Food Absorption and Weight Flux page

[StephenAegis]

I'm sure someone can point to a good writeup on this.

I'm a firm believer that this explains a ton with initial success, later failure, and a host of sub questions.

All food we take in has to be digested, absorbed, or eliminated.

This process is largely regulated by gut bacteria. We are amazingly adaptive creatures with amazing guts.

Most diets work short-term , I believe this is due to caloric restriction. Inadvertant restriction. As we change our dietary intake drastically, our guts have to adapt to the new caloric source.

Now before we explode into calories in vs out debate, this is calories in vs calories absorbed, an inadvertent restriction in calories

Those people that eat all they want without gaining weight likely have horrible gut health and poor food absorption

Those of us that look at food and gain are simply efficient

Those of us who lost heavy, and started regaining may have simply healed our gut and adapted.

I say this for people eating static amounts, the obvious solution is to be completely honest with your body and not follow societal eating norms and only eat when and portions as you feel you need for satiety.

I find I eat less now than when I started, yet I'm still packing on muscle... But my eating schedule is now erratic ...

[yodiewan]

I'm glad you started this thread, Stephen. I saw your post on this topic in another thread and thought of starting a new thread to address this issue myself. I don't have any research or studies, but I have noticed anecdotally that I am less hungry when my digestion is better. When my digestion is crap, (sorry for the pun) I can eat alot more and not be satisfied. I think this is how, as a child, I was able to eat pretty massive amounts of food on a regular basis and remain very thin. I still do throw down pretty hard on food, but I fast most days so I pretty much have to in order to meet my body's needs. I think I notice the appetite-digestion effect more since incorporating near-daily fasting, as fasting of course makes you more aware of your hunger level (not saying that fasting makes you famished, but you are just more in-tune with your true appetite). I've noticed that if my intake of green vegetables falls too low, my digestion suffers.

[MamaGrok]

Interesting idea. I'm very serious about improving gut health myself, for a multitude of reasons.

I do think there is a difference between people who can actually eat "anything" and "not gain weight" vs. people who just look like they do. I used to think my husband was one of the former, but when I learned to distinguish between grains/sugar and the rest of food, I realized that he just naturally eats only meats, veggies, fruits, dairy, & eggs w/ little grains, b/c that's what he's always naturally leaned to. I used to curse him (figuratively, lol) for eating steak & butter & bacon and never gaining weight, imagining he was eating huge quantities of "unhealthy" food, but now I can see that he eats decent man-sized (ha!) portions of only real foods, and *that's* why he never gains weight. He could never eat anywhere close to the amount of steak to compare to the amount of grains & sweets I used to consume.

If I could be that wrong about how my dh eats, I imagine a lot of naturally lean & strong folk are eating in a similar manner and we just don't realize it. I think the real fundamental difference between me & him is that he just isn't inclined to eat grains/sugar. Why, I still haven't figured out entirely, but have some theories.

[smhsailaway]

This is a great thread!! Having just finally gotten off the "conventional wisdom" via nutrition plans i devour ( bad pun), I notice the less often I eat, not the less food I eat, the better my digestion. Also I notice when on the 5-6 small meals a day clock, some of those 200-300 cal meals just aren't enough for that time of day or what I ahve been doing. So I am either left hungry, or lose it and eat way more, then in 3 hours it's time to do it again and I'm not hungry, but would freak out thinking if I didn't eat my body would go into starvation mode and my next meal healthy or not would find a home either on my belly or hips. All the naturally thin people I know, move all the time, are happy, and eat what they want when they want and stop when they are satisfyed. The also eat far less grains and sugary things than I ate following the best "plans" out there.

I think the biggest obsticle to health and fitness is our making it all harder and more complicated than it needs to be. Everything now-a- days is EXTREME. And worse, if you are not doing the Extreme program, you're somehow not doing enough, or have enough will power. Everywhere we turn there is someone or something telling us we are not enough. It can be exhuasting. Even some here on the PB forum... it can get pretty extreme. That's no cut to them, to each their own, but for myself, extreme actions have only resulted in failure and or burnout. I don't belive that is healthy, nor is it the way I want my life to be like in any aspect. So what I take most seriously about the PB is the intergrated balanced journey of it all. It is my daily affirmation to simply follow the 10 rules to the best of my ability and only in ways that create a joyful experience. I've beat myself up enough.

[Gabriel121]

Tumor-bearing pregnant rats showed impairment in food intake, body weight gain and muscle protein content, which were less accentuated in WL than in WN rats. These metabolic changes led to reduction in both fetal and tumor development. Leucine absorption slightly increased in WN group. In spite of having a significant decrease in leucine and methionine absorption compared to L, the WL group has shown a higher absorption rate of methionine than WN group, probably due to the ingestion of the leucine supplemented diet inducing this amino acid uptake. Glucose absorption was reduced in both tumor-bearing groups.

[sarahmasteller]

I am glad to see this thread started, this is a very interesting subject. Has anyone here taken digestive enzymes? If so what kind and how have they helped? Thanks in advance to any responses. Also I too for the longest time have been doing "mini meals" throughout the day and have wondered if that may have been to my detriment. In some ways it seems to make sense that eating more frequently may keep the metabolism "up" as they say...but on the other hand...it seems to NOT be helping in the area of digestion. I'm still searching for answers myself!

[yodiewan]

For those who didn't read this thread see MalPaz's post #14. Seems to be a paraphrase from Lex. It is along the same lines of what we're talking about here and brings up many interesting points

[sarahmasteller]

Thanks for that link yodiewan