eating 6 or more meals per day can increase energy intake. Given that eating just 2 meals a day may not allow you to maximize protein balance across the whole day and implement optimal nutrient timing (see previous course topics), it's generally advisable to consume 3-4 meals a day with the occasional situation where 2 or 5 meals fit best into a person's lifestyle. Anecdotally, lower meal frequencies tend to be more convenient when energy intake is low, simply because with a higher meal frequency your serving sizes end up impractically small and satiety after meals will be low. (p.49, Ad libitum)

Why starches are so easy to overeat on compared to fruits and vegetables?

In practice, liquids are a terrific way to increase satiety on an ad libitum diet. The higher the liquid content of a food, the more satiating it is, generally. Consuming more fruits and vegetables is a highly effective way to decrease ad libitum energy intake. One of the key reasons food processing reduces its satiety index is because it reduces the liquids. It's why starches are so easy to overeat on compared to fruits and vegetables. If you dry out the fruit though, the difference becomes much smaller. Vegetables at some point become chips if you dry them out enough. (p.11, Ad libitum)

List of low-calorie and high satiating foods

In terms of filling, low calorie foods, nothing beats the following list. 1) Vegetables, including pumpkin, preferably dark (green) ones, excluding potatoes and similar starches that are not commonly regarded as vegetables. 2) Strawberries, blackberries, grapefruit, papaya, chayote, starfruit, hog plums and peaches (especially peaches on sugar-free syrup). 3) Vinegar, mustard, low calorie condiments, herbs and spices and anything with zero calories. 4) Lean protein source, notably egg whites, chicken breast, white fish, tuna, organ meat (kidney/liver), 1% beef, cottage cheese, quark and Greek yogurt. (p.3, Hunger Management)

Why is it difficult to get into contest shape without tracking and restricting your macros?

It is exceedingly difficult to get into contest shape without tracking and restricting your macros directly, at least without drugs. Your appetite soars too high and your cognitive resources become too fatigued. In evolutionary terms, it would be very maladapted for the body to be able to lean down below a healthy body fat percentage while eating as much as it wants. Our taste also broadens as our body fat percentage decreases. It's not uncommon for individuals in contest prep to genuinely enjoy many vegetable or zero- calorie based dishes they can't stand when bulking. There's even an acute effect. Our sense of smell improves while fasting and decreases when we're satiated. (p.54, Ad libitum)

Why we should care more about other things than just Macronutrients?

It thus makes no sense at all to talk about 'protein' and 'carbs'. Many fitness enthusiasts become so obsessed with macronutrients they forget there's more to food. Meals with the same macronutrient intake can have very different effects on our appetite. For example, a breakfast with the same macros of goat dairy is more satiating than that breakfast with cow dairy. You can easily experience this yourself as well. Just think of a tasty whey shake compared to beaten casein fluff 'milkshake' that has swollen up to three times its volume. Same macros, but the fluffed-up casein is far more satiating than the watery whey. (p.17, 18, Ad libitum) When we compare different foods with different macros, the differences become extreme. Sugar and vegetables are both 'carbs' and butter and avocado are both 'fats', but is there anyone in their right mind who thinks they're equally satiating? Forget macros. Think food. (p.18, Ad libitum)

Why being lean doesn't require living on chicken breast and protein shakes?

Make sure you consume enough protein to support your activity level but don't worry about having to consume more than that. Factors like energy density and fiber are far more important than protein intake for satiety after you've covered protein requirements. Protein is not inherently more satiating than carbs or fats, so if you don't like high protein foods all that much, you can be just as satiated with other foods you like more. Being lean doesn't require living on chicken breast and protein shakes. Good alternatives for satiety, not to mention your wallet, include potatoes, beans, vegetables and most fruits. Experiment beyond protein and you may end up not just more satiated but also more satisfied. (p.18, Ad libitum)

Why carbs are not more satiating than fats?

