Does the SANE Diet Work

Does the SANE Diet work? This is a question many people are asking today, and for good reason.

They are tired of false promises, failed diets, and yo-yo dieting.

What is the dieting prevalence in the U.S.?

The Boston Medical Center estimates that 45 million Americans go on diets annually and spend $33 billion on weight-loss aids. Statistics also show that the average  American makes 3-4 weight loss attempts per year.

Why?

Research shows that diets fail more than 95% of the time. With less than a 5% diet success rate, it’s clear that traditional diets aren’t working for most people.

It’s understandable why they might be wary of starting another diet. It also explains why so many people are asking, “Does the SANE Diet work?”

Does the SANE Diet work?

To answer the question — “Does the SANE Diet Work?” — the answer is a resounding YES. The SANE Diet does actually work!

It has been clinically proven in over 100,000 success stories to unclog hormones, lower setpoint weight, and facilitate permanent weight loss. The SANE Diet, you see, is rooted in modern science. It is endorsed by top doctors at Harvard Medical School, the Cleveland Clinic, The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA.

We do not need to ask the question, “does the SANE Diet work?” because we know it works. It has been scientifically proven to work, and we know it will work for you. But we know answering your question, “does the SANE Diet work?” with a “Yes” is probably not enough. You want to know how it works. What makes SANE different from all those failed fad diets you’ve tried? And does the SANE diet work for everyone?

Why did all those other diets fail?

If you’ve struggled with your weight for a while, you’ve probably tried many diets. Jenny Craig. The Grapefruit Diet. The Cabbage Soup Diet. Weight Watchers. Atkins. Nutrisystem. A variety of liquid diets. No matter which one you tried, the diet ended the same way — although you lost weight, the diet was too restrictive for you to stick with it long term, and so you fell off the diet. Immediately after resuming “normal” eating, you started gaining the weight back. In a very short time, you regained all the weight you had lost, plus an additional 10 pounds.

Every time this happened, you felt guilty, ashamed, depressed, and frustrated. You blamed yourself, wondered what was wrong with you and why you just couldn’t get it right.

Well, listen up…

It is NOT your fault! You didn’t fail all those diets. They failed you. All of these diets were based on incorrect information about how the body and the metabolism works. These diets had you jumping through hoops and eating a certain way that is actually scientifically guaranteed to have the opposite effect. Starvation dieting makes you heavier in the long run.

Though all the diets you tried may have seemed vastly different on the surface, they were all based on the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss. That is, if you deprive your body of X number of calories that it needs per week/month, you’ll lose X number of pounds per week/month. The calorie-deficit theory of weight loss is incorrect, at least in the way it is being taught, mostly because it treats all calories the same. It treats the metabolism like a scale, calories in = calories out.

The problem with the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss

People have been following the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss since at least the 1960s, even though most people know from their own experience that it doesn’t work. Indeed, hundreds of peer-reviewed research studies — going back decades — prove the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss doesn’t work.

Do you know what that means? It means that many government health officials, nutritionists, medical doctors, and other “experts” have known for years that going on a calorie-restricted diet doesn’t work. Yet, they kept their mouths shut. This research never made it into the news or the mainstream dieting community. If it had, it would have saved you and so millions of other people so much needless suffering.

We’re going to correct that wrong right now.

There are 2 main reasons the calorie-deficit theory is incorrect in the way it is being taught:

1. It treats all calories the same.
2. It treats the metabolism like a scale, calories in = calories out, disregarding the homeostatic mechanisms of the body.

A calorie is a calorie…really?

At the heart of the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss is the belief that a calorie is the same as any other calorie. If you follow the calorie-deficit theory, you can eat anything you want and lose weight as long as your energy expenditure is greater than your calorie intake. In practice, this usually involves a calorie limit that you are cautioned not to exceed. You can eat anything you want as long as you don’t go over your calorie limit. This is one of the most harmful aspects of traditional dieting, one that virtually guarantees failure.

