How Not to Gain Weight on No Sleep: Protein, Iron, and That Marvel of Civilization, the Hot Pot

This is the follow-up to my last post (Midnight Ice Cream and Potato Chips Were Never About Weak Willpower).

Here’s what we learned last time. Sleep deprivation cranking up your appetite is physiology. And telling parents in the thick of it to “get seven to nine hours of sleep” is a fairy tale.

If we can’t win on the sleep front, there’s only one place left to dig a defensive line: the kitchen.

That’s today’s topic. We have three weapons: protein, iron, and the hot pot.

Table of Contents

  1. Line of Defense 1: When in Doubt, Protein
  2. Line of Defense 2: Iron, for My Breastfeeding Wife
  3. Line of Defense 3: Everything Goes in the Pot
  4. [My Take] The Line Is Allowed to Fall

Line of Defense 1: When in Doubt, Protein

Last time, it was formally established that willpower cannot beat sleep-deprived hunger. So we’re moving the fight to a ring we can actually win in.

Protein is the most filling of the three macronutrients. Your body also burns calories just digesting it, so for the same amount eaten, it sits firmly on the “harder to gain weight from” side of the menu.

And remember last time’s problem — diet while sleep-deprived and the weight you lose comes out of your muscle? One of the few countermeasures we have is, again, eating plenty of protein.

The practice is simple: at every meal, put down a palm-sized serving of meat, fish, eggs, or tofu. That’s the entire system.

And when it’s the middle of the night and you absolutely must eat something, reach for a boiled egg or some salad chicken (the plain steamed chicken breast sold at every Japanese convenience store) before the ice cream. Joyless? I know. But get the protein in first, and your longing for the ice cream drops by about half.

Line of Defense 2: Iron, for My Breastfeeding Wife

This line of defense isn’t for me. It’s for my wife.

Childbirth costs a mother a great deal of iron, her body is still mid-recovery, and then breastfeeding keeps drawing on the reserves. Postpartum moms are prone to running short on iron.

The tricky part is that iron-deficiency fatigue and sleep-deprivation fatigue look almost identical. “I thought I was just tired — turned out I was anemic” is apparently not a rare story. If any symptoms concern you, bring them up at a postpartum checkup or with an internal-medicine doctor. I’m not a specialist, so I am gracefully punting this one to the professionals.

What the kitchen can do is give iron-rich ingredients more playing time. Lean red meat, asari clams, komatsuna (Japanese mustard spinach), tofu, and natto are all strong performers.

Pair them with the vitamin C in vegetables and fruit, and the iron absorbs better. On the flip side, strong tea or coffee with the meal gets in the way of absorption, so it’s best to shift those a little away from mealtime.

Line of Defense 3: Everything Goes in the Pot

If you’ve read this far and thought, “If I had the energy to cook meals like that every day, I wouldn’t have this problem” — correct. That’s exactly what I thought too.

Enter the nabe, the Japanese hot pot. The nabe is a marvel of civilization.

  • Barely any knife work. Napa cabbage and komatsuna tear by hand, and tofu goes in by the spoonful.
  • One dish, done. Protein and vegetables all end up in the same pot, so the brainpower spent on meal planning rounds down to zero.
  • Exactly one pot to wash.
  • If the baby cries mid-cook, turn off the heat and the nabe will wait for you. A stir-fry in a frying pan will not.

Our house standard is a pot of shabu-shabu pork, komatsuna, and tofu. Add asari clams and you’ve got the iron-fortified edition. In other words, Lines of Defense 1 and 2 hold simultaneously, in a single pot.

As for the traditional finale — rice porridge or udon noodles simmered in the leftover broth — please consult your bathroom scale. I consult mine, and the noodles usually go in anyway.

[My Take] The Line Is Allowed to Fall

Having written all of the above: there will, I’m sure, still be nights that end with ice cream.

And that’s fine. As we covered last time, that’s not willpower failing — it’s the spec. On the days the line falls, skip the guilt and make the next day’s dinner a nabe. That’s a draw.

A diet that keeps going beats a diet that’s perfect. Much like parenting.

にじパパTRANSMISSION

In other words, I expect to keep losing to ice cream — but since I force a draw with the next day’s hot pot, my record is technically undefeated.

Wrapping Up

Against sleep-deprived hunger, hold a three-layer defensive line: protein, iron, and the hot pot. When the line falls, force a draw with the next pot.

For the record, I wrote this post while eating a boiled egg. As promised, my longing for ice cream is down to about half. Which means half of it is still here.

Sources

More Nijipapa Posts on Sleep Deprivation