Many textbooks state carbs are more satiating than fats. While it's clear that satiety is negatively related to energy density, fats are not inherently less satiating than carbs. - When palatability and energy density are matched, high-fat foods are just as satiating as high-carb foods and the carbohydrate and fat content of food does not predict its satiety index beyond the effects of fiber content and energy density. For example, chocolate and nuts are just as (un)satiating as rice cakes. Avocado and whole eggs are examples of high-fat foods with a relatively low energy density and consequently a relatively high satiety index. - High fat meals are just as satiating as high carb meals when they have the same energy density. - In whole diets matched for energy intake, protein intake and energy density, higher and lower carbohydrate diets again have similar effects on self-reported appetite and hunger hormone levels. (p.19, Ad libitum)

Proximity to food effect

More generally, proximity to food increases your appetite. This can make a huge difference in energy intake with little effect on satiety. People in households in which junk food is visible on the kitchen counter have been found to be over 30 pounds heavier than people in households with a clean kitchen counter. Tip: Don't store food in your kitchen that you don't intend to eat. Simply knowing it's there will increase your appetite and can induce a craving. (p.37, Ad libitum)

How to overcome decision fatigue?

Overcoming decision fatigue is achieved first and foremost by awareness. Realize that you have a limit in terms of how much attention you can spend on non-pleasurable activities that demand willpower to keep at them and plan in more pleasurable break activities. You're not a robot. Remember, the first step to becoming strong is to accept that you're weak. More generally, take care of your overall wellbeing. There's no need for comfort food if you're already comfortable. Secondly, plan your day so that you do not have to make decisions about your diet when you are in a state of decision fatigue: 1) Don't go shopping when you're hungry. 2) Always have a grocery list with you when you go shopping. 3) Systematically purchase what's on the list and leave. You often only have to be in the outer isles of most supermarkets, since the inner isles are just filled with processed crap. 4) Don't do your meal planning after work. Another solution to decision fatigue is to avoid it in the first place. This largely falls under stress management, which is discussed in the course topic on stress. (p.57, Ad libitum)

When your protein intake is already sufficient for body recomposition purposes but you're suffering from hunger, should you increase your protein intake further?

Probably not and here's why. Let's take every bodybuilder's favorite high-protein food: chicken breast. How difficult is it to eat 200 g of chicken breast? Unless you have the appetite of a sarcopenic 80-year old, the answer is: very easy indeed. After you cook it, the food volume is tiny. Even 500 g of chicken breast is no more than a snack for most big guys when it has a nice sauce. 200 g of chicken breast generally has over 250 calories. For those calories, you could eat about 3 pounds of zucchini, as it has only 17 kcal per 100 grams. Which is going to be more filling and appetite suppressing: the baby's handful of tender chicken or the mountain of fibrous zucchini? The answer should be obvious. (p.17, Ad libitum)

What is Satiety Index?

Researchers have quantified how satiating a food is as its satiety index. Since your appetite is quite constant over time, improving your diet's satiety decreases your energy intake and over time results in weight loss. It's like you have 100 units of appetite you must fill every day to avoid hunger. Each type of food fills in X units of appetite per 100 grams. By choosing foods with a higher satiety index, you fill up your appetite quicker and thus consume fewer calories. So increasing your diet's satiety index is a reliable way to lose fat without having to track your calories or suffer hunger. (p.7, Ad libitum)

Different terms regarding satiety

Researchers sometimes distinguish between satiation (being full; the termination of food intake) and satiety (staying full; inter-meal hunger) and also between tonic satiety (your general day-to-day appetite) and episodic satiety (acute hunger). In practice, however, these distinctions are often not relevant. We just care about total energy intake regardless of when this is consumed. (p.6, Ad libitum)

Why being distracted while eating increases voluntary food intake?

Since your appetite is largely controlled by the brain and not your digestive system, being distracted while eating increases voluntary food intake. When your attention is not on your food, the brain is busy with other things than registering your food intake. As a result, it sends a weaker 'stop eating' signal. Mindless eating is part of the reason why people eat more during social events and when eating in front of the TV or when using their smartphone. So focus on your food. What's the point of eating if you're not enjoying it? (p.39, Ad libitum)

How important is sleep to appetite?

