You know the drill: breakfast was only an hour or so ago, and there are still two or three hours til lunch, yet you’re absolutely famished. If anyone hears your stomach growl, they’ll think you’ve not eaten for a week – even though you barely finished your first meal of the day.
Feeling hungry doesn’t always have to be a bad thing, but it’s troubling when this happens all the time, and you’re between meals. Hunger pushes you to snack more, which means you end up stuffing your face with things that aren’t good for you and increase your calorie count for the day. It’s why a lot of people struggle with their weight – but you can change this by introducing positive food habits and figuring out what to eat to feel fuller for longer.
The best foods to eat to stay full will usually have these qualities:
High In Protein
Protein is the big nutritional buzzword that everyone loves, and that’s why we see so many “high protein” products on shelves. While typically seen as a key nutrient to help build muscle, protein is also useful in making you feel fuller.
How? Because protein slows down digestion and improves hunger regulation in your body. If you eat meals or snacks that are high in protein, you will feel fuller for much longer because your body recognises that it’s full and needs to digest the protein.
What should you eat? On the snack front, consider biltong and droewors as both provide high protein content with minimal calories. For your meals, consider Greek yoghurt or oatmeal at breakfast, maybe some eggs or yoghurt again at lunch, and something with a decent protein source for dinner.
High In Fibre
Everyone raves about protein making you feel full, but fibre is arguably even better. It bulks out your meals and snacks, giving your body something that’s quite hard to digest. You don’t need too much fibre as this can cause stomach cramps and digestive distress, but a little bit here and there makes you feel super full without needing to eat much.
What are the best high-fibre foods to try? Most fruits and vegetables are really high in fibre, so consider eating raspberries or a banana with breakfast and lunch. Always include some greens with dinner to up your fibre intake, and then switch to things like high-fibre wholemeal bread instead of the white stuff.
For snacks, you can turn to fruit or veg again, and you also see a decent amount of high-fibre snacks in supermarkets these days. Options like Fibre One bars are great as they give you a small cake-like snack that’s actually decent for you and contains a lot of fibre.
Slow To Eat
If you gobble down your food at a record pace, then you never feel full. It’s something to do with the signals your stomach and digestive system send to the brain. If too much food comes in too quickly, then it doesn’t properly register that you’re hungry, and this encourages you to eat more.
That’s why foods that are slow to eat are great for fullness. These foods force you to eat more slowly, but more importantly, they encourage you to chew frequently. Chewing your food is the first part of the digestive process, and this triggers your body’s response to eating. Research backs this up because chewing slowly gives your stomach the chance to register that you’re eating and digesting food, which sends signals to the brain, and it makes you feel full.
So, what’s good to eat here? Much of what we’ve already discussed will be suitable here. Dried meat snacks like biltong are very chewable, as are certain fruits – like apples and pears. For main meals, think about vegetables that require a lot of chewing, as well as protein sources like chicken, beef, tofu, and so on.
High In Quantity (But Not Calories)
Finally, you could turn towards foods that are quite large in quantity, yet don’t contain many calories. Soup is the perfect example of this. You could eat a bowl of soup and feel extremely full, even though you’ve barely had any calories. It’s because there’s so much liquid in the soup, so this stretches your stomach lining and makes you feel full.
The same goes for any foods with a high water content – like watermelon, cucumber or smoothies. If you can put snacks or meals together that look big or are difficult to finish, yet don’t go overboard on the calories, then you’re winning.
To summarise, the best foods to eat when you want to stay fuller for longer are any foods that tick these boxes. The food doesn’t have to tick every box, but if it nails at least one quality, then you shouldn’t hear your tummy growl as often.