That’s because calories work differently in the body depending on which foods they come from. If you want to know why the SANE diet works, it’s because it focuses on the quality of calories, not the quantity.

The quality of calories is determined by four factors: Satiety, Aggression, Nutrition, and Efficiency (SANE).

• Satiety is how quickly calories fill you up.
• Aggression is how likely calories are to be stored as body fat.
• Nutrition is how many vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, etc. that calories provide.
• Efficiency is how easily calories are converted to body fat.

Satiety

Satiety is the feeling of being full after eating. The SANE Diet promotes satiety while most diets based on the calorie deficit theory of weight loss — does NOT.

You see, a calorie is not a calorie when it comes to filling us up and keeping us full. Next time you eat popcorn or chips, notice how much you have to eat to feel full. After eating an entire bag of chips, notice how long it takes you to become hungry again. (Probably not long, maybe an hour or so.) Compare that to eating a 6-ounce serving of salmon or several cups of broccoli. Chances are, you’ll become full in just a short period of time, and you’ll stay full for hours.

That’s the way it works with high-satiety versus low-satiety foods. Calorie for calorie, high-satiety foods fill you up fast and keep you full longer than low-satiety foods — usually with way fewer calories. That’s right…you can eat more high-quality foods on SANE and lose weight because you’ll actually consume fewer total calories. But unlike the typical diet, you’ll be totally satisfied. You won’t feel hungry or deprived.

Need proof?

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine followed ten obese patients for twenty-one days and found those who ate as much high-satiety protein and natural fat as they wanted while avoiding low-satiety starches and sweets unconsciously avoided 1,000 low-quality calories per day.

Being able to unconsciously eat fewer calories is important because although the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss is incorrect, a calorie deficit is necessary to lose weight. But starvation dieting is not the way to achieve a calorie deficit for sustainable weight loss. Starvation dieting is entirely different from high-satiety SANE eating. When you eat high-satiety food, you consume more food and much more nutrition but unintentionally become full faster, stay full longer, and automatically avoid overeating. This is entirely different from less food, less nutrition, feeling hungry, and being tired and irritable all day.

Highest Satiety Foods

So, what are the highest satiety foods?

To keep it simple, focus on consuming foods that contain high amounts of water, fiber, and protein. The more water and fiber in a food, the bigger the food is. This stretches the stomach and other digestive organs, filling you up fast and keeping you full longer.

The amount of protein a food contains is also important because it triggers short- and long-term satiety hormones. The more calories you consume from protein, the more “full” hormone signals are sent to your brain. The result? Effortless calorie control.

Aggression

Calories also vary in how likely they are to be stored as body fat. When we eat, our digestive system determines where calories should go. How aggressively calories approach the digestive system determines their chances of being stored as body fat.

The digestive system directs calories to repair, fuel, or fatten us — in that order. It first makes sure we have enough resources to rebuild anything that has broken down. Next, it makes sure we have enough energy to do whatever we are doing. Finally, it makes sure we are not starving. As long as we have a calm and consistent flow of calories coming into our system, it does a great job directing them where they need to go.

However, our body does not do well when dealing with a bunch of Aggressive calories all at once. (The more Aggressive calories are, the faster they increase levels of glucose in the bloodstream.) When confronted with a bunch of Aggressive calories, the digestive system gets aggravated and sends most of those calories to the fat cells. Incidentally, this is what happens right after you eat a huge plate of pasta, pastries, or other starchy foods. The digestive system can’t deal with such a huge onslaught of calories, so it doesn’t bother trying to organize them — it just sends them straight to the fat cells.

Quantity of food doesn’t cause weight gain, aggressive calorie do!

To lose weight — or keep from gaining weight — we don’t have to worry about eating less food. Our body is fine with a lot of food. It is the aggressive types of food that annoy it. Five hundred calm calories creeping into the bloodstream over many hours are less likely to be stored as body fat than 500 Aggressive calories rushing in all at once. Anytime the body has more calories available than it can deal with at one time, it stores them as body fat.

