Historically, dieting is about refraining, by limiting portions, forbidding special types of foods, and reducing or changing the times of eating. Most of my obese clients who are victims of extreme dieting never get to enjoy their food. They eat bland foods and repeat a lot of the same boring meals; often these are (in the case of so-called diet foods) devoid of the nutrients that boost the feel-good hormones in your body that keep you satis?ed and vitalized. Not only do they end up hungry, but they’re also bored and depressed.
Dieting can be such an isolating experience. Life just isn’t as much fun without delicious food. Eating that way is restrictive, it is dull, and it certainly isn’t e?ective, because your natural food-sensing system gets all messed up.
So another thing the Fast Metabolism Diet is going to do is to encourage you to use all of your senses in a positive way, to help stimulate your metabolism again and be social and create a community around your new way of eating. Pleasure is powerful and stimulates the secretion of endorphins, reduces stress hormones, increases the metabolism—and it helps fat burn!
PLEASURE: NATURE’S METABOLISM BOOSTER
Stress triggers the metabolism to slow down, and the system senses an emergency and goes into fat-storage mode. Stress can also increase cortisol and minimize the thyroid hormone’s effect on the metabolism. Pleasure has just the opposite effect. When you take pleasure in the food you eat, you actually work with nature to speed things up. And bonus: you won’t need to overeat.
Pleasure stimulates the metabolism by triggering the adrenals to produce endorphins. These endorphins—what we know as the feel-good brain messengers—stimulate the brain to produce serotonin, a mood-elevating brain hormone that in turn stimulates the thyroid to produce the fat-burning hormone. Talk about a chain reaction.
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