Here are some tips to help you enjoy your food with less guilt, less bloating, and fewer cravings between meals.
1. Eat Slowly Until You Are 3⁄4 Full
Think of your washing machine. If you fill it right up to the top with clothes and turn it on, it has trouble doing its job. It may even break. The clothes stuck in the middle certainly don’t get soaped, rinsed, and cleaned. Similarly, the food in your stomach has to allow digestive juices to penetrate through and through in order to properly digest your meal.
Leaving some empty space helps the gastric juices mix with the food and makes it easier for your stomach to churn your food. This will allow you to get more energy and nutrients from less food.
How do you know if you’ve eaten the right amount? You should feel fine 20 minutes after eating – even if you walked away feeling a little bit hungry. If you’re still feeling hungry 20 minutes later, you probably didn’t eat enough.
2. Cup your hands to know how much to eat
If you cup both your hands together and pile your food into that space, you’d have a pretty good idea how much solid food you should be eating at one meal. (Of course, it all depends how high you pile the food!) The bigger your stomach, the bigger your hands will be. It would make sense, also, that our hands evolved to a size ideal for serving ourselves enough food.
3. Balance your fuels
There are basically four food groups and they all “burn” differently:
• Simple Carbohydrates (sugar, honey, fruit) burn like paper covered with oil.
• Complex Carbohydrates (whole grains, legumes, yams) burn like paper.
• Proteins (nuts, legumes, dairy, eggs, meat) burn like wood.
• Fats (avocados, oils, butter, nuts, eggs, cream) burn like coal.
Breads, root vegetables, whole grain pasta, and potatoes fall somewhere in between simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates.
Most people need a balance of all four groups. However, protein and fats are critical for life. That’s why we call them building blocks - essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. There’s no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Your body can turn fat or protein into carbohydrates if it needs to.
If you’re not getting enough protein or fat in your meals, you will feel deprived, even if your stomach feels full. In such cases, you are usually filling up on carbohydrates (either starches or fruits) or, more rarely, just eating vegetables. Depending on your metabolism, a high-carbohydrate diet will either burn up quickly, leaving you feeling drained, or it will be stored away as fat on your body. Neither sounds too desirable.
You’ll know your meals are more balanced if you find you feel content for 4-6 hours after eating. You can eat breakfast at 8am and not think about food until noon. After dinner, you’re not craving a bedtime snack. If you are craving too soon, then you may be eating too many high glycemic starches. Unless you’re a professional athlete, or you are doing a ton of heavy, manual labor, you should be able to eat and forget about it for several hours.
For more tips and a full review of today’s most popular diets, view our Diet Review Webinar at:
https://youtu.be/xB7I_u0DSPc
Aloha,
Dr. Carolyn Dean
A great message about meals and being satisfied-Dr Dean
Moderators: Rosie, Stanz, Jean, CAMary, moremuscle, JFR, Dee, xet, Peggy, Matthew, Gabes-Apg, grannyh, Gloria, Mars, starfire, Polly, Joefnh
A great message about meals and being satisfied-Dr Dean
To Succeed you have to Believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a Reality - Anita Roddick
Dx LC April 2012 had symptoms since Aug 2007
Dx LC April 2012 had symptoms since Aug 2007
Excellent analogies — whoever originally came up with those truly understands the human digestive system.3. Balance your fuels
There are basically four food groups and they all “burn” differently:
• Simple Carbohydrates (sugar, honey, fruit) burn like paper covered with oil.
• Complex Carbohydrates (whole grains, legumes, yams) burn like paper.
• Proteins (nuts, legumes, dairy, eggs, meat) burn like wood.
• Fats (avocados, oils, butter, nuts, eggs, cream) burn like coal.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.