Dieting 2

When you eat, you may not think about portion sizes or even nutrients that you body needs to survive. You may not think about how your body converts your food into what it needs to be sustained. When you want to loose weight it is a good idea to know how your body is going to use the food you consume. You know you are what you eat. It may be cliché but it is the truth. Think about it if you eat all junk with no nutrients then that is what your entire body is going to be made up of.

Think about your digestive system as a highway and along the way you need to make several pit stops. This is how food is used, at each stop your body takes the nutrients it needs at that stop and then moves on to the next. The first stop, after your mouth is the stomach. The stomach uses it’s acids to break the food into manageable pieces. When it leaves your stomach and enters the first part of the intestine called the Duodenum. At this stop your body will pull Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Fat-Soluble Vitamins A and D, and Glucose.

From there the food goes to the Jejunum will pull fat, sucrose, lactose, glucose, proteins, amino acids, fat-soluble vitamins A and D, and water soluble vitamins like folic acid. Then the food moves on to the Ilium, which is the last part of the small intestine. This part pulls proteins, amino acids, water-soluble vitamins like folic acid, and vitamin B-12. From here food moves into the Colon or Large intestine where it takes water, potassium, and sodium chloride from the food before the unused portions leave the body.

Your need energy to run the many parts of your body. The liver helps with this by using carbohydrates, proteins, and fats and turning these into energy. Small fats are used when sugar is not available but until then they are stored as fat. Amino acids that are broken down from proteins are converted into sugar if you haven’t eaten for a while and is also used to build muscles, cartilage, nerves, hair, and organs. Carbs are turned into simple sugars and used by your brain and muscles for energy and stored as fat until used.

When food reaches the small bowel your body releases CCK into the stomach wall, this how the vagus nerve gets the message that you are full and takes the message to the satiety center to let us know that we can stop eating because we are full. Leptin (from Dieting #1) is a long term indicator to the satiety center and CCK is a short term signal. A high-saturated-fat diet lead to less sensitivity to CCK and so you don’t feel as full as you would if it were working correctly. Then there is the elevated blood sugar that is also telling your brain that you are full. If you have diabetes then this signal is not as effective either.

Fiber is a great choice to add to your daily diet. Fiber kills cravings because it slows down the speed at which the food travels from the small intestine to the large intestine. In turn you feel fuller longer and are less likely to raid the cupboard for the Cheetos you bought the other day. You should add about thirty grams of fiber per day and take it in the morning, this will help you fell fuller throughout the day. Another tip is to eat about 70 calories of nuts twenty minutes before you eat a meal. That is about six walnuts, twelve almonds, or twenty peanuts. You’ll stimulate the CCK and will slow down the digestion of your meal and you will feel full much longer and will be less likely to over eat.

Keep it up you will loose the weight yet. Just keep learning about how your body uses food and you will find several ways to help yourself loose the extra weight. You just need to keep working on it and your body will be helping you. Soon you will be wearing a bikini with all of your friends asking how did you do it. Just watch and you will see. Remember your not just dieting you are making your body work for you.