5 Great Ways To Stay (Or Become) Slim

In this post I regurgitate information Ive learnt from watching a documentary on Channel News Asia which has the same title as mine. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be able to eat so much more then someone else and perpetually stay thin no matter how much it seems they eat? We conveniently put the blame on something we call metabolism. Most of us dont really know what it means, but there are so many other people that say the same thing, so that HAS to be the reason. The show loosely defines metabolism as the amount of energy the body expends when doing stuff. Then they go on to prove that metabolism is NOT what causes fat people to be fat.

TEST 1: Scientists take 2 women in a small scale experiment, both of them having ostensibly similar calorie intake, but one of them is a fatass and one of them is a bag of bones. The fatass blames her figure on low metabolism. Their metabolisms are measured, and its found that they both have almost exactly the same levels. They let them both drink a non-radioactively labeled water which measures the amount of calories you take into your body. After a set period of a day or something, their calorie intakes are measured and it shows that fatass has 1.5x the amount of calories taken in as compared to the skeleton.

FINDING 1: Scientists say that much of the time, weight gain/loss differences between 2 people have almost nothing to do with metabolism, but because of what they eat, eating practices and how much they eat at one sitting. They have concluded this not just cuz of this one experiment, but because of several others, involving larger groups of people.

TEST 2: One way to stay off food and snacking is obviously to stay fuller for long. So how do you do just that? Two groups of people were taken. One group takes solid food, followed by a glass of water while the other takes the solid food, grinds it up and mixes it with the water to form a sorta lumpy soup.

FINDING 2: The group taking the soup was found to stay fuller for longer, because water on its own simply passes through your system, but when made into soup, causes the body to take longer to digest the food. Why this is so I couldnt personally understand, because Im under the impression that food with smaller surface area (ground) should have more area in contact with the digestive enzymes and therefore should be faster. Oh but who am I to argue with doctors?

TEST 3: 3 volunteers were given meals divided into 3 groups: Carbohydrates, Fats and Protein (Plain Pasta, Pasta with cream and Pasta with chicken respectively). They were then quizzed on how hungry they felt after the meal.

FINDING 3: Protein was found to keep people full for longer. I dunno what comes second and third. But the bottom line is to have more protein in your food.

TEST 4:
Two groups of volunteers were given chicken drumsticks to eat. There was no great difference in the drumsticks in the way they were cooked or whatever. The only difference between the two groups is that one of them threw their chicken bones into a bowl that was left in front of them, whereas the other group had their chicken bones cleared away.

FINDING 4:
The group with visual cues to how much they had eaten (bowls left there) ate less then the group which had their bowls taken away. The difference in how much more was eaten was 10%. While it may not seem like a stunning significance, I guess it all adds up one way or another.

TEST 5: Two groups of volunteers were given popcorn to eat while watching a movie. One group, had fresh popcorn in a regular cup, while the other had 2-week old stale popcorn in larger volume in a large cup. The cups were collected at the end to see how many were empty.

FINDING 5: A huge amount of empty larger cups were collected. I cant remember the exact % difference, but it was much much more. This, in spite of the fact that the larger cups had stale popcorn. The reason for this was that people eat more when larger portions are given. Therefore, put less on your plate and youll eat less, according to the theory. Doesnt work for me tho, Ill just go and take more if Im not full after 1 serving lol

TEST 6:
Several volunteers drank milk together with their meals and their faeces (shit) were collected. The fat content excreted was measured.

FINDING 6:
The bunch of people who drank milk together with their food had more fat in their shit. This is because calcium binds to fat, interfering with the fat absorption process in our body. I wonder if it works on soya bean milk tho.

So there you have it! 5 ways to keep slim!