Top 30 Worst Foods in America (Beware)

Today’s food marketers have loaded many of their offerings with so much fat, sugar, and sodium that eating any of the foods in this article on a daily basis could destroy all your hard work and best intentions of eating healthy. Beware! This list is brought to you by Eat This Not That and Men's Health.
1. Worst Meal in America


Carl’s Jr. Six Dollar Guacamole Bacon Burger with Medium Natural Cut Fries and 32-oz Coke

1,810 calories - 92 g fat (29.5 g saturated, 2 g trans) - 3,450 mg sodium

Of all the gut-growing, heart-threatening, life-shortening burgers in the drive-thru world, there is none whose damage to your general well-being is as potentially catastrophic as this. A bit of perspective is in order: This meal has the caloric equivalent of 9 Krispy Kreme Original Glazed doughnuts, the saturated fat equivalent of 30 strips of bacon, and the salt equivalent of 10 large orders of McDonald’s French fries!
2. Worst Drink


Baskin-Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake

2,600 calories - 135 g fat (59 g saturated, 2.5 g trans) - 1,700 mg sodium - 263 g sugars

We didn’t think anything could be worse than Baskin-Robbins’ 2008 bombshell, the Heath Bar Shake. After all, it had more sugar (266 grams) than 20 bowls of Froot Loops, more calories (2,310) than 11 actual Heath Bars, and more ingredients (73) than you’ll find in most chemistry sets. Yet the folks at Baskin-Robbins have shown that when it comes to making America fat, they’re always up to the challenge. The large Chocolate Oreo Shake is soiled with more than a day’s worth of calories and 3 days’ worth of saturated fat. Worst of all, it takes less than 10 minutes to sip through a straw.
3. Worst Ribs


Outback Steakhouse Baby Back Ribs

2,580 calories

Let’s be honest: Ribs are rarely served alone on a plate. When you add a sweet potato and Outback’s Classic Wedge Salad, this meal is a 3,460-calorie blowout. (Consider that it takes only 3,500 calories to add a pound of fat to your body. Better plan for a very, very long “walkabout” when this meal is over!)
4. Worst Pizza


Uno Chicago Grill Classic Deep Dish Individual Pizza

2,310 calories - 165 g fat (54 g saturated) - 4,920 mg sodium - 120 g carbs

The problem with deep dish pizza (which Uno's knows a thing or two about, since they invented it back in 1943) is not just the extra empty calories and carbs from the crust, it's that the thick doughy base provides the structural integrity to house extra heaps of cheese, sauce, and greasy toppings. The result is an individual pizza with more calories than you should eat in a day and more sodium than you would find in 27 small bags of Lays Potato Chips. Oh, did we mention it has nearly 3 days' worth of saturated fat, too? The key to success at Uno's lies in their flatbread pizza.
5. Worst Mexican Dish


Chili's Fajita Quesadillas Beef with Rice and Beans, 4 Flour Tortillas, and Condiments

2,240 calories - 92 g fat (43.5 g saturated) - 6,390 mg sodium - 253 g carbs

Since when has it ever been a smart idea to combine 2 already calorie- and sodium-packed dishes into one monstrous meal? This confounding creation delivers nearly a dozen Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnuts worth of calories, the sodium equivalent of 194 saltine crackers, and the saturated fat equivalent of 44 strips of bacon. Check please.
6. Worst Seafood Dish


Romano’s Macaroni Grill Parmesan Crusted Sole

2,190 calories - 141 g fat (58 g saturated) - 2,980 mg sodium - 145 g carbs

Fish is normally a safe bet, but this entrée proves that it’s all in the preparation. If you fry said fish in a shell of cheese, be prepared to pay the consequences. Here that means meeting your daily calorie, fat, saturated fat, and sodium intake in one sitting.
7. Worst Chinese Dish