You see, body fat storage is not caused by eating a lot of food. It is caused by eating foods that cause us to have more glucose in our bloodstream than we can use at one time. You can eat pounds and pounds of food and avoid pounds and pounds of body fat if the glucose the food generates does not exceed the glucose level your body can accommodate right then.

The best thing about SANE eating is you don’t have to really think about Aggressive calories. As long as you increase the amounts of water-, fiber-, and protein-packed high-satiety foods you’re eating, you will automatically eat non-Aggressive calories. You will store less body fat and reduce your risk of many serious diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Nutrition

A 250-calorie candy bar is not the same as 250 calories of broccoli. There is no doubt that calories are vastly different when it comes to discussing the nutrition we need to burn body fat and be healthy. Like everything else with SANE, the key to Nutrition is quality. Yet, like the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss, all we’re ever told is to look for quantity on the nutrition facts labels on food.

Unfortunately, the information on food labels tells us only half of what determines nutrition quality: the concentration of nutrients in the food. But that gives us a distorted view of Nutrition. Think of sugary cereal “enriched” with certain vitamins and minerals. Is this cereal a healthy choice because it contains these extra vitamins and minerals? No, it is not. A high quantity of nutrients combined with low-quality calories is not nutritious.

So, we have to consider nutrients relative to calories. Determining nutrition quality is easy. Simply take the nutrient quantity information provided on nutrition labels and divide it by the number of calories in a serving of the food. This provides the food’s nutrition per calorie. Many nutrients per calorie — provided by non-starchy veggies, seafood, high-quality meats, and nuts/seeds — mean high nutrition quality. Few nutrients per calorie, provided by starches and sweets, means low nutrition quality.

Efficiency

A calorie is also not a calorie when it comes to how efficiently our metabolism converts it into body fat. The more inefficient calories are at being stored as body fat, the better. Fiber is inEfficient at being stored as body fat because it cannot be digested. Protein is inEfficient at being stored as body fat, too, but the explanation is a bit more complicated.

It takes the body five to ten times more energy to digest protein than it does to digest fat or carbohydrate. (About 30% of the calories you consume from protein are burned just by digesting it.) Then, any excess protein is sent to the liver to be converted into glucose. This burns another 33% of the remaining protein calories. (That leaves only 47% of the original protein calories.) Then, converting that newly formed glucose into body fat consumes 25% of the glucose calories. So, only 35% of the initial protein calories can be stored as body fat. (By comparison, 211 of 300 starch calories can be stored as body fat.)

Why the metabolism is NOT like a scale

Since the quality of calories varies widely, it makes sense that the metabolism doesn’t treat them all the same. Contrary to the calorie-deficit theory of weight loss, the metabolism is NOT like a scale. It doesn’t sit back with its little calculator, adding up every calorie you consume. The metabolic system is much more sophisticated than that.

The metabolism is one of several homeostatic mechanisms in the human body. Homeostatic mechanisms strive to maintain a state of equilibrium within the body, allowing a certain amount of independence from the environment. They keep the internal environment within certain limits or setpoints.

Homeostatic systems stabilize your blood pressure, blood sugar levels, body temperature, and so much more. And what about your weight? Well…your brain, digestive system, and hormones work together in a highly coordinated manner to stabilize your body weight. They continually communicate through feedback loops to synchronize the activities that automatically maintain body fat at a specific level, known as your setpoint weight.

What is the setpoint weight, and how does the SANE Diet work with it?

There is an invisible force inside you that is conspiring to hold on to those dangerous extra pounds, and it has nothing to do with calories, points, or any of the traditional diet “rules” you’ve been given. That invisible force is your setpoint weight.

The setpoint is the range of weight your body strives to maintain, no matter what type of diet you try. If you are overweight or obese, it is not because you eat too much food. It is because your setpoint weight is elevated.

