LEARNING how to listen to the signals your body sends you and saying goodbye to imposed starvation is one step toward maintaining a healthy weight – for life.

When Dr Amanda Sainsbury-Salis was a teenager she began the 'yo-yo' dieting that saw her balloon from a healthy weight to obesity.

"I spent six years constantly dieting – I dieted myself fat basically," she says. "I just gained little bits and little bits of weight and after six years I had gained 40 kilos."

Like many dieters, she found it difficult to stick to a schedule. The hunger that would overtake her body after a few weeks was overpowering. Dr Sainsbury-Salis also found that her weight loss would plateau – even if she had kept up with her eating and exercise plan.

She came to the realisation that the constant dieting was absorbing most of her time, energy and money – but refused to accept that her 'failures' with dieting were psychological.

"There definitely seemed to be something physical that was preventing me from losing weight," she says.

That's when Dr Sainsbury-Salis resolved to use her scientific training to find a way to lose weight for good. Seventeen years and 30 lost kilos later, she has documented her findings in a book, the Don't Go Hungry Diet, published by Random House Australia and released earlier this year.

The famine reaction

Dr Sainsbury-Salis's research uncovered what she blames for many people's problems with conventional diets – the 'famine reaction'.

"This is a survival mechanism that protects you from wasting away," she explains. "Once you lose a certain amount of weight, your body says, 'hmmm, something's happening, we're wasting away here'."

Sainsbury-Salis believes that in response to its perceived starvation, the body sends extreme hunger signals. "This contributes to that plateau and the rebound weight gain," she says. "The famine reaction also affects metabolism, making your body super efficient at storing fat."

Disabling the famine reaction

The most common response to the famine reaction with conventional weight loss programs is to struggle on, resist that hunger and exercise more.

However, says Dr Sainsbury-Salis, this actually makes the famine reaction worse.

And the key to negating it is to eat the types and amounts of food that make you feel satisfied.

"Science says when you eat whenever you feel genuinely hungry, this convinces your body that there isn't any famine, so the famine reaction switches off, in turn controlling hunger and making it easier to lose weight," she says.

So, in terms of losing weight and keeping it off, the important thing is to listen to your hunger signals and let them be the guide as to what and how much you consume.

"Your body can compute the fat, calorie, protein and carb content of every food you eat. So, even if you eat something that dieters might think of as fattening, your body can recognise that 'yep, there's plenty of calories in this food, I don't need any more calories for a while yet'," she says.

But striking the balance requires careful self-monitoring.

"You need to learn to listen to the signals that your body sends you," says Dr Sainsbury-Salis. "It helps to take a piece of paper and start tracking how hungry or satisfied you feel before and after you eat," she says.

From that, she explains, you gain a good understanding of what real physical hunger and satiety feel like – and learn to distinguish between real hunger and 'emotional' or 'clock' hunger, when you eat for comfort or just because it's a certain time of day, irrespective of your 'real' hunger.

"It's very important when you do feel hunger, you eat something. Don't let yourself get ravenous, because this can trigger this famine reaction and slow your metabolism," she says.

The fat brake

Learning to eat only when you're hungry will also kick in the services of what Dr Sainsbury-Salis has labelled the "fat brake".

"Just as your body has a famine reaction which stops you from losing weight, it also has a fat brake that protects you from gaining weight," she says.

"Laboratory experiments have shown that when people gain extra kilograms, their metabolic rate and appetite decreases. This is a tool employed by the body to maintain a constant weight. The fat brake can be taken advantage of to aid weight loss.

"If you simply make a habit of eating only when you feel hungry, then your fat brake will help you to burn off that extra weight automatically, without your having to think about it or stress or count foods," Dr Sainsbury-Salis says.

Learning the cycle

"After a while, if you lose a certain amount of weight – and it's different for everybody – your famine reaction will raise its head," says Dr Sainsbury-Salis.

"The famine reaction will rev up your appetite. If you just follow your physical hunger, you'll simply start eating more. Doing this will calm your famine reaction; appease it and convince it that 'no, it's okay, there's no famine'.

"The famine reaction will then go away after, say, a few days and off you go again fat burning. These little undulations are very gentle and you don't have to force anything – you feel your way thin rather than forcing your way thin."

"So it all boils down to eating nutritious foods whenever you feel hungry, stopping when you've honestly had enough and do some form of regular physical activity," she says.

Where to find out more

The Don't Go Hungry Diet is published by Random House Australia, at www.randomhouse.com.au

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