1. Satiety. Calorie sparse foods mean big food volume. I can be absolutely stuffed on 2000 cals a day if I choose the right foods, whereas I could eat 5000 calories in a single sitting with the wrong foods (or have to leave 93% of the 5000 cal food on the plate).
Is that really your experience? Yes I can get a full stomach on fish and broccoli a few times a day, but that's not what I would call "satiety". I would still be hungry most of the day. I'd rather be really satisfied one time a day than never. IMO, most of what we call "hunger" in western society is psychological anyway. Nobody is "starving" on a 2000 cal diet, regardless of how it is designed.
2. Cravings. My cravings seem to come from blood sugar drops rather than low but stable blood sugar, so I stay away from high GI carbs in general when dieting. Maybe its an individual thing. I don't take it to the extreme that some guys do tho, like refusing to use ketchup for fear of sugar for instance.
Yes maybe it's individual. I can only say that after a few days, I did not have any cravings on my current diet. I'm just a little hungry in the evening, that's all. I don't feel any effects of changing blood sugar levels.
3. Boredom. Carb and fat sparse foods are dull. Occasional indulgence, especially pwo, isn't the end of the world even when dieting, provided it's within reason. TA's eat anything but only in small amounts approach only addresses this point, for me anyway.
My approach is probably a little more extreme than TA's. While following the same basic principles, I choose to have one large meal of anything I like,
everyday. Since I like variety, this will include food considered healthy one day, and food considered not so healthy on a different day. The occasional indulgence for me means eating two or three such large meals a day, once a week.
Of course, I hate dieting, so I might accept getting a little smoother while trying to make gains (and while eating a less strict diet), but I try not to let the "bulk" get out of hand.
That's my main point: What good is any diet if you hate it? IMO, even the health benefits are possibly canceled out by hating the way you have to eat. Since switching to my current diet, I do not hate it at all. It's even better than "clean" bulking. I could easily stay on the diet maintaining my current condition for the rest of my life. It's the same with my training. If I wouldn't love working out, I would have quit a long time ago. I'm a lazy slacker.
The bottom line imo is that most people could eat food that they enjoy and stay reasonably lean without worrying about portion control if they eat 9/10 meals from a health-first perspective (not broccoli and dry chicken breast, but not a big mac, fries, coke, and ice cream either) and do regular exercise. That's more or less my idea of a middle of the road dietary approach.
Basically, I agree. However, if we are talking about people with a weight problem (who have little to no self-control), I would rather first put them on a diet, where they could eat everything they like but with enough protein and with the requirement that they must restrict their calories so that they lose weight. If they manage to do that consistently, it would still be more benificial to their health than any diet of foods they don't like and can't stick to anyway. A bigger variety of foods will come automatically, once they have learned that dieting is nothing to be hated.
