SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Believe it or not - At least after some time, a severely energy restricted diet will reduce your cravings for donuts, pizza, pasta, and even chocolate statistically significantly - the questions from the headline do yet remain: Who benefits? What's the mechanism? And do the effects depend on your diet / its macros? If you browse blogs and read e-books, you will read highly popular claims like "Dieting is useless, it just makes you hungry. If you want to lose weight, you got to stop eating carbs and reduce insulin." Those claims are popular because they entail the (unwarranted) claim that you could lose weight without cutting back on your energy intake. WRONG! Fortunately, more and more people seem to understand that. One thing that will still be hard for them to swallow is the conclusion of the latest meta-analysis that addresses the ubiquitous claim that "calorie restriction may increase food cravings" (Kahathuduwa 2017), would thus ruin all your weight l...

You always crave the foods you must not eat, right? No, ... a recent study finds decreases in sweet and starch cravings in obese individuals on low-carb diets. If the calorie intake is standardized, low-carb dieting has no proven metabolic weight loss benefit compared to any other dietary weight loss intervention. In the real-world, as well as less tightly controlled studies in obese  individuals, however, they tend to outperform their American Heart Association inspired bogus low fat, low protein, high carbohydrate counterparts. The reason? No, still no "metabolic advantage": reduced hunger and food cravings and the subsequently increased adherence and reduced energy intake - an assumption that isn't proven, but at least supported by Colette Heimowitz' latest paper. A paper based on a study that was sponsored by Atkins Nutritionals and smells of bias, but a study that's in line with millions of N=1 reports on the internet. Would be interesting to compar...

Trp and it's metabolite 5-HTP may be particularly useful for female sugar cravings and binges. Can l-tryptophan help you lose body fat? If you look at the results of the latest study from the University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology it would seem that the answer to this question may be "Possibly, yes, but..." Before we come to the implications I would yet like to take a closer look at said study which shows that a lack of tryptophan (Trp) during diets does not just affect the biosynthesis of serotonin, but may also be associated with increased susceptibility for mood disturbances and carbohydrate craving. Accordingly, "strategies to supplement Trp while dieting could be highly useful in treating uncontrolled weight gain or in preventing neuropsychiatric symptoms" (Strasser. 2014). Honestly, fasting and eating / skipping breakfast may be more promising weight loss tools Breakfast and Circadian Rhythm Does Meal Timing Mat...

Evil or harmless? If you exert some self- control, the effects non-nutritive natural and artificial sweeteners are about to have on the amount of sweetness it takes to satisfy you is not enough to make you fat - I mean, you are no fattening pig, but an intelligent human being with a free will and a decent degree of self-control. Some of you may have seen my post an a recent sweetener review in the SuppVersity Facebook News , already. In said post , I mention that Katharine Mary Wright makes the same proposal I did in a previous article on artificial sweeteners: the possibility of getting used to the intense sweetness could be, even if the sweeteners are non-toxic and non-insulinogenic, an issue we should not discard lightly. After all, someone who has been consuming his coffee with a ton of stevia for years is not likely to notice the calorie overload, when he happens to drink one the sugar-monsters at Starbucks. That being said, my rationale has hitherto been based on the assump...

When it comes to carvings, women are more susceptible to the sugar coating of a doughnut vs. steak in a salt crust. When I saw the results of a recent study from the University of Tokushima Graduate School , I felt reminded of my last barbecue with a couple of friends and how I would have preferred another steak, when my female friends devoured the chocolate cream grimacing as if they were about to have an orgasm. You're asking yourselves what this anecdote could possibly have to do with the latest nutrition research from Japan? Well, it confirms the main findings Zhou et al. present in their latest paper in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Nutrition (Zhou. 2014): Men have a significantly stronger desires for salty and fatty foods, whereas women prefer sweet food after meals. Learn more about the effects of your diet on your body composition at the SuppVersity Dieting Makes Gymnasts Fat! Minimal Carb Reduction, Max. Results? HIT Circuit + Plyos for Glu...