if you're serious about losing belly fat i bet you've already started cutting your calories or you're about to start and even though you can restrict your calories and track every last gram of food that goes into your mouth to eventually burn the fat from all over your body including your midsection the truth is that tracking and restricting calories can be incredibly difficult to sustain over time of course that doesn't change the very well-known fact that to lose weight and belly fat you have to be in a calorie deficit this is the whole reason why so
many trainers have their clients count their calories to begin with and counting calories can definitely help you reduce the size of your waist because it'll help you ensure that you are in fact in a calorie deficit at all times however many people may not want to count calories for the rest of their lives and there's a huge portion of people that simply don't have the time or desire to do it at all on top of that even if someone's great at counting calories in the beginning within a matter of weeks or months chances are very
high that they're no longer tracking their calories and macros anymore and even if you do track everything calorie counting doesn't inherently make dieting easier you'll still struggle with hunger cravings that'll make it very difficult to stay on track as time goes on but the good news is that you don't have to count calories to lose weight even though it can be very beneficial for some people there is another way an easier way and that's something known as an optimized ad libitum diet and for many of you i'm sure you're wondering what an ad libitum diet
is well ad libitum is latin for as you desire or at one's pleasure in other words ad libitum dieting means you can eat as much food as you want i know it might sound crazy but stick with me so you don't track your macros but instead you eat based on hunger now given the fact that you must be in a calorie deficit to lose weight it may seem impossible to reduce your belly fat and get slim without focusing on your caloric intake but that's not true by following a set of guidelines most people can lose
belly fat without tracking calories and without experiencing constant hunger and you do that by eating foods that are highly satiating in other words you want to follow a high satiety meal plan and here's why we can view appetite as something that's more or less genetically fixed you may have a big appetite you may have a small appetite or like most people you probably fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum now imagine your appetite as a tank and pretend that to fill your tank you need to fill it with a hundred units of food per
day each food you eat fills a certain amount of that appetite tank and some foods fill the tank more than others now once you've reached those hundred units you'll feel full and satisfied but if you don't reach that amount you're going to feel hungry and you'll want to eat more the beauty of all this is that different foods have different satiety values in other words some foods satiate hunger better per calorie supply than others if you only eat foods that score high on the satiety index which is a ranking of the most satiating foods if
you were to only do that you would reach that 100 unit mark of fullness earlier than if you were consuming foods that weren't very very satiating that's why a high satiety diet causes you to consume fewer calories while a low satiety diet promotes overeating for example here's a reference from a study that shows the satiety value of 38 foods one thing the study found is that potatoes are seven times more satiating than croissants so even though both potatoes and croissants are relatively fast digesting carbohydrates you're going to feel a lot fuller eating potatoes over croissants
so when you place people on an ad libitum diet their aim is to eat based on food volume let's say for example they're choosing between having four ounces of pasta rice or potatoes since potatoes have anywhere from one-third to half the amount of calories that are found in most grain products they can provide an easy way to reduce your calories without impacting hunger so much we can find the exact opposite with sugar which has almost no effect on satiety at all it won't help you feel any fuller than you were before you ate it and
that's why sugary foods and the calories they provide tend to go on top of the calories that people have already taken in for the day on the other hand if you simply make your diet more satiating that tends to automatically reduce your caloric intake that's why research shows that increasing your diet satiety index is a reliable way to lose fat without having to track your calories or feel starved on top of that a high satiety ad libitum diet has been found to be more effective than the nhs standard care weight loss program in a one
year long study the nhs or the national health service is responsible for setting standard dietary recommendations for weight loss and even so participants following an ad libitum diet got better results despite the fact that they were able to eat as much as they wanted as long as they followed the specific guidelines of choosing foods that were still satiating so now the one question is what makes a diet satiating well there are quite a few factors that determine the satiety index of a food or a diet and i want to give you guys the top four
that have the most significant impact and number one is eating a diet with a high food volume that's right food volume is the primary driver of satiety there are low energy density foods that will provide far fewer calories when eating 100 grams of that food versus 100 grams of a more calorically dense food so you can eat more of these low energy density foods while still burning more fat instead high energy density foods like donuts cheeseburgers and fried foods are worse from a body weight management perspective especially when you take hunger into account eating too
much of these foods tends to cause an excessive energy intake due to their high caloric value you can only eat a small amount of them before you exceed your calorie target so with these calorically dense foods you have to choose between either exceeding your calorie intake just to feel full and satisfied or staying under your calorie target but due to a lack of overall food volume you're going to be feeling hungry meanwhile the main reason why low energy density foods are so filling is because they simply take up more space in your stomach for a
given amount of calories that in turn activates the stretch receptors in your gut which signals to your brain that it's time to stop eating that's why there's a method sometimes used on obese men and women where they implant a silicon balloon and blow it up inside their stomachs to reduce their hunger and aid fat loss since having less space in your stomach leads to an automatic reduction in calorie intake so you can create this effect without some unhealthy invasive procedure just by focusing on foods that supply the fewest calories per 100 grams and you'll see
