If you are on a diet how would you answer this question? Are you
fat because you’re hungry or are you hungry because you’re fat?
This appears to be a “which came first the chicken or the egg”
type question but surprisingly to most dieters the answer is
both. Why? It is simple really, if you are over weight you have
more body surface area that radiates heat and thus requires more
calories to fuel this heat.
Nutritionists agree that foods that satisfy your hunger the
fastest will help you to cut down on calories. They call this the
satiety value of food. Some foods are quick to satisfy hunger but
are short term in the digestive system and ultimately cause us to
eat more often. Foods that remain in our digestive process longer
have a higher satiety value.
Foods that have a high satiety value level include: meat, milk,
and fish. Examples of foods with a low satiety value level would
be eggs, green vegetables, and bread. An adequate combination of
the high and low satiety value level foods is your best defense
in curbing your appetite while on a diet.
The following five tips will help you achieve a balance of
satiety value food intake and help you curb your appetite.
1) Stop eating just short of receiving the full signal from your
brain or stomach. For reasons not totally understood people that
tend to put on weight easily have trouble recognizing the full
signal from their brain until they have way over eaten.
2) Develop socially entertaining mental habits. Often dieters
will become bored because they have few entertainment value
interests and will turn to eating to fulfill this boredom. Find
new hobbies or socialize with friends more to avoid this lack of
entertainment stimulus.
3) Eat foods that require vigorous chewing. Generally foods that
you must chew more before swallowing will stay in our digestive
process longer. Foods such as meat, crisp celery, and uncooked
carrots are great examples of these type of foods.
4) Do not drink too much water with meals. Drink only enough to
help you swallow chewed food. Drinking more water than necessary
will give you the notion you are full too soon and will be a
false signal. Water remains in our digestive process the shortest
of any other drink and will be quickly depleted from our system.
5) Cut down on your consumption of alcohol. Alcohol has a
tendency to trick our metabolism system into believing it needs
more food and sends us the hungry signal. In actual reality the
body does want food to help absorb the alcohol, but often this
signal is perceived as a false hungry signal instead.
These are but five quick and easy tips a dieter can follow to
help keep their appetite in check. This is by no means an
complete or exhaustive list of things one could do to curb their
appetite. Whole books have been written on this same subject and
cover this topic more in depth.
