The Instinct Diet Plan
Professor of psychiatry and nutrition expert Dr. Susan B. Roberts created the Instinct Diet plan. She’s had over 200 articles published on nutrition and weight loss. The idea behind this diet plan is to understand the 5 built-in food instincts that help control your eating habits.
The Instinct Diet is divided in three phases. Phase I lasts two weeks and prepares you for the diet plan with a limited variety of hunger-suppressing foods. Phase II lasts six weeks and it allows a larger variety of foods along with the time to learn how to develop good eating habits. The last phase hones the skills that will help you keep the weight off permanently.
While most diet plans follow 2000 calories per day count, this diet plan restricts the individual to 1,200 calories if you weigh less than 160 pounds; 1,600 calories if you weigh 160-200 pounds and anyone over 200 pounds you’re restricted to 1,800 calories per day.
The first phase of this diet plans features three days’ worth of menus repeated four times and what this does is reduced-variety approach designed to suppress hunger while the limited variety helps you manage your food eating instincts.
Phase two of this diet plan has more variety of foods available for consumption, a bonus daily 100-calorie free choice treat and a 7-day menu plan with some food combinations options for greater flexibility. The last phase is a maintenance diet plan to assist you to keep off the weight lost in the first eight weeks. You learn skills ranging from planning menus to keeping track of calories and weight. Exercise (15-30 minutes daily) is recommended during the final phase, as it helps in maintenance, but the diet plan itself does not promote long-term exercise routine.
The Instinct Diet Plan centers on instinctual techniques that control your food choices. The diet plan outlines the 5 food instincts.
1. Hunger – build meals around foods that are proven to make you feel full
2. Availability – eat at regular times help actually cut hunger to make weight loss easier
3. Calorie density – obsession to eat high-calorie foods
4. Familiarity – urge to consume comfort food triggers
5. Variety – tendency to eat more when we have more choices
The hunger instinct of this diet plan consists of eating high fiber, high protein, low carbohydrates with a mix of low and high foods on the glycemic food index table.
The availability instinct is to keep your kitchen fully stocked with healthy, ready-to-eat foods. No junk food, alcohol or sweets.
Stage three is the calorie density instinct which consists of consuming high-calorie food in the middle of your meal and low-calorie foods high in fiber and proteins before and after. Use spices to make your low-calorie foods taste better.
Familiarity instinct of this diet plan is to train your body to eat at regular times, which will help suppress cravings.
The final instinct is variety, which is to keep a high variety of healthy foods and a low amount of unhealthy snacks in your pantry. This diet plan discourages food-additives and preservatives.