P.F. Chang’s Combo Lo Mein

1,968 calories - 96 g fat (12 g saturated) - 5,860 mg sodium

Lo mein is normally looked at as a side dish, a harmless pile of noodles to pad your plate of orange chicken or broccoli beef. This heaping portion (to be fair, Chang’s does suggest diners share an order) comes spiked with chicken, shrimp, beef, and pork, not to mention an Exxon Valdez-size slick of oil. The damage? A day’s worth of calories, 1 ½ days’ worth of fat, and 2 ½ days’ worth of sodium. No meat-based dish beats out the strip.
8. Worst Appetizer


On the Border Firecracker Stuffed Jalapenos with Chili con Queso

1,950 calories - 134 g fat (36 g saturated) - 6,540 mg sodium

Appetizers are the most problematic area of most chain-restaurant menus. That’s because they’re disproportionately reliant on the type of cheesy, greasy ingredients that catch hungry diners’ eyes when they’re most vulnerable—right when they sit down. Seek out lean protein options like grilled shrimp skewers or ahi tuna when available; if not, simple is best—like chips and salsa.
9. Worst Burger


Chili’s Smokehouse Bacon Triple Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch Dressing

1,901 calories - 138 g fat (47 g saturated) - 4,201 mg sodium

Any burger whose name is 21 syllables long is bound to spell trouble for your waistline. This burger packs almost an entire day’s worth of calories and 2 ½ days’ worth of fat. Chili’s burger menu rivals Ruby Tuesday’s for the worst in America, so you’re better off with one of their reasonable Fajita Pitas to silence your hunger.
10. Worst Sandwich


Quizno’s Large Tuna Melt

1,760 calories - 133 g fat (26 g saturated, 1.5 g trans) - 2,120 mg sodium

In almost all other forms, tuna is a nutritional superstar, so how did it end up as the headliner for America’s Worst Sandwich? Blame an absurdly heavy hand with the mayo the tuna is mixed with, along with Quiznos’ larger-than-life portion sizes. Even though they’ve managed to trim this melt down from the original 2,000-plus calorie mark when we first tested it, it still sits squarely at the bottom of the sandwich ladder.
11. Worst Salad


On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef and Chipotle Honey Mustard

1,700 calories - 124 g fat (37.5 g saturated) - 2,620 mg sodium

The dismal dawn of the 1,700-calorie salad is upon us. With as much saturated fat as 37 strips of bacon and more calories than 11 Taco Bell Fresco Beef Tacos, this abdomen expander earns a well-deserved spot on our list of the Worst Foods in America.
12. Worst Dessert


Romano’s Macaroni Grill New York Cheesecake with Caramel Fudge Sauce

1,660 calories - 97 g fat (57 g saturated) - 950 mg sodium - 165 g carbs

Considering the fact that Macaroni Grill’s savory menu is already cluttered with one of the country’s most potent arrays of calorie, fat, and sodium bombs, its lineup of destructive desserts only adds insult to injury. There’s the Dessert Ravioli (1,630 calories), the Lemon Passion (1,360 calories), and the always classic and catastrophic caramel-smothered cheesecake, which, with more calories than 3 Big Macs and as much saturated fat as 57 strips of bacon, is the worst dessert in America. Seek solace in a scoop of sorbetto—one of the country’s best sit-down sweets
13. Worst Pancake Breakfast


Bob Evans Stacked & Stuffed Caramel Banana Pecan Hotcakes

1,543 calories - 77 g fat (26 g saturated, 9 g trans) - 2,259 mg sodium - 109 g sugars

This appalling platter is stacked and stuffed with the sugar equivalent of 7 Twinkies, the caloric equivalent of 8 Dunkin’ Donuts glazed doughnuts, the sodium equivalent of 6 ½ large order of McDonald’s French fries, and 4 ½ times your daily limit of trans fat. It’s made numerous lists in our newest book, Eat This, Not That! The Best (and Worst!) Foods in America, including Worst Foods, Most Sugar-Packed Foods, and Trans-Fattiest Foods. Above all of these dubious distinctions, it’s the undisputed Worst Breakfast in America.
14. Worst Omelet Breakfast


