If you often find yourself looking for more food, or not feeling full or satisfied, you may be experiencing dietary displacement.
What is 'dietary displacement' exactly?
Negative Dietary Displacement
This occurs when you take a pass on healthy foods in order to splurge on something less healthy later. Like skipping meals all day so you can eat that dessert at the birthday party after work. You are replacing meals (or healthy eats) with non nutritious foods.
Negative dietary displacement can lead to a host of problems:
- rebound overeating
- lack of satiety
- atrocious nutrient intake
- loss of muscle mass
- low energy levels
- increased body fat
You won't feel or look very good and you'll never really feel like you've had enough to eat.
Positive Dietary Displacement
Positive dietary displacement occurs when you consume enough healthy and nutritious foods during the day that you don't have room for the nasty, non nutritious stuff.
Eating this way can contribute to:
- consuming the right amount of food for your energy needs
- satiation after meals
- a stellar nutrient intake
- lean muscle development
- high energy levels
- lower levels of body fat
All of this is important because so many times when people try to get healthy or to lose weight they narrow their focus to include only what they should eliminate or what they shouldn't be eating. What might be more effective would be to focus on how to make sure you eat enough of the healthy stuff during the day. If you surround yourself with healthy foods and options, you will find it a lot more difficult to eat the non nutritious stuff. You won't have room. Humans consume about 3-4 pounds of food a day, if you make it 3-4 pounds of healthy food, where are you going to put the unhealthy food?
And although worrying about the number of calories you consume in a day is important, it isn't everything. Especially when you consider that all things are not equal in the world of calories.
Calories from processed foods and sugars are different from the calories you'd get from raw veggies, for example. The 'non food' calories found in 'junk' food are more likely to be stored as fat, make you feel hungrier, lead to lower levels of energy and make you even more preoccupied with food.
It is important to be aware of the calories you are taking in but being obsessed with it to the point of applying extreme detail is probably not so useful.
The most important factor that leads to dietary displacement is our appetite. Many of us believe it is something that is beyond our control but that isn't really the case.
The number of calories we eat isn't what controls our appetite. It is actually controlled by the volume of what we eat. A large food volume passing through our digestive tract means a satisfied appetite.
So, you could load up all day with candy and processed food, and sugary coffee drinks all day which will have a high calorie hit and leave your body looking for a place to store those excess calories or you could load up with healthy nutritious foods, feel full longer and gain a bunch of other benefits from the food.
If you start your day with a full, healthy breakfast, you'll be less likely to feel hungry and grab a donut and a soda on your way to the office. You will be able to keep your appetite in balance and make better choices during the day.
Instead of looking at your 'diet' as being restrictive and limited, focus on loading it up with raw, fresh foods. Instead of limiting your meals during the day so you can indulge later, try this: eat something nutritious first, if when you are done that you still want your treat, you will be unable to overindulge.
Shift your focus from eliminating bad to adding the good and you'll be feeling fab in no time!
Source:
Precision Nutrition
