'You: On a Diet:' Fool Your Brain to Eat Less

Jan. 19, 2007 — -- There's a biological basis behind gaining weight, and Drs. Mehmet Oz and and Michael Roizen say you can't fight biology.

What you can do, though, is learn to work with your body to get cravings under control. There are two hormones that determine whether you fell hungry or full -- ghrelin and leptin.

Ghrelin sounds like gremlin, and it's the hormone that makes your stomach churn and says, 'Hey, you gotta eat.'

The second, leptin, sends message from fat that tells your brain you are full. Oz and Roizen say that learning the timing of these hormones can help you eat less.

When you're really hungry, ghrelin sends those messages every 20 or 30 minutes. It takes 30 minutes to turn those signals off, so unless you take 30 minutes to eat, you'll probably eat too much.

If you have eaten some food and can wait 20 minutes, leptin will send the message that you're full and you'll get over the craving to keep eating.

Breakfast: Eat a high-fiber breakfast like oatmeal or a high-fiber, low-sugar cereal. Omelettes with spices and vegetables are good also. Or you can make the magic breakfast blaster, which takes three minutes to make and is filled with fiber and vitamins.

Snack: Apple or carrots in the morning whenever you feel hungry. A good time to eat these foods is a half-hour before lunch.

Lunch: Automate it. If you have to think too much about it, the ghrelin will start churning, and you'll get desperately hungry. You'll grab whatever and won't make a good decision, so it's ok to have the same three or four things all the time if you know they are healthy.

For example, a good lunch would be a meal-sized salad with chicken, oil and vinegar, a garden harvest soup and water with lemon or lime wedge.

Snack: Around 4 p.m., have a snack. There are some foods that give you calories but they don't turn leptin off. Have some nuts -- they contain "good" fat, which sends the signals to your brain that there's some fat there.