Hi Izabela

FAQ Friday question, and this is the one I get asked in whispers:

"Why am I hungry an hour after dinner? I've eaten a proper meal. What is wrong with my appetite?"

Nothing is wrong with your appetite. A message didn't get sent.

Here's the mechanism.

You have cells lining your gut whose entire purpose is making a hormone called GLP-1. When food arrives, they release it, and it tells your brain you're full, slows your stomach emptying, and steadies your blood sugar.

You were born with this. It's been running your appetite your whole life.

But those cells sit further down your gut. So they only get the message if the food gets that far.

And soft, fast, stripped food doesn't. White bread, sugar, packaged things. 

All digested and absorbed high up, gone before they ever reach the cells that were supposed to tell you that you'd eaten.

You ate. Your gut never told your brain. Does that make sense?

There's a second half to it, too. Those cells depend on your gut bacteria. And your own gut matters more here than most people realise. 

A study published in Gut Microbes back in 2021 showed that imbalances in the gut can make it genuinely difficult to stick to healthier food and lifestyle habits. 

I talk about this in my Masterclass (click here if you haven´t seen it yet)

It isn't only about what you choose. 

It's about who's in there helping you choose it. 

So here's what actually turns the signal back up. Four things, and the first one is the big one.

• One. Fermentable fiber. Beans, lentils, oats, vegetables. When your bacteria eat this kind of fiber they make compounds that tell your gut to release more GLP-1 directly. This is the single biggest lever you have, and it's the one nobody can sell you. If beans aren't a habit yet, that's the highest-value change available to you this week.

• Two. Protein at every meal, and good fats alongside. Both help. Neither works as well alone.

• Three. Bitter. This is the one people have never heard. The bitter foods we've mostly bred out of our diet, rocket, radicchio, dandelion greens, even a squeeze of lemon before you eat, appear to wake these same gut cells up. Your body reads bitter as a signal that real food has arrived.So the arugula salad nobody orders is doing more for your appetite than the protein shake everybody's drinking. I find that very funny and slightly annoying.
  

• Four. Slow down. The hormone takes time to rise and it needs you calm enough to make it. Sitting at a table for twenty minutes does more than any ingredient on this list. If you inhale lunch at your desk, you skipped the conversation.

Try this for one week and watch your evenings specifically. That's where women notice it first. The fridge stops calling at nine.

And one last thing, because I know some of you are on the medication or thinking about it.

This isn't an argument against it. That's your decision with your doctor and I'm not in that room. It's just that your own system is still in there, and it still responds. Whatever you decide, you want that machinery working.

Love,

Vale

P.S. This week's video goes much deeper than I can here, including the two plant compounds I actually use myself. "Your Body Already Makes Its Own Ozempic": 

I release a new video every week, and there are many already on my YouTube Channel