Sleep regulates everything, including your appetite, and sleep deprivation is pretty much always bad. 4 Nights of sleeping 4-7 instead of 8 hours a day increase your appetite by 20-22%. In other words, a moderately sleep deprived person on an ad libitum diet that's currently eating at maintenance level can go into a 20% deficit simply by getting more sleep without any change in the diet. Sleep deprivation can also decrease your metabolism. Together with the increase in appetite, this creates what is known as the 'energy gap': a mismatch between energy balance and appetite that causes you to overeat. On an ad libitum diet, getting enough sleep and, just as importantly, having high quality sleep, is crucial. Everything related to perfecting your sleep-wake cycle can be found in the corresponding course topic on sleep. (p.53, Ad libitum)

The smaller the serving size, the better for our weight loss.

Smaller is not better, however. When the plate is obviously too small to hold someone's desired serving size, they will simply serve new food afterwards. There's a limit to how much we can be psychologically tricked. (p.35, Ad libitum)

Why fiber supplements cannot replace whole foods?

Supplements generally don't provide the same benefits as fibrous whole foods. Fiber supplements cannot (yet) rival whole foods in terms of satiety or health, since the health effects of fiber are influenced by the plant's cell walls and many of its other nutrients and phytochemicals during digestion. Some supplements are better than others, but in practice people that rely on supplements to consume enough fiber have great difficulty becoming, let alone staying, very lean. (p.21, Ad libitum)

Sensory Specificity

The body has evolved to cause you to stop eating when you have consumed enough. What is enough? It depends on what you're eating. If you only have access to fish, you will not eat as much as when you also have access to steak, even though these foods may have the same satiety index. Since they contain different nutrients, it is in the interest of the body to consume both of them. Physiologically, the mechanism that governs this is sensory-specificity. Your appetite's negative feedback loop is sensory-specific. You do not become 'full'. Rather, you become demotivated to consume certain flavors. This is why you always have room for dessert. You may have satiated your appetite for sushi, but you still have an appetite for strawberry ice-cream. The greater the variety of foods in a meal, the greater your appetite is. As such, reducing the variety of foods in your diet is an effective method to decrease ad libitum energy intake. Since sensory-specificity is particularly relevant during a meal, reducing per-meal variety is particularly effective. Reducing the variety of foods in the diet as a whole may not be needed to curb your appetite. (p.38, Ad libitum)

Top tier of satiety index foods

The following foods comprise the top tier of the satiety index based on a combination of research and Menno's experience: 1) Highly viscous (think cement) cottage cheese, quark and casein. 2) Egg whites. 3) Fibrous vegetables, including pumpkin, bean sprouts, green veggies, mushrooms 4) and cauliflower (not including potatoes and similar starches that are not commonly regarded as vegetables). 5) Strawberries, blackberries, grapefruit, papaya, hog plums and peaches. (p.25, Ad libitum)

Gastric Stretch Receptors

The gut has gastric stretch receptors that signal satiation in response to pressure. These sensors quite literally measure how full your stomach is. So more food volume, even if it's just water or air as in carbonated beverages or a beaten protein shake, is more satiating than less food. (p.10, Ad libitum)

Why is it difficult to control our satiety in the modern day?

The more you like food, the more you eat of it. In natural/paleo settings, we tend to like food that we need. So it makes sense to eat what we want. This is what our feelings do. They are the messengers of our genes that make us act on their behalf. The survival of our genes is all that matters in evolution's never-ending competition. Unfortunately for us, what our conscious mind wants and what our genes want is not always the same. And in modern society, what we like to eat is no longer what we need. Needs are no longer on the table. To really limit your appetite, it can be a good idea to follow a typical bodybuilding diet. Sure, broccoli and white fish aren't very tasty. But sometimes it's most important to just not be hungry. On the bright side, the body learns to like what we eat. Many people have experienced this themselves. You become accustomed to healthy foods, and hyper-sweet beverages end up tasting like poison when you've become used to eating whole foods. And most people don't need to diet to below the healthy body fat range anyway. (p.45, Ad libitum)

Spectrum of fullness

There's a difference between eating until you're no longer hungry, until you're comfortably full and until you're completely full. For maximum wellbeing, men typically prefer to eat until they're full for maximum wellbeing, whereas women prefer not to eat until they're completely full. It's good to realize this and ask yourself where on this spectrum you stand and if you're still enjoying your food. Is the next bite going to be enjoyable or are you mindlessly stuffing yourself even though your stomach already hurts? (p.40, Ad libitum)

Why ad libitum diets are not as good for bulking as for cutting?

