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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mini Mikkipedia and here's something which I check the clients about all the time. Many come to fat loss assuming success means eating less food. You've got smaller meals, fewer plates, more restriction, less meals, the smaller the portion and the faster the results. And it's a super common trap to fall into, But the thing is, is that when people start eating better,

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they often end up eating more. And that means more volume on their plate, longer meals, more chewing. And this is the key to the success. They're able to lose more fat, more consistently, and it's way more sustainable. So today, I wanna unpack why eating better often means that you're actually eating more and why, in fact, this is one of the fundamental principles for successful fat loss.

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and of course weight maintenance, is the major thing which is important. The first concept I want to tackle is that volume versus energy density. So this is a fundamental concept that explains this entire phenomenon. And energy density is simply the number of calories in a given weight or volume of food. And this is where I want to chat a little bit about ultra processed foods. And of course I appreciate that the very definition of an ultra processed food is a little bit challenging.

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because there is no one sort of, it's not that all ultra processed foods are terrible such as protein powder, et cetera, but the type that I'm thinking about are the ones like a muesli bar, a chocolate bar, potato chips. They are engineered to pack maximum energy into minimum volume. If you consider my definition or what I'm thinking about with ultra processed food, it is the combination of processed and refined oils, of sugar, of starches.

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and any number of flavors, additives and preservatives to create a flavor which our brain might recognize as something that may have existed in nature, but it doesn't. And these food scientists are able to create this product in a way that has a bliss point in our brain that makes us want to continue to eat. And they're able to do that with putting maximum calories into a minimum volume. In fact, last week I was in a nutrition store and I picked up

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what looked like some sort of fluffy cookie, 45 grams in weight, 320 calories. But of course it was high protein, so there you go. That is an example of energy density. You could eat that in about 30 seconds and your stomach would barely notice. Same thing goes for a handful of chips, a couple of biscuits, a small pastry, high energy, low volume. Now compare that to whole foods. Think of

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for example, a large bowl of vegetables or three pieces of fruit. Let's say you've got these three pieces of fruit, maybe about 300 calories, the same as that little energy donut, the protein donut or cookie I was talking about before. It's very difficult to get through three pieces, large pieces of fruit in one hit. You've got this absolute full plate. You will have 10 to 15 minutes of eating and you'll have significant chewing.

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Same goes with, let's say, a chicken breast with a side salad and maybe you've even got some rice or quinoa or something alongside. That is a complete meal and it will leave you feeling satisfied for far longer. Yet when you're looking at this amount of food on the plate, it looks like so much more. And this is what happens when you eat better. You're often eating more food, but less calories. Your plate gets bigger, your meals take longer, there's more chewing involved.

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more sensory satisfaction, more actual food, and that calorie load is significantly lower than the grazing, snacking, and ultra-processed type of eating that you might have been doing before. I see this with clients and of course, members of my programs all of the time. We'll have group chats and they'll message me saying, my god, I cannot believe that I'm eating so much food and I'm still able to lose weight. And then if we sort of drill down on that data, we'd see that they'd reduce their

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calorie intake by about 300 400 calories a day, but they've just increased their food volume by replacing these energy-dense processed foods with these nutrient-dense whole foods. And of course you've got satiety. This is the other thing that happens. Your gut has stretch receptors. Your brain registers volume, chewing, meal duration, and when you eat a large volume of lower energy-dense foods, those satiety signals are stronger and they last longer.

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You're not hunting for something else an hour later because your body actually registers that you ate and your brain and your stomach are aligned and they keep up with each other. So the first refrain really is that eating better means more food, not more calories. And that's precisely what makes it sustainable. Of course, I could not talk about eating better and feeling fuller without considering protein because this is where the eating more phenomenon becomes a little bit more pronounced as you imagine.

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when I advocate for people to shift to eating better, they almost always increase their protein intake. And it's not because I'm super, super prescriptive, I'm a little prescriptive, but the types of foods that have the micronutrients, which I suggest people increase, will naturally bring about more protein rich foods to the plate. And protein is bulky. 150 gram cooked chicken breast.