IHOP’s The Big Steak Omelette

1,490 calories

We’re not sure what’s more concerning: IHOP’s never-ending stacks of margarine-slathered sweets or their reckless attempts at covering the savory side of breakfast with entrees like this one. With close to three-quarters of a day’s worth of calories folded into its eggy shell (thanks to a heaping portion of fatty beef), you’re committing to eating rice cakes for your next 2 meals when you start your morning off with this bomblette. Why not enjoy the substantial Garden Scramble and 2 more real meals instead?
15. Worst "Healthy" Sandwich


Applebee's Chicken Fajita Rollup

1,450 calories

For some curious reason, wraps have come to be viewed as a healthy upgrade from sandwiches, as if those massive tortillas can be filled with nothing but anticalories. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The problem with wraps is that they function as holding tanks for fluids, so hurried fry-cooks can squirt in as much sauce as they want without making it look messy. With Applebee’s rollup, the offending sauce is a Mexi-ranch sauce, which looks suspiciously more like ranch than anything eaten in Mexico. But here’s the final insult: This “healthy” meal is served with fries. Eat them and you tack on 400 extra calories.
16. Worst Sliders


Ruby Tuesday Bacon Cheddar Minis

1,358 calories - 86 g fat - 75 g carbs

Diminutive dishes are one of the hottest trends in the restaurant world right now (probably since most are looking for ways to stretch a buck), and you’d think that would serve health-conscious eaters well. But not under the reckless watch of the burger barons at Ruby Tuesday, who manage to turn 4 “mini” burgers into the caloric equivalent of 7 Dunkin’ Donuts Sugar Donuts.
17. Worst Kids' Meal


Uno Chicago Grill Kids Kombo with French Fries

1,270 calories - 79 g fat (11.5 g saturated) - 2,850 mg sodium

For food marketers, the color of money isn’t green—it’s beige. Any parent knows that most foods kids clamor for, from fries to white bread to chicken nuggets, come in beige. It’s also a marker of cheap, calorie-rich, nutritionally bankrupt foodstuffs. So when you see this monochromatic cluster of cheese sticks, dinosaur-shaped chicken and fried potatoes, you know your kid’s in trouble. Make it a rule when eating out: All dishes must come with at least two colors (and ketchup doesn’t count).
18. Worst Vegetarian Sub


Blimpie Special Vegetarian Sub (12")

1,186 calories - 60 g fat (19 g saturated) - 3,532 mg sodium - 131 g carbs

“Vegetarian” doesn’t automatically translate to “healthy.” Sure, this sandwich has vegetables, but it also has 3 different kinds of cheese and a deluge of oil tucked into a hulking 12” roll. No wonder it contains more than half a day’s worth of calories and a cascade of carbs. For a truly healthy pile of vegetables, try the garden salad. If a sandwich is the only thing that will do, you’ll have to settle for the small VeggieMax, still far from a model of meatless eating.
19. Worst Frozen Meal


Stouffer’s White Meat Chicken Pot Pie

1,160 calories - 66 g fat (26 g saturated) - 1,780 mg sodium

The potpie is one of the world’s worst dietary inventions to begin with, and the damage is all the more extreme when the pie seems as big as a child’s head. Stouffer’s tries to get away with it by falling back on the serving-size sleight of hand; that is, to list as 2 servings what every person with a fork will consume as 1. Nobody splits potpies, and eating this whole thing will fill your belly with more saturated fat than you should eat in an entire day.
20. Worst Mall Treat


Cinnabon Regular Caramel Pecanbun

1,110 calories - 56 g fat (10 g saturated, 5 g trans) - 151 g carbs - 47 g sugars

Cinnabon and malls are inseparable. Consider it a symbiotic relationship: Researchers have found that men are turned on by the smell of cinnamon rolls, and further studies have shown that men are more likely to spend money when they’re thinking about sex. But just because Cinnabon might be good for Gap doesn’t mean it’s at all good for you. This dangerously bloated bun contains nearly an entire day’s worth of fat and more than half of your daily allotment of calories. (For those keeping score, that’s as much as you’ll find in 8 White Castle hamburgers.)
21. Worst Breakfast For Your Blood Pressure