This module of ad libitum diet is written from the perspective of someone who's cutting, since that will be the case the majority of the time. All of these tips and findings also apply to bulking in reverse, but it is exceedingly rare to find a natural trainee that truly has problems consuming enough calories. This is what we call a luxury problem, and choosing less satiating foods will suffice in the majority of cases without the need for behavioral change or psychological tricks. Moreover, ad libitum dieting is much less suitable for a lean bulk than a cut because you can't control energy intake as meticulously. During a cut, you have significant leeway with your day to day energy intake. (p.28, Ad libitum) As you learned in the course module on energy, given the same weekly energy intake, fat loss will be similar in practice regardless of the distribution of said energy intake. Thus, if you end up in 10% deficit one day and 15% the next instead of in a 12.5% deficit every day, that's perfectly fine. Even if one day you end up with a much greater deficit than planned, that's similar to a planned PSMF day, and it will not adversely affect progress as long as your average daily energy deficit over the surrounding days is on target. (p.28, 29, Ad libitum) During a lean bulk, however, you do not have this luxury. As you learned, there's quite a precise optimum level of energy surplus that maximizes muscle growth and any net energy surplus beyond that mostly ends up as fat storage. Your body can only build so much muscle in one day. Conversely, because the sweet spot energy surplus is so small for most people, eating a little less will not achieve energy surplus and therefore not maximize muscle growth, especially if this occurs during your anabolic windows. As such, while cutting on an ad libitum diet is very viable, bulking without precisely tracking your energy intake will typically either results in excess fat gain or a significantly reduced rate of progress, if not both. (p.29, Ad libitum)

Tips on Dinnerware

Tips 1) Serve your food on plates that are only just big enough to hold the food. 2) Serve your food on brightly colored plates that contrast strongly with your food. 3) Serve your food on the center of the plate and arrange it horizontally. 4) Use relatively small cutlery. (p.36, Ad libitum)

How to avoid getting hunger pangs?

To avoid getting hunger pangs, it is therefore best to maintain relatively strict meal times. You don't have to eat at the exact same times every day though. Menno's general recommendation based on the research and his experience is that 2-hour windows for your meal times are sufficiently consistent to avoid considerably increasing your appetite. (p.47, Ad libitum)

True or False? The higher level of endurance training and physical level, the more food your body will need to consume and the higher your appetite will be.

True. The exact effect of exercise on your appetite appears to depend on your total daily activity level. Several lines of research have found there is an optimum level of physical activity for maximum appetite suppression. Compared to being sedentary, which is an evolutionarily alien level of activity for humans, a more active lifestyle decreases your appetite (win-win!). However, as your activity level increases to very high levels, as commonly researched in high level endurance training, your body tries to offset the increased energy expenditure by stimulating you to consume more food. If you sit on your ass the whole day, this doesn't prevent you from getting hungry. In fact, you're probably less hungry in general if you're busy. However, on days with an extraordinarily high activity level, you may also notice you have an above average appetite. (p.51, Ad libitum)

True or False? Popcorn has better satiety index than potato chips.

True. A better snack option would be popcorn. It's still corn, but blowing it up makes it fluff up with air, decreasing its energy density. 100 kcal of popcorn is significantly more filling than 150 kcal of potato chips. (p.10, Ad libitum)

True or False? Reducing the average calorie density of your diet helps reduce your hunger.

True. By far the most common culprit of hunger is simply not eating enough food. Food's don't differ that much in how satiating they are, but they do differ enormously in how many calories they have. Your stomach roughly senses total pressure on the gut receptors, not calorie intake, so one of the most effective ways to reduce your hunger is to reduce the average calorie density of your diet. (p.3, Hunger Management)

True or False? Caloric liquids such as sodas only have a very short-term satiety.

True. Consuming more water is also an effective way to decrease ad libitum energy intake. Here too the volume, not the energy content, of the liquids is what matters. Caloric liquids, such as sodas, are no more satiating than water generally, which means liquid calories should be minimized during a diet when hunger is an issue. Moreover, water and gas tend to result in only very short-term satiety and the effect is not as potent as that of solid food with comparable volume. If your meal itself just isn't satiating enough, you can only compensate for this to a limited extent by drinking a lot of water. (p.11, Ad libitum)

True or False? Grains, beans, and legumes have similar satiety index to white bread.