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piece of fish, a couple of eggs with some egg whites. These are substantial foods. Not only do they take up space, they require quite a bit of effort to eat. And crucially, protein has the highest thermic effect of all macronutrients, meaning your body uses more energy just to digest and process it. But I do want to be a bit careful here with the language. You'll often hear that protein boosts your metabolism. And while this is technically true,

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The thermic effect of food accounts for about 10 % of total energy expenditure. So protein's contribution to that, whilst it's meaningful, it is modest. So we're not talking about some sort of metabolic magic trick or anything like that. I do think that the real magic of protein is in its satiety, its ability to keep you fuller for longer. And also it then reduces decision fatigue because you're not in this limbo of

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Should I, shouldn't I eat more food? It's the most satisfying macronutrient. It reduces ghrelin, which is our hunger hormone, increases peptide YY, which is an appetite hormone, stabilizes blood sugar, keeps you satisfied for hours. I'm not talking about the 70 grams of cooked chicken on your salad. I'm literally talking about, you know, at least double that. When your meals are protein anchored, you're not prowling in the pantry.

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at three o'clock. You're not negotiating with yourself about whether you should or shouldn't have a snack. That drive to eat is just quieter. And the thing is though, and I alluded to it above about the, it's not just 70 grams of chicken breast, is that people panic when I tell them to eat a greater amount of food at their meals. They look at their plate, they see that amount of protein, they may see a huge pile of vegetables, an appropriate amount of

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carbohydrate, dare I say potato, and they think this is more food than I used to eat at dinner. So how could this possibly allow me to lose weight? The thing is, is they forget about what they're not doing. They're not having three biscuits with their afternoon coffee. They're not finishing the kids leftovers at dinner. They're not eating half a block of chocolate while watching TV. They're not grazing on crackers and cheese before bed. And those background calories could easily lead to an increase of

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500-800 calories a day. Not because it was a planned part of their diet or that you're lacking in willpower. It's because adequately fed people don't feel compelled to graze. And whilst you should feel hungry whilst in a fat loss phase, and it's a really normal and natural response, you shouldn't feel so ravenous that these other eating opportunities are occurring.

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protein increases, when food volume increases, your meals look substantial, that actually plays a big part of it too, but your total energy intake is often lower and infinitely more sustainable because you're not fighting hunger between meals. Of course it isn't just protein that plays a role here and we've got to consider fibre too. And when people shift to whole foods, inevitably they start eating more vegetables, more fruit, more legumes.

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and their carbohydrate comes more from starchy carbohydrates. And not only do these come with fiber, which is half the calories of carbohydrate, but very voluminous, fiber slows gastric emptying. It stabilizes blood sugar, feeds your gut microbiome. It contributes to that feeling of satisfaction after a meal. And also when you consider all of this at a meal time, what happens is

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that eating better from a behavioral standpoint usually introduces structure. Whole foods require preparation. You can't eat a chicken breast in a bowl of roasted vegetables in the car. Well, you can actually, but you get my drift. You can't grab a handful of salmon and quinoa while you're standing at the kitchen bench. You can't have a meal, a slow cook meal while you're just passing through the kitchen. These meals demand that you sit down,

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You eat slowly and you actually experience the eating. And that's when the grazing stops. I cannot tell you that how many clients realize once we start tracking that their main meals weren't the problem. They were typically under eating at breakfast and lunch, then spending the entire afternoon and evening trying to compensate with snacks. A typical pattern might be that they have coffee and a piece of toast for breakfast or a couple of wheat bakes. They get through to lunch and they have like a

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a salad at their desk which may have a tiny bit of protein if any. And that in itself might be about 500 calories in total. Then they've got biscuits and chocolate at three o'clock. They've got cheese and crackers while making dinner. They've got a reasonable size meal at dinner of about 600 calories. And then in the evening after dinner, they've got ice cream or chips while they're sitting down relaxing and unwinding at the end of the day. These eating opportunities outside of the meal

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easily can account for over a thousand calories from grazing, often more than the actual meals. Now when you turn that on its head and consider someone who eats better, breakfast might be a couple of eggs with some scrambled egg whites, avocado, tomatoes, maybe even a piece of sourdough, 450 calories. Lunch might be chicken, a big salad, might include some hummus or a mindful amount of olive oil dressing, might have some fruit.

