The Maltodextrin Diet

A simple approach to weight loss

Most people who are overweight want to lose weight. Unfortunately, its not a simple thing to do. Our bodies and our brains actively resist weight loss, and most people discover that, even when we lose weight, we often gain it back. Research suggests that there are a number of effective approaches to weight loss and that none are more effective than at least some others. This site is not suggesting that any of these diets are good or bad. The author has successfully lost weight (upwards of 40 pounds eacy) by calorie counting, food point systems, high carbohydrate diets, high protein diets (Atkins, South Beach), and workout intensive exercise regimins.

The problem, for most people (including the author) occurs when the diet moves from weight loss to maintenence (and sometimes before that). Our brains and bodies actively resist weight loss by lowering our metabolic rate (such that we burn less calories), putting us to sleep (we burn less calories when we sleep), and encouraging us to overeat. Binging is an extreme example of this. Reality is that we can gain a pound a month by eating 100 calories a day more than our bodies are burning. One candy bar every other day can add enough calories to your diet to gain a pount month (or sixty pounds in five years). Bottom line: feeling hungry doesn't feel good, and our bodies work hard at making us feel hungry when we deprive it of calories.

This site suggests what may be a safe, simple, and very inexpensive approach to enhancing any weight loss or weight control program: use of a maltodextrose rinse to fool your body into thinking its being fed.

I don't yet know if the approach will work. There is, however, recent research that suggests it might work. A study oif workout intensity while exercising found that athletes who rinsed their mouth with a maltodextrine solution before they exercised achieved more intense workouts than athletes who did not. When I say "rinsed", they used maltodextrin, diluted in water, as a a kind of "mouthwash". They swished the solution around in their mouths for a few seconds or minutes and then spit it out. The effects of the rinse weren't dramatic (people didn't rim 10% faster), but they were consistent. They went a little further a little faster and perhaps more. This result held even when the rinse was used between exercise sessions (e.g. before a second round of exercise). The theory forewarded in the article suggests that our mouths are wired (think taste buds) to detect carbohydrates, even when they are tasteless, as maltodextrin often is. The effect is to "fool the brain" into thinking that nutrition is coming. As a result, the brain allows the body to to work a little harder.

It seems to me that this effect should have value for dieters as well. If a maltodextrine rinse can fool your brain into letting the body burn calories faster, might it also convince the brain that you aren't really hungry for sweet stuff. If it can, then the simple act of rinsing your mouth with a maltodextrine rinse a few times a day might seriously reduce your desire to overeat. If it is, then use of a maltodextrine rinse in conjuction with a diet or exercise program has the potential to be a double threat, as it would both:

1. Decrease your desire to overeat, and
2. Increase the effectiveness of your exercise

Its is extremely early to conclude that this will definately work, but preliminary indications from my own use of a Maltodextrin rinse are very encouraging. If I feel hungry, the feeling goes away if I rinse my mouth with a maltodextrin solution, at least during the interval that the rinse is in my mouth. There is, by the way, no need to spit it out. Maltodextrin is completely safe to ingest. Indeed, its a widely used food additive. The key is not drinking the solution or spitting it out. The key is in holding it in your mouth for a while.

The easiest way to get a maltodextrine that can be used in solution is to obtain sucralose (Splenda is probably the major brand). A packet of Splenda in a glass of water will provide a usable rinse that, at least so far, works just fine. There are online vendors who supply pure maltodextrin (that's what was used in the research). I'll be trying that out too.

I will be using this site to provide more information on maltodextrine rinses and how they can be used in a diet and exercise program. I'll post more when I know more, so watch this space.

Davis Foulger