Eating to speed up your metabolism

To train yourself to eat smaller portions, use a salad plate or a small bowl instead of a bigger dinner plate. Many dieting studies have proven that this advice works, possibly because of what marketing researchers at Washington University call the "partitioning effect." When people are given a hundred dollars to spend, those who receive it in ten envelopes of ten dollars each spend fifty dollars; those who are given one envelope with one hundred dollars blow the whole thing. The same effect works with food, because when you reach one partition—finishing the food on a smaller plate, say—you have to make a conscious choice to reach for more.

Compare that scenario with the mindless shoveling of food from a bigger dinner plate. We've seen how those large meals send insulin levels soaring and overtax all the systems responsible for digestion. When you take the calories eaten during one large meal and spread them throughout the day, all your cells, organs, glands, and hormones can do their jobs so much easier.

If you have been overeating, perhaps it would help to know that cutting your daily calorie intake by just 15 per cent—from 2,000 to 1,700, for example—could reduce your risk of cancer. University of Texas researchers found that mice given 15 to 30 percent fewer calories inhibited the signaling power of IGF-1, diminishing excess cell growth and the development of papillomas, precancerous lesions on the skin. Researchers believe the same mechanism may be at work in as many as 80 per cent of other cancers as well.

Yes, as complex as the whole picture of hormones and weight loss is, one undeniable maxim of weight loss still applies: Calories are important. Of the five thousand people in the National Weight Control Registry who've successfully maintained weight loss of at least 30 pounds, 99 per cent of them had cut calories.

Okay, I had to say it. But that's the last time we'll mention it.

Hormone homework: The only portion sizes that really count are animal products, processed foods, starchy vegetables, and high-sugar fruits. I truly don't care how many nonstarchy vegetables you eat. I'd love it if you would eat plates and plates full of them! Start your meal with veggies and you'll give your gut-based satiety hormones more time to kick in.

Junk food without the junk
I know you're human. You're going to have sugar. You're going to have chocolate. (Some argue that chocolate is a health food.) But here's the deal: Instead of a processed, artificially flavored peanut butter cup with trans fat and high-fructose corn syrup, have a Newman's Own organic peanut butter cup. Instead of a huge bowl of sugar-free, nonfat frozen yogurt, loaded with chemicals and artificial sweeteners, have half a cup of organic full-fat ice cream. If you're going to have foods that are less healthy, eat real food and not chemicals.

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Excerpted from Master Your Metabolism, copyright 2009 by Jillian Michaels and Mariska van Aalst. Used by permission of Random House. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.