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550 calories. 3pm comes, maybe they have something if they're hungry and it might just be, I don't know, like a protein shake or a piece of fruit. They might not have anything because they may not be hungry. Dinner may be the same sort of salmon, roast veggies, sweet potato, 600 calories. And if they're having anything in the evening, it might be something like a couple of pieces of dark chocolate. The amount of calories they have in between meals rapidly diminishes because they've

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feed themselves appropriately at meals, and they're eating way less calories. I do also want to address mindset, and I know this may seem like an overused term, and I appreciate that, but this is where the psychological shifts happens. Traditional dieting is about shrinking, smaller portions, smaller plates, eating less than you burn. The entire framework is about creating scarcity, and physiologically, your body responds to scarcity with hunger.

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When you under eat, especially when you under eat protein, fiber, micronutrients that these foods provide, your appetite doesn't get quieter, it gets louder. Greelin increases, lectin drops, your brain starts scanning the environment for high calorie foods and suddenly that block of chocolate in the cupboard is all you can think about. Everyone talks about food noise. This is the type of food noise I'm talking about. And traditional dieting can feel like a fight.

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You're constantly resisting, you're constantly exerting willpower, you're constantly trying to override your biology. And eventually you just lose. And this isn't because you have no willpower. It's because your hunger will win every time. When you eat adequately, when you've got enough of all of those things and you've got enough volume, your body's drive to eat decreases. And it isn't that you never feel hungry, but you just dampen down those thoughts of food.

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and your appetite becomes predictable. You eat breakfast and you feel satisfied until just about lunchtime. You eat lunch and you don't need to graze all afternoon. You eat dinner and you're not hunting through the pantry at 9pm. Your hunger, like I say, it doesn't disappear, but it becomes predictable and anchored to your meals. And that is so much more freeing from this scarcity mindset.

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So you're not always white-knuckling it. You're not always relying on motivation, which honestly just will run out even after a week. You're not negotiating with yourself. You're just eating like a human should eat. And this is why so many people can sustain this way of eating for long term. And it doesn't mean you're never eating any of the delicious foods that you love that may just in fact be ultra processed. But when you anchor your diet in this way,

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you can then make the decision to eat these foods rather than be driven to eat them through hunger. So that's really the refrain that I want to leave you with today. Successful fat loss doesn't feel like constant restraint. It's cognitive restraint, yes. You're making a decision not to eat other foods, but it is calm, it is repeatable, and it's the type of eating that finally matches what your body needs. And if so, if you're eating better and you find yourself thinking,

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This is so much food. don't know how this is working, yet you're losing weight. That is good. That's exactly what you should be happening. You're eating more food, not more calories. You're eating more volume and you're eating to support your nutrient needs. If fat loss feels like scarcity, if it feels like deprivation and you're constantly resisting the urge to eat, then there is something missing upstream. And that answer that you're looking for isn't more willpower, really

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does come down to food choice. thanks for listening to Mini Micropedia. Just so you know, in a couple of weeks time, I'm opening doors to Mondays Matter Accelerated so you get an opportunity to experience what effective fat loss feels like before we crack on into the main program, Mondays Matter. So that is all happening in a few weeks. You can find out more information over on my website, mikkiwilliden.com.

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Scroll down to the bottom and pop your name in the box that asks for your email or head to my Instagram @mikkiwilliden which is the same name that you can find me on X in threads or Facebook at mikkiwillidennutrition. Thanks team, you have a great day and a great rest of your week.