Arby's Sausage Gravy Biscuit

1,040 calories - 60 g fat (22 g saturated, 2 g trans) - 4,699 mg sodium

This is absolutely one of the worst ways you could start your day. Make a date with this and you’ll have consumed 2 full days’ worth of sodium before the noon hour. The key to maintaining a reasonable blood pressure for most folks is to take in at least the equivalent amount of sodium and potassium throughout your day. (A 1:1 ratio is seen as ideal.) The problem with this biscuit is that you’re consuming a heart-stopping level of sodium and almost no potassium. Throw in an abundance of calories and trans fat and you may have been better off sleeping in.
22. Worst Adult Beverage


Red Lobster Traditional Lobsterita

890 calories 183 g carbs

Lobsterita means a lobster tank-sized glass filled with booze and high-fructose corn syrup. You’d have to drink 4 regular on-the-rocks margaritas to outdo the massive caloric load. Pair that with a dinner and you might be pushing a full day’s calories in one meal. If you want to get drunk, take a shot. If you want to enjoy a cocktail, make sure it doesn’t start with a bottle of mix—your body and your taste buds will thank you.
23. Worst Frozen Breakfast


Jimmy Dean Pancake and Sausage Breakfast Bowl

710 calories - 31 g fat (11 g saturated) - 890 mg sodium - 34 g sugars

A disastrous trifecta of refined carbs from the pancakes, saturated fat from the sausage, and added sugar from the syrup. Jimmy’s got his name attached to more than a few solid breakfast choices, so find one less than 400 calories immediately and make the switch. Hint: Look to the breakfast sandwiches and the D-Lights line.
24. Worst Frozen Pizza


DiGiorno for One Supreme pizza with Garlic Bread Crust

840 calories 44 g fat (16 g saturated, 3.5 g trans) 1,450 mg sodium

Regardless of the crust you choose, DiGiorno’s For One line is dominated by nutritional duds. The bloated crust and the greasy toppings will saddle you with 60 percent of your day’s sodium, 80 percent of your day’s saturated fat, and nearly twice the amount of trans fat you should take in daily. Hands off!
25. Worst Side Dish For Your Arteries


Jack in the Box Bacon Cheddar Potato Wedges

760 calories - 52 g fat (16 g saturated, 13 g trans) - 960 mg sodium

It’s no surprise this side dish is bursting with fat and calories—it’s a plate of fried potatoes topped with bacon and melted cheese. The Jack in the Box menu is so thoroughly swaddled in trans fats that they truly have earned the bottom slot on our list of the trans-fattiest foods in America—not to mention, the title of Trans-Fattiest Restaurant in America. The good news is that not all of Jack’s items are filled with the bad stuff—a smarter appetizer or side dish would be the Grilled Chicken Pita Snack.
26. Worst Supermarket Kids' Lunch


Oscar Mayer Maxed Out Turkey & Cheddar Cracker Combo Lunchables

680 calories - 22 g fat (9 g saturated) - 1,440 mg sodium - 61 g sugars

The Maxed Out line is the worst of the lackluster Lunchables, with a back label that reads like a chemistry textbook. By cramming dessert and a superweet drink into the box, Oscar manages to saddle this already-troubled package with more added sugar than your child should take in all day. This meal has the sugar equivalent of 10 Dunkin’ Donuts jelly-filled doughnuts!
27. Worst Gas Station Treat


Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pie

520 calories - 24 g fat (14 g saturated, 1.5 g trans) - 45 g sugars

This is the type of snack you pick up at a gas station in a pinch and feel vaguely guilty about, not knowing that you just managed to ingest nearly three-quarters of a day’s worth of saturated fat before your tank finishing filling up. And considering these little packages of doom cost a buck or less across the country, the pudding pie qualifies as one of the cheapest sources of empty calories in America.
28. Worst Supermarket Drink


Sobe Pina Colada Liz Blizz (20 oz bottle)