True. Grains, beans and pulses in general have a poor satiety index and often do not reduce energy intake more than white bread. They may have a bit more fiber or protein than white bread, but they have basically the same energy density, so it's all very much the same for the body's food intake sensors. (p.10, Ad libitum)

True or False? Satiety is more influenced by food volume than food energy content.

True. In fact, satiety is more strongly influenced by food volume than food energy content. Since food volume on a calorie-equated basis is the inverse of caloric density, food volume is strongly related to how few calories a food has per 100 g. The fewer calories per 100 g a diet or meal has, the more satiating it is and the fewer calories you consume on it. This knowledge gives you enormous control over how satiating a meal plan is, as you now have a numerical estimate of any diet's satiety index. (p.10, Ad libitum)

True or False? Vegetables are far more satiating than high-protein foods.

True. In general, vegetables are far more satiating than high-protein foods. For example, a given volume of mushrooms in a lunch meal is just as satiating as that volume of meat, even though the meat contains far more protein and total calories. When you equate for protein content, mushrooms are significantly more satiating than meat. Eating mushrooms instead of meat also decreased energy intake and consequently improved weight loss in a year-long study. The combined effects of energy density and fiber on satiety can easily overshadow the satiating effect of protein. (p.17, Ad libitum)

True or False? Different types of fat can have different satiety indices.

True. It's an oversimplification to group all fats together. Different types of fat can have different satiety indices. For example, medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) have a relatively high satiety index compared to long-chain triglycerides. PUFAs may also be more satiating than MUFAs. (p.19, Ad libitum)

True or False? Most people that want to stay lean are best off eliminating all liquid calories from their diet.

True. Most people that want to stay lean are best off eliminating all liquid calories from their diet. Small amounts of coconut water, almond/cashew milk and milk in coffee (especially when beaten) and the like can be fine though. (p.23, Ad libitum)

True or False? In an ad libitum diet, consuming sugar will thus easily cause you to overeat.

True. Not all foods are equally satiating. Sugar, for example, has almost zero satiating effect and barely influences subsequent energy intake when eating intuitively. In an ad libitum diet, consuming sugar will thus easily cause you to overeat. That's why sugar's notorious for being fattening even though calorie per calorie it's not more fattening than, say, watermelon. (p.7, Ad libitum) If you have overweight people eat 2 cups of watermelon daily, they generally end up consuming fewer calories than they were before and over time they'll lose fat, whereas the same number of calories in the form of cookies will cause them to overeat and gain fat. (p.7, Ad libitum)

True or False? It's the satiety, not the total amount of food you ate, that makes you happy.

True. Not only do we typically eat most of what we're served regardless of how much it is, we're also susceptible to how a portion size is called. Changing the label of a fixed portion size from 'regular' to 'half-size' can cause us to eat 41% more food. Most people have a mental reference of how much of an appetite we have. "I'm a big eater." or "I despise stuffing myself and prefer to snack, like the French." We use this mental reference to select what portion size we likely want and then we eat most of that even if it's actually too much. Crucially, people don't typically have higher meal satisfaction after larger portion sizes. Portion size does not affect the activity of reward pathways in the brain. It's the satiety, not the total amount of food you ate, that makes you happy. (p.32, Ad libitum)

True or False? Increasing your fiber intake substantially may effortlessly put you in a 20% energy deficit.

True. On average in research, every 14 g of fiber reduces ad libitum energy intake by 10%, though the effect is smaller for leaner individuals. That's a major effect. Increasing your fiber intake substantially may effortlessly put you in a 20% deficit. All recommended fiber sources from the Carbohydrates course module score well on the satiety index and you should consider the recommended fiber intakes a bare minimum when hunger is a problem during dieting. (p.21, Ad libitum)

True or False? Portion sizes of food are perceived as larger and better liked when they are put in the center of the plate.

True. Portion sizes of food are also perceived as larger and better liked when they are put in the center of the plate instead of on the site and arranged horizontally instead of vertically. (p.35, Ad libitum)

True or False? Instructing people to limit their portion sizes has been found to increase weight loss success in various settings.

