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Suppress your appetite by including more fat in your meal
You’re weight watching – so you NEED to control how much you eat.
Ideally you want to eat just enough, to be satisfied, but not too much, that you end up eating “too many calories”.
The fullness measure
When it comes to, FULLNESS – it is a team effort, a lot of organs, have input, including your eyes and ears, seriously – your ears have “taste buds”, but the stomach, is dominating the conversation.
And for the stomach, volume of food, is EVERYTHING.
This little guy, lives to eat !
And he is happy to tuck in, at every opportunity, he gets.
The problem…….
The more you eat, the more distended your stomach becomes, necessitating the opening of a button or two.
There is no room at the inn
The distended stomach, ends up taking up MORE SPACE, as it stretches, bigger and bigger. Since space in the body cavity is limited – the dramatic expansion, finally puts a stop to your eating…..
Because you’ve got to the point, where there just is NO MORE ROOM.
Unfortunately, the “I AM FULL MESSAGE” can be slow to arrive.
Minor delays, can have major consequences. Short-term, it can bring on a serious case of indigestion and necessitate a helping or two, of ENOS. Long-term, it can bring on extra layers. Eish !
So what can you do ?
Dinner chatter
Researchers from the University of Nottingham, wondered if what was on the dinner plate, impacted stomach fullness, so they decided to eaves drop, on digestive chatter.
To do this, they invited young health adults, to a rice pudding dinner, on two separate occasions.
The “dinner”, was designed to taste GOOD. It needed to………….. because this dinner, ended up being a 6½ hour ordeal. The eating part was quick-quick. Actually too quick, for some participants.
5 people were timed out, of the study !
The reason, for the prolonged dinner, was the follow up. This involved multiple MRI scans to track just how long the GREAT TASTING dinner, stayed in the stomach. Along with how full, the puddings made people feel.
NOTE : Fullness, was measured, with the help of a 100 mm long visual scale, one end was labelled “NOT FILLING” and the other end, “EXTREMELY FULL”.
Racing down the gullet
There were two versions of dinner, which were pretty much identical in size :
- The high carb version – had extra sugar added, in the form of a glucose polymer
- The high fat version – had dollop of cream added.
Interestingly enough, the high carb version, ended up having, 18 % more calories, than the high fat version. Go figure !
FAT makes you FULL
Despite the decreased calorie count, the high fat pudding, ended up being MORE FILLING. This can be seen in this graph, which plots the change in perceived fullness (using the VAS score), against the changes in the total gastric volumes.
At all time points, the fats, were more satiating.
How could less calories make you MORE FULL ?
The stomach is clueless
The team speculated, it had nothing to do with the stomach.
Although the stomach, is the driving force behind HUNGER PAINS, it is not terribly conscious of what you had for dinner. But, the lower regions of the digestive tract are. It’s a job requirement.
You can’t process and package the nutrients, without this kind of information.
Since the processing and packaging does not happen quietly, the brain is kept abreast of the situation, through digestive feedback.
And, the brain, being a good leader…………… keeps the stomach, in the loop.
The digestive banter
Now digesting fat – is complicated, because fat molecules, stick together, they first have to be teased apart, with the help of bile acids and only then, can they be broken down by enzymes.
Cholecystokinin, CCK for short, manages this processes………….
As soon as fats, begin arriving in the duodenum, CCK gently reminds the brain, that to do a good job, the team needs TIME, so it would be prudent, to STOP EATING.
This is the captain speaking
The captain, let’s the stomach know……….
The message is heard, and eventually obeyed.
Although, the little guts, might sneak in a bite or two more, but, it will be a bite or two less, than he had hoped for.
The upshot for you…….
You feel FULL, a little before, you are genuinely FULL.
And eating less, means there are less excess calories requiring storage. Yah !
To stop the munchies…. eat more fat.
I know, it almost sounds like heresy, but it works. It’s biology !
Further reading
Scents and sensibility – use ambient odours to eat LESS
There are warm scents and cool scents – the classification your brain uses, can impact how many calories you end up eating, in a scented eating environment
Strapping on a pair of red ears is all it takes to lose weight effortless
A group of North Korean researchers have verified, ear acupuncture can be used to lose weight. You may look like a dork, but you will be SIGNIFICANTLY THINNER
Maybe it’s time to invest in appetite suppressing glasses
Avoiding eye contact with chocolate fudge sundae, is helpful, but there is more to “watching” than meets the eye. Appetite control begins with the eyes.