325 calories - 0 g fat - 78 g sugars

Don’t be fooled by the natural motifs that adorn Sobe’s bottles. It has more sugar than you’ll find in two Snickers bars! We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Don’t buy products with cartoon animals on the front.
29. Worst Snack For Your Arteries


Pop Secret Kettle Corn (1/3 bag)

180 calories - 13 g fat (2.5 g saturated, 5 g trans) - 150 mg sodium

The only “secret” here is that the company has no qualms about trans fat. Eat an entire bag of this kettle corn, and you’ll consume 15 grams of the artery-clogging junk—that’s more than 7 times your recommended daily limit. Choose Orville Redenbacher’s Movie Theater Butter for fewer calories and no trans fat.
30. Worst Canned Fruit

Del Monte Peach Chunks Yellow Cling Peaches in Heavy Syrup

100 calories - 23 g sugars

Peaches themselves aren’t bona fide junk food; they are, after all, still fruit. But why manufacturers feel the need to can, packaged, and bottle nature’s candy with excess sugar is a question we will never stop asking. In this case, the viscous sugar solution clings to the fruit like syrup to a pancake, soaking every bite with utterly unnecessary calories. Looking for cheap sources of fruit to have on hand at any time? Opt for the frozen stuff—it’s picked at the height of season and flash frozen on the spot, keeping costs low and nutrients high.

Source: www.eatthis.menshealth.com/slideshow...
Related DVDs

Food Matters
Food Matters is a feature length documentary film informing you on the best choices you can make for you and your family's health. In a collection of interviews with leading Nutritionists, Naturopaths, Scientists, M.D.'s and Medical Journalists you will discover...

Format: DVD - Region Free
Running Time: 80 minutes
Price: $24.95

The Best Foods that Fill You Up and Boost Your Metabolism and Shed Pounds

What you're about to read here may change the way you think about food. Yes, once you see the facts, you'll realize that most of the products on the grocery shelves don't fit your biology. Most of today's dietary products are not designed to keep your body young.

The genes that regulate your biological age are highly sensitive to your diet, as they're triggered or inhibited by what you eat, how much you eat, and how often. The point is: You need to know how your diet affects your biological age. You need to know what food keeps you young and what food is making you old.

How Your Diet Affects Your Biological Age

It has been largely agreed that one of the most detrimental causes of aging is excessive calorie intake. Scientists speculate that humans have an overly strong drive to eat when food is readily available. And since people are surrounded today with calorie dense food, they tend to consume excess calories, which then cause them to gain weight, lose health, and age prematurely.

Given this, many believe that calorie restriction is the most effective strategy to get in shape and counteract aging. But the calorie restriction theory is only partly true. It can't always predict whether you'll gain weight or lose weight, neither can it predict whether you'll get in shape or get out of shape. You can be on a low calorie diet and fail to lose weight, and you can be on a high calorie diet and yet manage to slim down.

Emerging evidence indicates that there is another powerful factor behind the scene – one that overrules and dictates your energy expenditure, metabolic rate, body fat percentage, physical shape and eventually your biological age. That factor is the system that controls your hunger and satiety signals. And as you'll soon see, it has nothing to do with your calorie intake, but rather with what you eat and how often.

How Your Hunger-Satiety System Affects Your Physical Shape

Your hunger-satiety system consists of multiple neuro-peptides that act to initiate or terminate your feeding. These are your hunger-satiety hormones. Their signals are integrated by centers in your brain to modulate how you consume, spend or store energy. The balance between these signals dictates whether your body is in a fat-burning or a fat-storing mode.

In order to maintain a healthy body weight, your hunger and satiety signals must continually adjust your food intake to your energy expenditure. Any imbalance between these two will affect your fat stores and physical shape. Obesity, for instance, is a result of a disrupted energy balance in which a surplus of accumulated food energy is stored as body fat.

Again, your physical shape seems to depend on the ratio between your hunger and satiety hormones and so is your biological age. Both hormones regulate your eating behavior and metabolic rate, albeit with opposite effects on your body.

