What is the satiety index and does it work?
What is the satiety index? Basically it measures how full certain foods make you. How does it achieve this?
Generally speaking, it looks at the chemicals in a food to determine how much it will fill you up. The size of the food is also a factor. Basically the bigger it is, the more full you will feel because it takes up more room in your stomach.
So how are the most filling foods determined?
In general, they are those that contain the most fiber, protein, carbs and water. In addition, many studies have been done on people to determine how full they felt after certain meals and that is taken into consideration as well.
In most instances fruit is at the top of the list due to its high water content. Of course, different kinds of fruit are more filling than others, but in general this food group is among the best.
In addition, beans, lentils, potatoes and grains are extremely filling because they take a long time to digest. This prevents you from being hungry as quickly.
In fact, the slow carb diet, which is extremely popular today, is based largely on beans and lentils due to how filling they are.
So does this measurement work?
It is a good rule of thumb because consuming filling foods will prevent you from overeating. This stops you from in taking too many calories or carbs. So in that sense this is a very effective measurement. Basically, you won’t eat nearly as often. The higher the foods on the satiety index you consume, the less you eat. And the less calories you eat, the more fat and weight you will lose.
Eliminating calories is usually the hard part because it can make you very hungry. Luckily following the satiety index diet means you won’t suffer from hunger pans while taking in less overall calories.
Also, most “low calorie” diets attempt to solve the problem by either eliminating many food groups or just severely cutting your total intake. It’s easy to see why neither will last long term.
Another reason you should focus on filling foods is that not only do they prevent overeating, but they also effective for eliminating junk food consumption. This is because the fuller you feel, the less you will crave processed food. This is more important than you might think.
In addition to being incredibly bad for your health, processed foods generally rank very low in terms of overall satisfaction. This means – you guessed it — you will eat more of it. The more you eat the more weight you will gain.
To sum up, eating according to the satiety index is a very effective method for reducing caloric consumption. Most agree that fruits make up a large part of your diet. When you combine it with vegetables, lentils and grains you have a well balanced diet with all the nutrients you need.
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