Eric Hubscher Fitness Training: Can't Get Enough Food: Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills, California, Southern California, Ventura County, Calabasas, Performance FItness Institute

Satiety is technically defined as a state or condition of satisfaction. In other words, it's the full gratification of appetite or thirst resulting in the elimination of the desire to consume more food or liquid.

Put more simply, it's when you feel and have no desire to continue eating. the mechanisms and events that lead to this state are numerous, quite complex and, on the whole, poorly understood. This article will present several factors that lead to the consumption of TOO MANY CALORIES, often sabotaging one's attempt for weight loss.

The mechanics involved in fat and weight loss are quite simple. If you consume FEWER calories than you expand, you loose weight. However, in order to reach or maintain your fat-loss goals, your body and mind must achieve a sense of fullness and satisfaction from the foods and liquids you consume.

If reaching your desired body weight leaves you hungry and lethargic, the likelihood of long-term success is remote at best. If you can't continue to live the lifestyle it took to get in shape, you won't be able to stay in shape for long.

At this time, we should distinguish between hunger and appetite. Hunger is the true physiological need for nourishment. Appetite, however, is simply the desire to eat and has nothing to do with the need to eat.

In my quest to better educate you, the following is a short essay on eating, weight loss and understand the mind-set to maintain weight loss. If you are serious about weight loss then the 10 - 15 minutes it will take you to read this and understand it will be worth it.

So why do we feel the need to eat? There are two main reasons we eat. In the case of real hunger, the physiological need for nourishment signals the body that it's time to take in more energy. In the case of appetite, it's learned association and habits surrounding food and eating that trigger a psychological desire for food.

Humans are designed to consume food and fluids until the nutritional needs of our tissues and organs are fulfilled. However, this isn't our only trigger for satiety. If it were, our desire to eat would end immediately upon consuming what we need, rather than continuing to eat after we are full.

Newborns up to six weeks old may be the only thur depletion-driven eaters. They eat only until the amount they need, and only when they need it, because they haven't yet had food-related experiences.

To maintain current body weight and composition, the amount of calories we burn must match the calories we eat and absorb. But in loosing weight, we can't eat so little and burn so many calories that we are always hungry. We must arrive at the satiety level so that we can comfortably stop eating.

Nearly all humans are born with a craving for sweetness. Newborns are a perfect example of this. Obviously, without learned eating behaviors, a newborn responds positively to sweetness and negatively to bitterness. These biases were probably necessary at one time for the survival of the species. Bitterness tends to be correlated with toxins and sweetness with energy, favoring the bias for sweetness.

This innate human characteristic causes us to crave sweets even when we are not hungry. Unfortunately, food manufactures upon the natural craving to lure customers into eating more than necessary. Evry restaurant provides a dessert tray after a large meal, and delicious, nutritionally useless foods are everywhere you look.

Eat meals that contain a ratio of nutrients - protein, fat, carbs and fiber that leave you feeling energetic and full. Eat them at least three to four times a day, depending on your total allowed caloric intake.

Each of these nutrients effects satiety in unique ways. When consumed together at each meal, they may initiate and prolong satiety better than if eaten alone. If you still want something sweet following a full meal, either satisfy the craving with a low-calorie dessert or just ignore it. Just because we feel the desire to eat something sweet doesn't mean that the body needs it, this desire usually subsides about 30 minutes after the meal as the internal satiety cues are triggered and received by the brain. Dessert is a habit, and as such can be broken or replaced by a better habit.

Evidence is accumulating that genetics may influence both the likelihood that a given individual will become fat, and what percentage of body fat will settle into as an adult. This idea is the basis of the "set-point theory" and it means that attempts to alter this "set-point" of weight or fatness triggers the body to take steps to revert back to it. The body does this trrough several mechanisms that cause increased food consumption, decreased energy expenditure, or both.

However, this is not to say that your genetics are a death-sentence for the body you desire. Ultimately, our lifestyles, such as our eating and exercise habits, determine to what degree our genetics influence the shape of our bodies. Although your ancient ancestors may have had the same set-point as you, it is unlikely that they reached it. The energy they expended in acquiring and preparing food increased the energy cost of eating. Also, food was not as readily available as it is today, making chronic overfeeding unlikely. Today, we drive a car to the grocery store and buy prepared foods, reaching our energy cost of eating. Genes also get the opportunity to express themselves because of our sedentary lifestyles.

Your current lifestyle dictates your current body. You must adhere to the principles of your fitness plan, which means making gradual changes and incorporating a realistic amount of work with realistic and convenient foods. Upon achievement of your body weight goal, maintaining your weight depends on whether or not you like the lifestyle you have adopted to achieve it. At times, vanity and health can help defeat an appetite that would destroy the goal. But the bottom line remains the same...you must become addicted to you new lifestyle.

We often drink and eat when we are not truly hungry. Holiday feasting, going out after dinner for drinks with friends, and consuming buttered popcorn throughout a movie are but a few examples of eating as a result of social or ritual influences instead of actual hunger.

Following the newborn period, children begin to have food experiences that influence their eating behaviors for life. These behaviors interact with the body's signals to control appetite and satiety. These learned cues are created in part by our parents, culture, commercial influences, at cetera. Keep in mind that these are learned cues, and as such, they can be unlearned.

Eat a healthy snack before attending an event. People make bad food choices when they are hungry. Eating properly throughout the day will help you to make wiser food choices and maybe even bypass ritual foods.

Eating behaviors and patterns developed during youth, passed on to you by your parents or peers will affect your choices throughout your life. High-calorie foods and desserts after meals may not have been a problem during youth, when energy expenditure was high, but now, forced into less activity by sedentary jobs in adulthood, these behaviors lead to energy storage that result in the accumulation of body fat. Ethnic groups consuming mainly foods indigenous to their culture for many generations develop a digestive physiology or enzymes that are compatible with the food they eat. Therefore, changing foods, if necessary, may be unpleasant until one's digestive tract adapts to the new food choices.

Can your mood affect your appetite, or, more specifically, a craving for a particular food, like chocolate? There ahs been a fair amount of research in the area of food, mood and appetite, but any conclusions drawn from this data have had little effect on our expanding waistlines. No one has to be stuck with sinful food cravings for life.

Always try to make more good food choices than bad ones. But, you may incorporate some of your foods cravings into a healthy diet. The level where regular satiety occurs varies for each individual, influenced by genetic predisposition and learned behaviors.

Ask a friend who has reached and maintained a fat-loss goal. You will often find that the baked potato dipping with butter, the fast food hamburgers, the sauces and the milkshakes they used to enjoy no longer tastes good, and may even be considered unappetizing. This is because they have acclimated to healthy, lower-calorie, high-volume foods that allow then to look and feel great. This individual won't allow anything to interrupt this feeling. In other words, they have unlearned these food-craving behaviors and replaced them with positive and beneficial eating habits.

In today's environment, people often consume food or drink even though they're not hungry because of the social settings, type of food available or because of the habits they have learned.

Additionally, at some level, people aren't regularly satiated until they reach a certain weight or percentage of body fat, then internal or physiological cues direct them to maintain that daily energy intake. This causes the body-fat level to remain fairly constant.

Depending on your genetics, this "set-point" may take place at a low, moderate or high percentage of body fat. Learned behaviors may override this internal mechanism, creating a weight-control problem. Ultimately though, we are all responsible for what we eat, and how much we move our body each day. Finding a balance of sensible choices, behaviors and enjoyment is the key to long-term success.