Hunger Hormones vs. Satiety Hormones

Your hunger and satiety hormones are constantly clashing with each other like two armies at war. And the consequences of that hormonal clash are manifested in your body. Hunger hormones tend to slow your metabolism and increase your body fat whereas satiety hormones tend to boost your metabolism and decrease your body fat.

Simply put, if your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll be prone to suffer from a sluggish metabolism and excess body fat. And if your satiety hormones take over, they will counteract the effects of your hunger hormones to allow you greater energy and a leaner healthier body.

But note that your hunger hormones are not inherently bad; when balanced, they play important roles in your metabolic system. Under healthy conditions they may even help you burn fat. The hunger peptide ghrelin, for instance, is a most potent trigger of your growth hormone – it binds to growth hormone secreagogue receptors (GHS-Rs) and increases its release by six fold. Indeed, fasting and hunger boost your growth hormones and potentiate its actions to burn fat and repair tissues more efficiently than drugs – naturally and safely without side effects.

Your hunger hormones are part of your survival apparatus. They relate to your satiety hormones like yin to yang. They keep you alert and give you the drive to search for food along with the desire to achieve. And they balance the actions of your satiety hormones which tend to calm you down.

But if you let your hunger hormones get out of control, you'll experience chronic hunger, diminished energy, metabolic decline, decreased libido and increased tendency to gain weight.

You need to know how to manipulate both types of hormones to work for you. And you certainly need to keep your hunger hormones under control. But how can you do that if you don't even know what causes your hunger hormones to get out of control?

What Causes Your Hunger Hormones Get Out of Control?

Normally your hunger hormones are highly responsive to feeding – their levels increase during fasting and reduce upon food ingestion. Your most notable hunger hormones are ghrelin, neuropeptide Y (NPY) and agouti-related protein (AgRP).

During fasting, your hunger hormone ghrelin peaks, boosting your growth hormone to initiate fat burning. Meanwhile, your remaining hunger hormones are continually balanced by your satiety hormones (adiponectin and glucagon-like peptide). This keeps your hunger under control and potentiates your sensitivity to satiety signals.

Then, when you resume eating, your hunger hormones decline – allowing your satiety hormones to kick in and act to boost your metabolism.

That's how your hunger-satiety system works under healthy conditions. It allows you to burn fat when you don't eat and it acts to boost your metabolism when you eat. Hence, a win-win situation.

But your hunger-satiety system can only function well as long as your diet is adequate. If your diet is high glycemic and your feeding episodes are too frequent, your hunger-satiety system will be utterly disrupted.

Frequent consumption of high glycemic meals impairs your key satiety hormones insulin and leptin, leaving your hunger hormones unopposed and dominant. When insulin is impaired (such as in cases of insulin resistance), ghrelin levels remain elevated even after meal consumption – a condition that leads to chronic hunger (mostly for carbs), excess food intake and undesirable weight gain.

This issue has been widely overlooked, perhaps because people normally like to consume baked goods and candies on a daily basis and even more so during celebrations. But the evidence leaves no doubt: frequent consumption of high glycemic foods jeopardize your satiety apparatus and put your body under the tyranny of your hunger hormones.

To prevent that you need to avoid high glycemic foods and resist cravings for sweets. You need to know how to boost your satiety hormones and let them take control over your metabolism.

How to Boost Your Satiety Hormones

Your satiety hormones include insulin, leptin, adiponectin, cholesystokinin (CCK), glucagon-like peptide (GLP), PPY and melanocortin. When potentiated to counteract your hunger hormones, they help increase your energy expenditure, stimulate your thyroid, enhance your sex hormones, lower your stress hormones and increase your capacity to burn fat.

The three main factors that boost your satiety hormones are:

–   Food restriction

–   Exercise

–   Weight loss

Food restriction, exercise and weight loss increase the sensitivity and effectiveness of your insulin and leptin while potentiating the actions of your other satiety hormones. This means that with proper diet, exercise and restoration of a healthy body weight, you can increase the efficiency of your satiety hormones to allow you be at your peak physical potential. But how do you put this in practice? How do you put your satiety hormones in charge?

