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How is the Don’t Go Hungry Diet different from conventional diets?
Science shows that when you lose weight with any method, sooner or later your body's Famine Reaction is activated as a way of protecting you from losing more weight.
Conventional diets force you to work against your body in an attempt to keep losing weight. You're encouraged to resist the nagging hunger bought about by your Famine Reaction and to quash hunger pangs by drinking water or by eating vegetables from the 'free list', for instance. As a molecular scientist, we now know that these types of strategies only serve to exacerbate the Famine Reaction and make weight loss unnecessarily difficult.
Exciting new research shows that you can disarm the Famine Reaction and achieve more effective weight loss simply by eating whenever you feel physically hungry. So the difference with the Don't Go Hungry Diet is that as you lose weight and your Famine Reaction is activated, instead of struggling with unsatisfying diet portions, you simply follow your hunger signals and eat as much as you need to eat.
By eating the types and quantities of food that make you feel really satisfied (being sure to choose mostly nutritious, wholesome foods), you convince your body that there really is no threat famine. In this way, your Famine Reaction is kept in check as you lose weight; you no longer have to struggle with nagging hunger, and you no longer have to fight against nature to lose weight because your body doesn't slip into the fat-conserving mode it uses in times of famine.
In addition to disarming your Famine Reaction as you lose weight, The Don't Go Hungry Diet also helps your Fat Brake do its job of preventing weight gain. When you eat the foods that help your Fat Brake work at its best, and when you follow the signals it sends you (e.g. when you're not hungry, do something else besides eat), your Fat Brake helps you keep the weight off, automatically.
The Don't Go Hungry Diet therefore enables you to lose weight and keep it off more effectively and with less effort than ever before.
What our readers say...
"Dear Amanda, I recently read your book a second time. The first time I read it, I was impressed but it took me another year before I was ready to seriously have a go. I am now on my third month of keeping a success diary. I have lost 4 kg, 3 in the first month and 1 in the second. I always have eaten a relatively healthy diet but I have had to learn to leave food on my plate. We grow a lot of our own food and I am a dedicated cook, so it was hard to get used to the idea that throwing food away was actually less wasteful than eating it when I have had enough. That was a big challenge, but I think I can do it now. Keeping the success diary has made me more aware of when I am up to 3+ and I can stop before I get to 4+. I was a bit disappointed to only lose 1 kg in March but encouraged by all the stories in your book and in your newsletter that losing weight slowly is the way to lose it for ever. I wonder if the slow down in weight loss is evidence of the Famine reaction setting in? In the past I would have been so discouraged at this point that I would have given up the diet. But this isn’t really a diet that I can give up, but a whole different way of thinking about eating. The really big difference to my weight loss attempts this time is that I got the exercise component. I never found ‘going for a walk’ very meaningful, so now I park the car 2kms away from the shops or wherever I am going and walk 2kms there and 2kms back, which feels more meaningful to me. I think in the past I didn’t walk for long enough to experience the benefits of walking and gave up on it because it was time consuming and pointless. Now I have lost weight and sleep better and feel more energetic. I am addicted to my pedometer and try to do 12, 000 steps 4 times a week and 10,000 the other days. I really think this is why I have been able to lose weight this time, more meaningful than my eating patterns. Thank you for your work and I look forward to reading the new book when it is finished. Sally"