Man in the Arena with Craig Spear
Are you ready to change the trajectory of your health? If so, you’re in the right place. Man in the Arena with Craig Spear is a podcast dedicated to helping men over 40 optimize their health and lose weight. Here, we discuss strategies that will get you off the sidelines and into the game so you can lead a legacy of longevity.
Man in the Arena with Craig Spear
3 Strategies to Master Your Appetite
Struggling with weight can feel like an uphill battle, especially for men over 40, but what if the key to unlocking sustainable weight loss was understanding the science behind hunger and satiety? That's exactly what we're laying out in this episode—three solid strategies to conquer over-hunger and the desire for foods that sabotage your health goals. We're digging deep into the hormonal seesaw of ghrelin and leptin and revealing how you can naturally keep your appetite in check. With a candid look at why tracking progress without self-deception is vital, and how tackling weight loss plateaus with patience can lead to victory, this discussion is your first step toward a lasting transformation.
Ever consider how a good night's sleep could be your greatest ally in the fight against the scale? We're unpacking the crucial sleep macronutrients—Quantity, Quality, Regularity, and Timing (QQRT)—and their undeniable impact on your food choices and cravings. Learn why protein isn't just gym-talk but a real tool for feeling full and fuelling your metabolism, and how healthy fats aren't the enemy but an essential part of a balanced diet. As we wrap up, I challenge you to step out of your comfort zone, embrace change, and visualize the powerful outcomes awaiting on the other side. Remember, support is just a click away at thespearmethod.com, where your journey to wellness is our top priority.
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Welcome to man in the Arena. This podcast is for men over 40 who want to master their health and weight loss goals once and for all, with innovative strategies, practical tools and insightful interviews. My goal is to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and achieve your optimal health. It's time to look good, feel good and do better. Hello and welcome to man in the Arena.
Speaker 1:Today we are going back to basics. Growing up playing sports, I often went back to the main fundamentals. Now, whether it was tackling or blocking in football, we always went back to practicing the root fundamentals that made us great players, and in weight loss, it's no different. So today we're going to revisit some really important fundamentals. In last week's episode, I talked about consistency and recognized that consistency is the most important ingredient for success, so I wanted to offer you three simple weight loss strategies that you can build into your day so that you can stay consistent, and then this is going to help you produce the results that you want. I really believe that following these three weight loss strategies is all you need to focus on when it comes to weight loss. So if you stay consistent in their application, weight loss is going to be inevitable for you and you will reach your target, but we often not often sometimes we experience plateaus where our weight loss just stops, even when we remain consistent in our practice. You have to be really honest with yourself, though, because a lot of times, I see guys say, well, I've hit a weight loss plateau, but they haven't stayed consistent. And here's what you have to consider when it comes to a weight loss plateau If your weight isn't dropping even though you've stayed consistent, it has to be for at least three weeks, and you have had to stay consistent with your practice, right? So if you haven't stayed consistent, then you have to get back to the strategies and the fundamentals that help you lose weight. If you have stayed consistent and it's been three weeks, then it's time to make some tweaks.
Speaker 1:Before I jump into these three strategies, I want you to know that each of these strategies is created to help you manage over-hunger and over-desire for food. That's what causes us to overeat. When we overeat, we gain weight, and the reason why we are overeating is we have this inflated, this exaggerated over-desire and over-hunger for food. So if you're overweight, it's really important for you to understand what's causing you to have an over-desire and an an overhunger for food. If you fix this, then you will lose weight for good.
Speaker 1:The first strategy that I want to offer to you deals with hormones. Specifically, it deals with your two hunger hormones, which are ghrelin and leptin. Ghrelin is produced primarily in your stomach and your digestive tract and it increases your drive to eat. So when ghrelin is secreted, you will have an increase in your hunger. When you have above normal ghrelin levels, you will have overhunger and an overdesire for food. So I really want you to hear this If you want to lose weight, you want to eat less and you want to desire food less, it is in your best interest to do whatever you can to regulate ghrelin in your body.