After all, don’t you know people who eat anything they want — any time they want — and never gain an ounce? Meanwhile, you can’t look at a piece of cake or a hamburger without gaining 10 pounds! Yet, your skinny friend probably eats way more than you do. You probably say or think that these lucky people have fast metabolisms, and you are correct. But what you may not have ever thought is that you are not destined to have a slow metabolism.

While about 50% of our setpoint weight is determined by genetics, the other 50% is totally under our control. Once you lower your setpoint weight, you can have the metabolism of a naturally thin person. You will eat high-quality SANE foods most of the time — and be totally satisfied.

However, if you should eat inSANE foods here and there, you will not have to worry about gaining weight.

The problem with starvation dieting

You will never achieve a faster metabolism and lose weight permanently by starvation dieting. Your setpoint weight always wins. Say you decide to go on a crash diet of 1,200 calories per day.  As soon as you start eating less food, your body panics. Hormones send an emergency alert to your brain that you’re starving.

The hypothalamus in the brain releases hormones to keep you from starving. (Hormones are chemical messengers that travel through the bloodstream, directing cells to take certain actions.) The hypothalamus has many hormones at its disposal, hormones that make you hungry or tired or cranky, or weak. Hormones that slow your metabolism. Hormones that stop your body from burning fat. To conserve calories (and keep you from starving to death), the hypothalamus even releases hormones that make the body burn muscle instead of fat.

Gaining more weight and yo-yo dieting

If you’re wondering why you feel so crappy on a starvation diet, it’s because the cells are not getting the amount of nutrition they need. And your body — your setpoint — is working against your weight-loss efforts. It even continues to sabotage you after you go off the diet. How many times have you regained all the weight you lost and then some? The weight gain, of course, is your body’s determination to bring you back up to your setpoint weight. But what’s up with gaining more weight than you lost? This happens because the body overreacts to the starvation your body endured. To make sure you’re physically okay — and that this starvation will never happen again — it gives you MORE fat than you had before you started the diet!

It should be obvious that reducing your calorie intake while eating low-quality foods is not the way to lose weight long term. At best, it is a frustrating short-term fix. At worst, it is the trigger for yo-yo dieting, for gaining more weight.

You deserve so much better than that, and having your question, “Does the SANE Diet work?” answered completely is one of your rewards for struggling so long and so hard with your weight. The SANE Diet is the answer you’ve been looking for. Before we detail the SANE Diet, it might help if we review the factors that may have elevated your setpoint weight.

Factors the elevate setpoint weight

Everything you do affects setpoint weight, for good or ill. Many experts credit modern society for providing many of the factors that commonly elevate setpoint weight. There are three main causes of an elevated setpoint weight: poor-quality diet, stress, and sleep deprivation.

Poor-quality diet

The global rate of obesity has nearly doubled since 1980, according to the World Health Organization. People’s bodies defended a much lower setpoint weight back then. The question is: why did setpoint weights rise so dramatically in the past few decades?

Genetics cannot explain this rise in setpoint weight. After all, genetics cannot change that much in just four decades. So…many experts have concluded that the main culprit in elevated setpoint is a poor-quality diet, particularly starchy carbs, and sweets. These foods break your system, clog your hormones, and elevate setpoint weight.

Indeed, research does indicate that consuming a steady diet of starchy carbs, sugars, and heavily processed foods contributes to weight gain. It is certainly true that these foods are staples of many people’s diets, especially in the U.S.

A report published online in the March 9, 2016 edition of the journal BMJ Open stated that more than 60% of the average American’s calories consist of ultra-processed foods. (Ultra-processed foods contain added sugar, salts, and chemicals. They are also devoid of fiber and contain few nutrients.) The researchers also found more than 90% of the added sugar in our diets comes from these ultra-processed foods.

How Does the SANE Diet Work with Meals?

