Hungy hungry hippos

Have you hit a plateau in your weight loss?

Are you craving food more than a hungry, hungry hippo?

Are you feeling tired?

Are you feeling cold?

If you've answered yes to the above questions, then it's possible that you're suffering from the famine reaction. When we go on a diet and lose weight, our bodies can act in unusual ways. Often once we've lost a bit of weight, we may end up suffering from the famine reaction. This has resulted from many years of human evolution - our bodies will try to retain onto every last morsel of food that we eat when they think that food sources are scarce. This effectively makes it that much more difficult to shift those unwanted kilos!

So what can we do to stop the famine reaction from halting our weight loss efforts? The answer may surprise you. Ordinarily when our weight loss stalls, we become even more determined, spend more time at the gym or cut down further on food. However, studies at the Garven institute indicate that this is exactly what we shouldn't be doing.

In an article written by Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis entitled "Why losing weight and keeping it off is so difficult", she suggests that we should be taking the counter-intuitive action and EAT MORE! That's right, if you answered yes to all of the questions above, you should consider eating more food in order to deactivate the famine reaction. Now this doesn't mean pigging out on a whole cheesecake to yourself, but rather choosing a variety of healthy and nutritious foods. You should be eating more calories than your diet would otherwise allow. Exercise can also assist in getting your body out of this mode and put your weight loss back on track.

For further information about the famine reaction, make sure you read the whole of Dr Sainsbury-Sails' article for yourself (refer to the above link).

Happy weight loss!