Nutritionist Louis Aronne explains why people fail when dieting

Mar 20, 2009 10:50 GMT  ·  By
Being able to stick to a diet is related to one’s perception of fullness, nutritionist says
   Being able to stick to a diet is related to one’s perception of fullness, nutritionist says

Diets can come extremely in handy in terms of losing weight, with the efficiency of some of them having already been put to the test in extensive studies. With all this, slimmers fail in their mission against the extra pounds, not on account of the diet they choose, but because they can’t seem to be able to stick to it. Giving up on dieting is often a direct consequence of feeling hungry, nutritionist Louis Aronne says for USA Today.

Aronne has helped thousands of people lose weight throughout his career spanning almost 23 years. All this time, he has noticed that the feeling of fullness is directly related to whether a person sticks to a diet or simply discards it to stop feeling hungry all the time, as he also shares in his new book, “The Skinny on Losing Weight Without Being Hungry” (written with Alisa Bowman).

“Many patients say they go off their diets because they are hungry. They don’t feel full. It’s easy to go on a diet, but it’s hard to stick with one if you’re thinking about food all day.” Aronne explains for the aforementioned publication, as to why so many dieters fail to lose weight. Sticking to a diet, he believes, should always imply several easy tricks to “deceive” the mind into believing that the body is full. One of them would be to eat sweet or starchy foods at the end of a meal, and not at the start, in order to control quantities.

“Some patients suffer from what I call fullness resistance – the important hormones (insulin, leptin) that are supposed to induce fullness no longer work effectively. So, the more they eat, the hungrier they seem to get. Their brains can’t seem to register the signals of fullness that are coming from their stomach and intestines. This seems to be a physical, not psychological, issue. So they may have cravings or eat more at a meal and afterward than they should.” the expert tells.

Another thing that can help the dieter trick the body into perceiving a feeling of fullness is as simple as drinking a glass of water before each meal. This, combined with the above-mentioned tip, should significantly aid dieters in their fight against the extra pounds, Aronne assures us.