True. Since appetite regulation is very meal-specific with imperfect compensation in subsequent meals, instructing people to limit their portion sizes has been found to increase weight loss success in various settings. Even if you are aware of the self- trickery, it still works. This is a common finding in psychology: humans are only partially capable of rationally overriding their emotional system. It's just like with visual illusions: knowing the illusion doesn't make it go away. (p.33, Ad libitum)

True or False? Low-fat food variants is a highly effective way to reduce your ad libitum energy intake.

True. Since fat has an inherently higher energy density than carbohydrate per gram, switching to low-fat food variants is a highly effective way to reduce your ad libitum energy intake. In practice, this is particularly useful when total energy intakes have to be pushed so low that carbohydrate intake falls below the 100-200 grams per day range. In this case, it's typically best for appetite management to go with a low-fat diet or to go with a fully ketogenic diet. (p.20, Ad libitum)

True or False? Soluble fiber supplements can help improve fat loss by reducing your appetite and thereby making you consume fewer calories.

True. That said, a person is better off consuming enough fiber in the form of a supplement than not consuming enough in the first place from nothing but whole foods. Soluble fiber supplements in particular can help improve fat loss by reducing your appetite and thereby making you consume fewer calories. (p.21, 22, Ad libitum)

True or False? Men tend to eat twice as much when in the company of women.

True. The gender of your company matters as well. Men tend to eat almost twice as much when in the company of women, presumably as a demonstration of their masculinity. Women eat the same amount of food regardless of their company's gender, though they tend to falsely believe that they eat more in the company of men. (p.46, Ad libitum)

True or False? The satiety index of a food is not inherently related to its carbohydrate or fat content, only to its total energy density.

True. The satiety index of a food is not inherently related to its carbohydrate or fat content, only to its total energy density. In practice, high fat foods are easy to overeat on because they are also highly caloric, but equally caloric starches are just as easy to overeat. Foods rich in carbs as well as fats are the worst of both worlds, as they are actually even easier to overeat on than you'd predict based on their energy density. (p.20, Ad libitum)

True or False? The presence of other people can make you overeat.

True. The social situation in which you're eating can greatly influence how much you eat. We've already seen how just the presence of other people can make you overeat, mostly by distracting you. However, the implied social norms of the environment also play a strong role. If your eating company orders salads and low-calorie foods, you likely won't be in the mood to completely stuff yourself, whereas if everyone's stuffing themselves, you'll probably be inclined to join them. (p.46, Ad libitum)

True or False? The least satiating foods are foods that are high in carbs and fats.

True. Combining carbs and fats in the same meal typically fosters overeating. The least satiating foods are consistently foods that are high in carbs and fats. Meals rich in carbs and fats also hyper-stimulate reward pathways in the brain. (p.20, Ad libitum)

True or False? It appears the brain directs us to consume at least ~15% of energy intake as protein.

True. It appears the brain directs us to consume at least ~15% of energy intake as protein, as hunger increases below this point but satiety does not increase above it. The average optimum protein intake for satiety may be a bit higher for some people though, as several studies find benefits of going higher than 15% in protein for satiety. 15% of energy intake corresponded to only 64-75 g protein per day in these studies and it was often insufficient to optimize body recomposition, so it's not surprising the average sweet spot for hunger control was higher than that in these studies. (p.16, Ad libitum)

True or False? Women tend to experience greater satiety from fats than men. (p.19)

True. Women tend to experience greater satiety from fats than men. (p.19, Ad libitum)

Doggy-bagging

We can reduce the clean plate effect with doggy-bagging: packaging and storing your food for later consumption reduces our tendency to overeat large portion sizes. So it's good to always keep in mind you can put your food in the fridge and eat it later. (p.32, Ad libitum)

Ad libitum

We set our food choices so that we end up eating X number of calories. The Latin, meaning "at one's pleasure", may make it sound as if this is a special way of dieting, but it is in fact the natural way the vast majority of the population eats: until they're full. (p.4, Ad libitum)