Speaker 1:It is also imperative that you regulate leptin. Now, leptin does the opposite of ghrelin. Leptin tells us when we need to stop eating. It tells us when we're satiated. It tells us when we've had enough to eat. So when you have this increased desire for food and you want to eat more, that means that leptin is dysregulated in some way. It's usually absent, or we have what's called leptin resistance. In other words, leptin is present in our body and it's being secreted, but our cells and our brain aren't picking up the message. Now leptin is produced in our body and it's being secreted, but our cells and our brain aren't picking up the message. Now leptin is produced in our fat cells and, ironically enough, the more fat we have on our body, the less leptin we produce. So the fatter we get, the less leptin we produce and our desire for food goes up. But when we lose fat, we're able to produce more leptin and our satiety returns. But when we lose fat, we're able to produce more leptin and our satiety returns.
Speaker 1:So strategy number one revolves around regulating ghrelin and leptin. And here's how you can do that. First, without question, the best thing that you can do, the best strategy that you can implement, is to get adequate sleep. During our deep wave sleep cycle, our body regulates our ghrelin and leptin levels. So sleep is this rebooting of our system, not only emotionally and physically, but also hormonally. This means that our appetite becomes more stable when we get adequate sleep. And when you say this differently, sleep is by far the best appetite suppressant on the market. Sleep is by far the best appetite suppressant on the market.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've had one of those days where, no matter how much you eat or what you eat, you just don't feel satisfied by the amount of food that you're eating. In other words, you keep eating and you don't feel satiated. When that happens, there's a high likelihood that ghrelin and leptin levels in your body are all out of whack, and the first culprit is probably poor sleep. So I guarantee you, if you sleep better, you will notice this dramatic shift in your baseline hunger levels. At the same time, it's not that you want to eat more when you get poor sleep. It also affects what you want to eat. With poor sleep, we often crave higher levels of starchy, processed carbohydrates right, and we know. As a result, these foods are obesogenic. Okay, they cause rapid weight gain, but with adequate sleep, you're going to desire more nutrient-dense foods Fruits, veggies, healthy fats and protein.
Speaker 1:So beginner weight loss strategy number one is to focus on changing your sleep. And you might be asking yourself where do I even start? And there's a sleep researcher out of the UK who's actually researching at California University now and he's come up with this great acronym and it's QQRT, and he basically calls this the four macronutrients of sleep. So QQRT quantity, quality, regularity and timing. Now I've done a full episode on sleep. If you go back, you can listen to that. It's called A System for Better Sleep, and I dive into how you can actually improve your sleep. But just in terms of this episode as a strategy, one of the things that you want to focus on is this QQRT. So seven plus hours of sleep a night, that's the quantity, how much sleep you're getting. Now, when I say seven plus hours of sleep, that means you're actually going to be in bed for eight hours.
Speaker 1:The quality of sleep is really important. That's the second cue, and this deals with two most important stages of our sleep deep wave sleep and REM sleep. So if you want to sort of optimize your quality of sleep, meaning your deep wave sleep and your REM sleep, which is going to have the biggest impact on regulating ghrelin and leptin and your hunger hormones you want to really make sure that you're reducing your screen time, especially before bed, at least an hour before bed. You want to really make sure that your sleep environment is helping you get quality sleep. So cooler room, clean environment, close the shades, make sure it's nice and dark, you can play some noise, sounds that will help you sleep better. And then certainly another thing that you can do is you can avoid alcohol before sleep. Right, alcohol and stress are going to really negatively impact the quality of your sleep.
Speaker 1:The next one is regularity okay, impact the quality of your sleep. The next one is regularity, and regularity deals with the bedtime consistency that you're using as you go to sleep. So ideally each night, within a half hour on either side, you want to be going to bed and then waking up. So if you go to bed at 10 o'clock and you're waking up at six o'clock, you want to make sure you're within a half an hour on either side of that. And why is that? Well, as I've explained in the last episode, this regularity, this sleep consistency, really helps you optimize your circadian rhythm. It helps you get into a better quality of sleep. So this is another way that you can improve your quality of sleep is the regularity. But by far this is something I've been working on personally in my own sleep hygiene and I've noticed a big change how I sleep.
Speaker 1:The last one was relatively new in sleep research and this is around timing and not the time you go to bed. That's regularity. Timing more in terms of your genetic chronotype. So what are you naturally predisposed in terms of going to bed and waking up? And it turns out there's four chronotypes there's early morning, mid-morning, early evening and late evening. Right, and I'll talk about this on a future episode. I don't want to spend too much time here, but we are all sort of predisposed to want to go to bed at a certain time and wake up at a certain time, and this again affects our hormones. It affects our moods, our productivity, all these different things. So that's the most important part of strategy. Number one is to regulate, moderate your hormones ghrelin and leptin and how you can do that is through sleep hormones ghrelin and leptin and how you can do that is through sleep.