superior fat loss results because your diet will be more satiating the second thing that highly influences satiety is eating foods that are high in protein foods high in protein raise various satiety hormones such as peptide yy cholecystokinin and glp1 while at the same time lowering the hunger hormone ghrelin so consuming more protein tends to lower your calorie intake automatically in one study for instance researchers raised the protein intake of their subjects from 15 to 30 percent of their daily calorie consumption then they evaluated how that influenced factors like energy intake and body weight the results
showed that consuming more protein led the participants to consume on average 441 fewer calories per day which produce an average weight reduction of 11 pounds in 12 weeks now the third thing you can do is add foods with a higher fiber content because this is an effective way to lower caloric intake on an ad libitum diet as well that's because fiber reduces hunger and causes you to stay full for longer in between meals for example data shows that for every 14 grams of extra fiber you eat add libidum energy intake drops by around 10 percent
and 10 of your calorie intake is saving you hundreds of calories the best way to make sure that you're getting enough fiber is by eating a lot of vegetables vegetables are low in calories but highly satiating fruit can also be an excellent option especially fruits like apples raspberries and pears which score especially high in fiber so feel free to include multiple servings of fruit per day finally the last guideline is to do your best to choose foods with a high viscosity as a rule of thumb viscous or solid foods are a little better at satiating
hunger than those with a low viscosity for example whole oranges satiate hunger better than the same product processed into orange juice that's why it's better to stick to whole foods over liquid foods if you're on an ad libitum diet however with that said if you're in a rush or if you're simply feeling too tired to cook you can throw some vegetables and some fruit into a blender and still fill up your stomach quite a bit helping you avoid making bad decisions when hungry i've mentioned this before as a great strategy to quickly deal with hunger
even though you won't meet the high viscosity guideline when you make a smoothie in a blender you'll still keep the fiber and you're still consuming vegetables that have a very low energy density remember to still use common sense obviously just because a cookie is more solid than a vegetable smoothie doesn't make it a better choice and as a side note i definitely don't recommend juicing because as opposed to blending you lose almost all fiber so based on what we've covered i want to give you a step-by-step action plan to lose weight and belly fat moving
forward first of all avoid the foods that have a poor satiety index due to their high energy density some of these foods can be surprising nuts are a perfect example even though you can of course portion these into a plan where you monitor your calories or you can portion by only allowing yourself to have a limit like a handful if you're on an eat when you're hungry type of diet nuts are definitely not the best snack because they tend to have around 600 calories per 100 grams and research shows that they are no more satiating
than baked goods with the same macronutrient content so we can find other examples with grains beans and pulses which all tend to have a poor satiety index and they usually don't reduce energy intake any more than white bread while these foods may have a bit more protein and fiber than white bread the energy density is the same making them about as poor of a choice for reducing ad libitum calorie intake as white bread and of course as mentioned before sugar is one of the worst for helping satisfy hunger so do your best to eliminate sugar
the second thing that you're going to want to do is choose foods with a high satiety index due to their low energy density i want to show you guys a site that will be linked up in the description below this site provides an outline of what 200 calories of a particular food looks like as you can see you can eat much more celery or carrots than you can eat fruit loops or even peanut butter power bars before you reach that 200 calorie mark since food volume is the primary driver of satiety focus on foods that
are higher up on the list try to eat at least two to three cups of fruit and vegetables per day aiming to have a higher percentage of vegetables than fruits for most people it would be even better to aim to eat even more so around four to five cups of combined fruits and vegetables per day doing that would reduce total calorie intake by a lot which is often enough to promote weight loss all on its own in fact a study found that when overweight people eat two cups of watermelon daily which by the way is
a highly satiating food they generally end up consuming fewer calories than before causing them to lose more fat over time on the other hand if they ate the same number of calories in the form of cookies they would end up overeating and gaining fat in this study on top of eating more food with a higher satiety index there are three final things that i want you to do to make this work first get at least .73 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day as mentioned throughout previous videos this amount helps you optimally
combat diet-induced muscle loss while also helping you control hunger you can technically eat more protein than that amount but that likely won't further reduce hunger this is due to a phenomenon actually called the protein leverage theory second drink half a liter of water before every meal studies have shown that water helps to fill you up and one study in particular showed that when participants drank half a liter or about one plastic bottle of water 30 minutes before breakfast they ate on average 13 fewer calories in other words downing a glass of water before meals can
assist with fat loss because it'll help you naturally eat less and finally the third thing is to do your best to try not to eat your meals in front of a computer screen television or around another form of a distraction that's important because we consume on average 10 percent more calories when we're eating while distracted not only will doing this make you enjoy the food that you're eating more but it'll also help benefit your waistline that about wraps it up guys i really hope that you enjoyed this video if you have make sure you subscribe
to the channel also if you're looking for a done-for-you program that includes a customizable diet plan as well as a full workout plan that can be done at home as well as in a gym and comes with a trainer to help guide you through the entire process and on average is helping my clients lose twenty pounds or five percent of their body fat in only six weeks then click the link below in the description or you can visit my website directly at gravitytransformation.com i'll see you guys soon [Applause] you