There are three ways to achieve that:

1. Eat satiety foods
2. Avoid hunger foods
3. Train your body to endure hunger

Eat Satiating Foods

The food that promotes satiety most is protein. It yields satiety more effectively than carbohydrates or fat. Out of all proteins, the one with the fastest satiety impact is whey protein – that's if the whey is whole and non-denatured.

Studies reveal that consumption of whey protein before meals can swiftly boost the satiety peptides CCK and GLP-1, which have been shown to decrease food intake and increase weight loss. Whey protein is also beneficial when consumed before exercise. Having a small serving of whey protein (with no sugar added) about 30 minutes before exercise seems to help sustain intense muscle performance and increase the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis after exercise. A pre-exercise whey meal has also shown to boost the body's metabolic rate for 24 hours thereafter.

Other satiety-promoting foods are low glycemic plant foods including raw nuts, seeds, legumes, roots, cruciferous vegetables, tomatoes, eggplants, grasses and green leafy vegetables.

Being low glycemic and fibrous, these plant foods are a great fit for your insulin and leptin as well as your whole satiety system. Nuts and seeds trigger PPY – a satiety peptide which is highly sensitive to dietary fat. PPY shifts your cravings from carbohydrates to fats and increases your metabolic capacity to convert fat to energy.

That action counteracts your hunger hormones, which typically shift your cravings towards carbohydrates. Note that it's the shift towards refined carbohydrates that has been linked to chronic cravings and excessive food intake. This is the reason why once you open a bag of potato chips and start crunching, you may find it difficult to stop.

And note that your muscle isn't programmed to do well on hunger foods; it rejects fructose and has a limited capacity to utilize high glycemic foods. But your muscle literally thrives on satiety foods. Combinations of whey protein and berries, eggs and beans or meat and nuts have unmatched muscle nourishing properties. Furthermore, being satiety oriented, these food combinations promote the right hormonal environment for muscle rejuvenation and buildup.

All that said, you can't fully benefit from your satiety food if you don't know what food to avoid.

Avoid Hunger Foods

Stay away from high glycemic foods including all refined carbohydrates, sugars, fructose products, baked goods, candies and sugary beverages. Fructose in particular has shown to cause leptin resistance, lipid disorders, hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Studies reveal that the muscle rejects fructose as an energy substrate and the liver has a limited capacity to utilize it; excess fructose is converted into triglycerides and body fat.

But nothing is more damaging to your satiety than the combination of high sugar and high fat. This dietary combo packs on empty calories, causes insulin and leptin resistance and shatters your satiety along with your whole metabolic system. In fact, it has been found that the high sugar-high fat combo causes insulin and leptin resistance even prior to any change in body composition.

This means that all food products made with a high content of sugar and fat are poisonous to your satiety system. These include cookies, cakes, ice creams and chocolates, all of which set you up for serious metabolic setbacks associated with insulin and leptin resistance which may include excess estrogen, excess cortisol, low testosterone, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia and increased belly fat.

The good news is that both insulin and leptin resistance can be reversed by food restriction and weight loss. Hence, your insulin and leptin are restored by austerity and shattered by indulgence.

It has been suggested that insulin and leptin play important roles in times of scarcity but have a lesser role in times of plenty. To keep your insulin and leptin intact you must not indulge yourself with high glycemic treats, not even in moderation. Otherwise, your body will get the wrong signal and you'll pay the consequences with your weight, energy and state of health.

Now that you know how to choose your satiety foods, let's take a look at the other methods that boost your satiety hormones.

Train Your Body to Endure Hunger

Hunger should be treated like physical exercise. Both are perceived by your body as survival signals to adapt and improve. When your body is repeatedly challenged with acute (temporary) hunger, such as due to periodic fasting, it adjusts itself by decreasing the number of hunger receptors in your brain and thus making you increasingly resilient to hunger. This in turn increases the efficiency of your satiety hormones, and potentiates them to take control of your metabolism.