Speaker 1:The second strategy is through your food choices, more specifically, the nutrients that you're getting. The first nutrient that I really want you to focus on when you're eating certain foods and choosing certain foods is protein quality lean proteins. Why? Well, protein is highly satiated compared to carbohydrates and fats. And why is that? Well, it triggers the release of other hunger and satiety hormones, including CCK, peptide YY and glucagon-like peptide 1, which is the GLP hunger hormone right Now. These hormones, just like ghrelin and leptin, they send signals to the brain that tell your brain you're full and you should stop eating. Okay, the other great thing about protein is it has what's called a high thermogenic effect, and basically what that means is that your body's going to burn more calories, digesting and metabolizing the proteins compared to carbohydrates and fats, and this can create this kind of feeling of fullness. It also increases your energy expenditure, so that's a really positive thing. The last thing is we eat a lot of protein. It helps us build bigger muscles, it helps us build more muscle and, of course, muscle is a metabolically active tissue and this helps us burn more calories and increases our basal metabolic rate. All right, so protein, a really important nutrient that is going to help you feel full and really balance your hunger.
Speaker 1:Hormones, now fat I say fat, but I mean healthy fats. Avocados, fats in eggs I say fat, but I mean healthy fats. Avocados, fats in eggs, fats in fish, fats in different nuts and seeds. Now, fats also play a role in satiety. Fats really give you this sense of fullness and satisfaction, and that's really important when it comes to the desire or over-desire and over-hunger you have for food. It comes to the desire or over-desire and over-hunger you have for food. If you feel satisfied in what you're eating, then you're not going to seek other foods to gain more satisfaction, so to speak. The other great thing about fat is it takes longer to digest and break down, which means it slows down your gastric emptying and your stomach feels fuller longer.
Speaker 1:The last nutrient I want you to focus on in food choice is fiber, right? So fiber found in grains and fruits and vegetables, found in legumes, lentils and beans and chickpeas. Why is fiber so important? Well, it adds to this bulk of your diet, right? So when you eat it, you ingest it. It's going to make your stomach feel more full. This bulk feeling makes your body feel more full and, of course, now the stomach takes longer to empty. And again, this is really important. Fat, fiber, protein they all take longer to digest and because of that, the stomach empties at a much slower rate and you feel satiated for a longer period of time and, as a result, you don't have this over-desire and over-hunger for food.
Speaker 1:Now I talked about protein having an impact on the secretion of satiety hormones. Fiber does as well. The same ones CCK, peptide YY and GLP-1. So, just like protein, fiber is going to help signal to the brain hey, we've eaten enough, you don't need to keep eating. Another thing that's great about fiber is it improves your gut health and when you have a really healthy gut the bacteria in your gut you will absorb a lot more nutrients. You'll break down foods a lot better and absorb more of those nutrients, and, again, this is great at help regulating your appetite and your satiety. Another great thing about protein is it helps stabilize your blood sugar levels, and we know that when we have nice, stable, flat blood sugar, we have way less cravings throughout the day.
Speaker 1:We're not eating as frequently throughout the day, and, of course, this is just has a really positive effect on our hunger, something that all of these foods have in common, not just in how they empty and how do they digest, but you have to chew them a little bit longer, and chewing actually increases the signals that we send to our brain when it comes to satiety and fullness. We don't have to chew that much when we drink foods or when we drink smoothies and drink our calories. We're not getting those signals as frequently as we are when we eat more dense foods. The last thing with fiber I'll mention is foods like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes. They tend to have a lower energy density and this means that you can eat a larger volume of food with fewer calories, and this, of course, contributes to a greater feeling of fullness without the caloric intake. Now notice how I've said fat, fiber, protein. I've talked a lot about this before with my clients, with the group coaching that I do. I've talked about this on the podcast before.
