Have you ever started a diet and then become overwhelmed with the feeling of hunger, craving, and food deprivation? We all have!
Nothing can ruin a diet faster than the feeling of hunger or cravings of certain foods. Let’s be honest, it’s much easier to stay on track with a healthy eating plan when you’re feeling full and not hungry. Scientists have a name for this feeling: it’s called satiety. I’ve also heard satiety referred to as the ”craving-free” zone by various weight loss systems.
The concept of satiety is ever present in most eating plans and diets, except nobody takes the time to refer to it by name or explain what it actually means. If you understood the basic workings of satiety it would definitely make the food suggestions you see, hear, or read, make more sense and probably encourage you to follow it and your diet a lot more closely.
In order to lose weight, we have to eat less, particularly of the wrong foods, which often produce cravings and a sense of wanting more. However, when we eat less, we tend to feel hungry all the time. Most of us cannot resist hunger very long. That’s why the average weight loss diet lasts less than three weeks.
Great, I’m either craving chocolate bon bons all day or I’m starving like a character in Lost!
Enter the concept of satiety. If you’re not craving food and feeling deprived, it’s much easier to stay with your eating plan. Fortunately, nutrition researchers have learned it is possible to feel satisfied with a diet that still allows you to lose weight. But how?
It’s all about food selection.
The key practice in healthy satiety is eating small appetizers. Now, before you get excited about ordering the Jack Championship Slider Sampler from T.G.I. Friday’s or the Bloomin’ Onion
The appetizers I’m talking about contain specific satiety activators, or special nutrients that activate the body’s natural appetite control switch, so you eat smaller meals yet still feel satisfied. This eating strategy actually has a name and it’s called “healthy satiety.”
The most effective satiety activators are long-chain fatty acids, which are monounsaturated fats found in high concentrations in olive oil, macadamia nut oil, flaxseed oil, almond oil, peanut oil and other healthy cold-pressed oils. Consuming a small amount of foods rich in these oils will activate your appetite control switch before you begin eating a meal. Therfore, you will feel fuller even if you eat fewer calories.
Here are some high satiety appetizers. Because these oils are so effective in turning off your appetite, you only need a small amount:
• 2 cups of salad, dressed with one oz. olive oil
• 2 oz. turkey on a whole grain cracker
• 2 oz. mozzarella cheese on a whole grain cracker
• 2 oz. tuna in one oz. olive oil
• ½ teaspoon peanut butter on a piece of celery
Does this list of food options look familiar? Of course it does, but now you hopefully know why.
Certain oils trip the appetite control switch!
Studies have shown when the items above are consumed before a meal, it reduces food intake, slows the movement of food from the stomach, and extends the feeling of fullness for up to four hours after a meal.
If hunger was the main reason your last diet failed, you might want to try healthy satiety next time. Perhaps the best thing about it is, it can be used to make any reasonable diet more effective!
From Mike Geary’s book The Truth About Six Pack Abs