Serving size effect on appetite

We tend to eat what we're served and have little objective idea of actual portion size or energy intake. We're even fundamentally unaware that we're unaware. Appetite is not purely something that builds up over time and is satiated via eating. To decide when the body has had enough food, it cannot simply register nutrients and send a stop signal when enough nutrients have been consumed. The digestive process takes far too long for this to work. So the brain needs to estimate how much appetite should be generated. The brain uses all the information with predictive value to determine how much appetite is needed to consume enough food, even if these cues do not make logical sense. One of these cues is your serving size. Rather than you deciding how much you're going to eat and basing your serving size on that, a lot of research indicates your serving size also greatly influences how much you eat. Psychologically, your serving size suggests this is the expected amount of food you should consume. In various settings, larger serving sizes result in up to 30% more caloric intake. (p.31, Ad libitum)

List of recommended calorie-free liquid

While liquids aren't as satiating as solid foods per unit of volume, many liquids are free in terms of calories. Be sure to drink a lot, especially during and right before meals. Liquid calories are extremely unsatiating per calorie, so stick with calorie-free liquids. 1) Decaff teas and coffee. Tip: You can make extremely low-calorie cappuccino with sucralose powder and just 25 ml of skimmed milk if you beat it thoroughly. 2) Herbal teas. 3) Water, preferably carbonated water. The gas puts extra pressure on the pressure receptors in your gut, increasing your satiation. 4) Diet sodas. There's nothing wrong with artificial sweeteners. (p.5, Hunger Management)

How much protein do we need?

With protein leverage in mind, 'how satiating is protein?' is the wrong question to ask. We should instead ask: how much protein do we need? As you learned in the course module on protein, the answer to that is generally 1.6 g/kg/d. Protein leverage theory would thus predict 1.6 g/kg/d is the optimal protein intake for satiety as well with no further benefits of going higher in protein. In sedentary individuals, the optimal protein intake for satiety should be lower in accordance with their lower bodily protein requirement. (p.15, Ad libitum)

How to implement ad libitum diet in combination with macro tracking?

You can combine ad libitum dieting with macro tracking by tracking some but not other foods or meals in the diet. Example: not tracking foods with fewer than 50 kcal per 100 g but otherwise tracking macros normally. (p.28, Ad libitum)

How to implement ad libitum diet by must-have foods?

You can prescribe certain quantities of must-have foods. Must-haves tend to be preferred to may-nots. This can work well to ensure sufficient fiber, omega-3 or total fat intake. For example, if you see that during contest prep, someone is eventually only consuming lean protein sources and vegetables, you can add the rule that they have to consume 2 avocados and 4 flaxseed fed eggs to ensure a good fat intake. (p.28, Ad libitum)

Why training hard and eat less than your level of satiety does not work?

You should also make sure you at least come close to your optimum level of satiety. Trying to train yourself to just eat less doesn't work. You have a certain appetite and you need to satiate that. Just eating less isn't a solution, as it doesn't suppress the fundamental reason you want to eat: hunger. The truly effective solution is to manage your appetite better, such as by eating foods with a lower caloric density and a higher satiety index. So make sure to satiate yourself, but don't eat more than you need to achieve this. (p.40, Ad libitum)

How is your appetite related to your lean body mass?

Your body's appetite has a strong homeostatic regulation: it not only increases when you're losing fat and decreases when you gain fat, it is also strongly linked with your total lean body mass. The correlation between lean body mass and your appetite is actually even stronger than the relation between fat mass and your appetite. Most strength trainees have personally experienced this. After you've built up an appreciable amount of muscle mass, you should notice that your appetite has increased considerably and you can no longer live without hunger on the relatively puny amount of food you consumed before your lifting days. A direct correlation between lean body mass and your appetite makes perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view. The more lean body mass you have, the greater your energy expenditure and so the greater your energy requirement. To maintain homeostasis between energy intake and energy expenditure, a greater appetite is needed to fuel a person with more lean body mass. Both theoretically and empirically, the current evidence suggests that the relation between your appetite and fat-free mass is strongly mediated by your metabolic rate. (p.55, Ad libitum)

Ebbinghaus-Titchener & Delboeuf effect

Your brain is also susceptible to the size of your plate and its spatial orientation and color in relation to the food on it. This results in the Ebbinghaus-Titchener size-contrast illusion and the Delboeuf effect. Specifically, you tend to perceive your food intake as larger when: 1) It is served on a small plate and 2) The plate's color is very different from the food's (high contrast). (p.35, Ad libitum)

Visual illustration of the principle of energy density.

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