Speaker 1:I have never really said that processed simple sugars and carbohydrates should be a part of our diet and they shouldn't, because the inverse is true of all of this. When you eat processed carbohydrates, simple sugars, you are disrupting your gut health, you are destabilizing your blood sugar levels. You don't need to chew these foods nearly as often to digest them, and so you are seeing an increase in energy density as well. And what does that mean? Well, it means that you're getting more calories for less volume. You're not feeling as full, and then, of course, the stomach empties a lot quicker when you are eating these simple sugars and processed carbohydrates. So that's why the food choices we make are really important and how they're going to affect the downstream result of our hunger. And if weight loss is your goal, this is really important to manage. So the last strategy, you know, strategy number one sleep. Get adequate sleep. Strategy number two better food choices. And then strategy number three always goes back to emotions.
Speaker 1:We are not taught as guys on how to manage our emotions. We're simply taught to be happy, get over whatever we're dealing with and move on, buffer away our emotions, and I see this as probably being the number one reasons why guys overeat, especially when they get into their 40s. They developed really bad habits in terms of using food for comfort, using food for pleasure, for pleasure, using food for joy. And when you start to eat foods that are high in sugars, they are processed, they're concentrated and they give you a greater sense of pleasure because you're receiving a bigger hit of dopamine, and dopamine is that reward. Chemical makes us feel good in the moment, but of course, we know it has a lot of negative effects down the line.
Speaker 1:So instead of seeking food to feel better, it's important to feel our negative emotions right. We're not always supposed to feel happy. We have to build this tolerance, this emotional resilience, in our life as a skill set in order to lose weight. It's a really important strategy. We can no longer use food and alcohol to feel better. So how do you do that? Well, you have to find joy in other areas of your life, not just food. So you have to ask yourself how much of my life or how much of my joy in life comes from food, and if it's a high amount, then you want to decrease that. Now, I'm not saying you can never enjoy food, but what I'm saying is that the majority of your joy should not come from food. It has to come from other areas in your life, and if you use food to feel better, then you need to develop better skills to manage your emotions.
Speaker 1:Well, how do you do this? Well, it takes consciousness. It takes takes awareness. You need to recognize when you're feeling an upsetting emotion like anger, fear, sadness, then become aware of it and become aware of how that makes your body feel. What sensations you know come up for you in your body. Do you have tightness in your chest? Do you have shallow breathing? Do you get flushed? Do you cry? Right, these are all natural, normal sensations that we've repressed and lost touch with, and so we buffered them away with food and alcohol. And when we buffer away our emotions, this leads to, of course, back to the beginning the over-desire and over-hunger we get for food.
Speaker 1:So the strategy becomes this I want you to start to manage your emotions by one, having awareness. Number two, having this practice of body consciousness, understanding what's going on in your body. And then three, I want you to self-regulate. I want you to practice breathing, practice journaling exercises, do meditation, go for a walk, get outside into nature. These are all ways that you can regulate your nervous system and how you feel and those sensations, rather than going to food to feel comfort.
Speaker 1:Here's where this strategy comes full circle. When you get adequate sleep, not only do you moderate your hunger hormones, you moderate your mood hormones as well, and with a stable mood, you feel better. You require food less for comfort and pleasure and at the same time, you're eating healthier food and this makes you feel good. It makes you feel healthy and more energetic. So this is how the positive virtuous cycle all plays out, and not only do you feel better and you have more energy, but the scale starts to move as well. And then, when you see the scale move, the results are uplifting and it builds momentum right. It's this positive virtuous cycle. So there you have it, fellas.
Speaker 1:These are three beginner strategies to weight loss. They're time tested and they go right back to the fundamentals of what I've been preaching on this podcast for the last year and a half. Now it's time to do the work. So, in doing so, recognize that change doesn't always feel good in the beginning. It's unfamiliar, and that means our bodies can perceive these changes as a threat. And so when we perceive different change as a threat, we actually seek comfort in the things that we're trying to avoid. So we stay up late watching TV, we get on social media, we get poor sleep and then we start to eat poorly again and again we get caught up in this vicious cycle playing out instead.
Speaker 1:So I challenge you to embrace the discomfort of this early change, of implementing these new strategies, and affirm to yourself that you can do it. I promise you that you can do it, and when you do, you're going to have powerful, uplifting outcomes. That's all I have for you today, guys. Until next week, keep showing up, surrender the result and keep doing the uncomfortable work. Thanks for tuning in. Now is the time to take action and change your life. Head on over to thespearmethodcom and discover how I can help you get started on your path to better health and weight loss. You.