But only real hunger can benefit you that way. Real hunger is what you experience while fasting or undereating, not the kind of craving you feel on a fully belly after finishing a meal.

There are different ways to train your body to endure hunger. You can try to gradually increase the gap between your meals or alternatively put your body in an undereating state for most of the day. And you can also try exercising while fasting. Let's see how all this translates into practice.

Undereating

You can put your body in an undereating state by minimizing your food intake during the day to small, low glycemic, fast assimilating protein meals such as quality whey (every 3-5 hours), which could be served with (or substituted with) small servings of fruits and vegetables. Have your main meal at night.

Undereating has some notable advantages over complete fasting. It challenges your body similar to fasting – yielding a negative energy balance which increases your adaptability to hunger while promoting fat burning and tissue recycling. However unlike fasting, it allows you to nourish your body with protein and antioxidants, and you won't feel the desire to eat as intensely as when you completely avoid food.

But whether you fast or undereat, do not chronically restrict your calories. Your hunger must be acute, not chronic. Treat yourself with sufficient food in your main evening meal to compensate for the energy and nutrients you spend during the day.

Exercising While Fasting

Probably the most intense way to improve your hunger durability is by exercising while fasting. This presents a double challenge to your body and it yields a stronger signal to adapt than fasting or exercise alone. Though exercise while fasting may initially affect your maximum performance, it will nevertheless come with an additional bonus.

A study published in the Journal of Physchology/November 2010 indicated that exercising while fasting increases the body's metabolic adaptation efficiency to utilize energy, burn fat and deposit protein in the muscle – substantially more than when exercising after a meal. The researchers reported that the increased capacity to deposit protein in the muscle as observed in people who were exercising while fasting and then eating a post-exercise meal, is a result of increased insulin sensitivity and activation of the muscle mTOR (the mechanism that increases muscle protein synthesis).

Your body is inherently programmed to benefit from acute hunger (via periodic fasting or undereating) and even more so when exercising while fasting. This probably has to do with an early adaptation mechanism to hunger and hardship which evolved to support human survival during primordial times of food scarcity and intense hardship. Apparently, this primal evolutionary trait is still pertinent today and it potentially affects your physical shape.

Love the Opportunity

Love the Opportunity by Jim Rohn

Somebody said you have to love what you do, but that’s not necessarily true. What is true is that you have to love the opportunity. The opportunity to build life, future, health, success and fortune. Knocking on someone’s door or making that extra call may not be something you love to do, but you love the opportunity of what might be behind that door or call.


For example, a guy says, “I’m digging ditches. Should I love digging ditches?” The answer is, “No, you don’t have to love digging ditches, but if it is your first entry onto the ladder of success, you say, ‘I’m glad somebody gave me the opportunity to dig ditches and I’m going to do it so well, I won’t be here long.’”


You can be inspired by having found something; even though you are making mistakes in the beginning and even though it is a little distasteful taking on a new discipline that you haven’t learned before. You don’t have to love it, you just have to learn to appreciate where you live, appreciate opportunity and appreciate the person who brought you the good news—who found you.


Appreciate the person who believed in you before you believed in yourself, appreciate the person who said, “Hey, if I can do it, you can do it.”


If you will embrace the disciplines associated with the new opportunity you will soon find that your self-confidence starts to grow, that you go from being a skeptic to being a believer. And soon, when you go out person to person, talking to people, you will find it to be the most thrilling opportunity in the world. Every person you meet—what could it be? Unlimited! Maybe a friend for life. The next person could be an open door to retiring. The next person could be a colleague for years to come. It’s big-time stuff. And sometimes in the beginning when we are just getting started we don’t always see how big it is.


So, before you are tempted to give up or get discouraged, remember all success is based on long-term commitment, faith, discipline, attitude and a few stepping stones along the way. You might not like the stone you are on right now, but it’s sure to be one of the stones that lead to great opportunities in the future.