Whole Health Source reader Sarah Pugh recently went on a six-week simple food (low reward) diet to test its effectiveness as a weight loss strategy, and she was kind enough to describe her experience for me, and provide a link to her blog where she discussed it in more detail (
1).
Consistent with the scientific literature and a number of previous reader anecdotes (
2), Sarah experienced a reduction in appetite on the simple food diet, losing 15 pounds in 6 weeks without hunger. In contrast to her prior experiences with typical calorie restriction, her energy level and mood remained high over this period. Here's a quote from her blog:
Well, it looks like the theory that in the absence of nice palatable food, the body will turn quite readily to fat stores and start munching them up, is holding up. At the moment, the majority of the energy I use is coming from my insides, and my body is using it without such quibbles as the increased hunger, low energy, crappy thermo-regulation or bitchiness normally associated with severe calorie restriction.
I can't promise that everyone will experience results like this, but this is basically what the food reward hypothesis suggests should be possible, and it seems to work this way for many people. That's one of the reasons why this idea interests me so much.
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