One of the best things you can do to lower your setpoint weight is to reduce or eliminate starchy carbs, sugars, and ultra-processed foods from your diet. The good news is removing these foods is not as difficult as you might think it is. There is a SANE substitution for every inSANE food (except for those crazy ultra-processed foods.) For instance, you can replace regular noodles with zucchini noodles (zoodles). You can replace mashed potatoes with mashed cauliflower.

Instead of vowing to eat less inSANE foods, concentrate on eating more SANE foods. Remember what SANE foods are? SANE foods contain high levels of water, fiber, and protein. When you eat SANE foods, you’ll be too full to eat inSANE ones. The higher-quality foods will unclog your hormones, you’ll unconsciously consume fewer calories, and you’ll effortlessly lose weight.

Stress

We live in a very stressful society. There are bills to pay, children to care for, and employers to please. This stress, though, is not life-threatening, and that’s precisely the problem. You see, your body is designed to deal with short-term, life-threatening stress.

Stress to our caveman ancestors was a pride of lions about to attack his village or some other catastrophic threat. In response to this stress, the endocrine glands release cortisol. Cortisol not only primes the body to fight or flee, it also triggers a release of insulin to get the glucose into the cells. (To fight or flee, you need extra energy from this glucose.)

During the conflict, the body burns off glucose. The relaxation response sets in, gradually bringing the body back to normal. Our stress response is designed to save our life. Unfortunately, most people treat every aggravation as a life-threatening event. But if the stress response is always being triggered, it leads to chronically elevated levels of cortisol, which can cause an accumulation of belly fat.

Chronically elevated cortisol levels also lead to chronically elevated insulin levels (since cortisol triggers the release of insulin.) Insulin is the fat-storage hormone. Too much insulin circulating in your bloodstream almost guarantees you won’t be able to burn fat. Finally, since psychological stress does not burn off glucose, a surge of glucose is also constantly circulating in your bloodstream. Elevated glucose levels trigger still more insulin that can lead to weight gain and type 2 diabetes.

To keep stress from elevating your setpoint weight, try to de-stress at least once per day. Try meditation, deep-breathing exercises, yoga, and long walks. Anything you enjoy doing will de-stress you and help lower your setpoint weight.

Sleep deprivation

According to a Sleep in America poll, about 20% of Americans say they get less than 6 hours of sleep per night, on average. There are many reasons why people are not getting the amount of sleep they need. Work. Stress. Entertainment. Internet. But whatever the reason, many research studies have found a link between sleep deprivation and many health conditions, including heart disease, diabesity, and obesity.

With respect to overweight and obesity, research shows that sleep deprivation may dysregulate hormones, leading to overeating and/or cravings for starchy carbs.

To keep sleep deprivation from elevating your setpoint weight, try to get 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night.

Want to learn how the Sane Diet Works? Here’s the SANE Diet Plan

The SANE Diet is easy to follow. There are no complicated menus to learn or calories to count. Simply choose foods from these food groups as much as possible. These foods have been clinically proven to unclog hormones, trigger fat-burning hormones, and lower setpoint weight.

Non-starchy vegetables

10+ servings per day. Fill half your plate with non-starchy vegetables.

Nutrient-dense protein

3-5 servings per day, 30-55 grams per meal

Whole-food fats

3-6 servings per day

Low-fructose fruits

0-3 servings per day

Does the SANE Diet work?

Yes, it does work. But we’ll let you be the judge.

Next step: Does the SANE Diet work? find the answer and learn more with SANE

Ready to finally break free from the yo-yo dieting rollercoaster by balancing your hormones and lowering your body’s setpoint weight?

Want to know the exact foods and serving sizes that are scientifically proven by over 1,300 peer-reviewed research studies to boost metabolism, burn fat, and enjoy virtually effortless weight loss like a naturally thin person?

Download the free SANE metabolism boosting food list, cheat sheet, and “Eat More, Burn More” weight loss program by clicking here .