What's satiety?

by Angela Reed-Fox

Satiety is the fullness you feel after a meal. Satiety is important as it affects how frequently and how much you eat. Understanding satiety and the satiety levels offered by different foods will help you reach and maintain a healthy body shape.
If we don't understand satiety and just try to restrict our food intake, we'll find that we spend much of the time being hungry - and life should be better than that!
By gaining a better understanding of satiety we will be able to eat in such a way that hunger between meals is reduced - and we won't be tempted to go for an off-piste snack!

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What happens when we're satiated?

You might not think it, but eating and digestion is an incredibly complex process. We eat with our eyes, nose and brain as well as our mouth. We digest not only with our stomach, but our intestines and our mouth too.
When we see or food we have an expectation of how filling it will be. If you try eating less by reducing your usual portions, you may catching yourself thinking "This isn't going to be enough". That's your brain getting the process started.
Satiety is determined not just by your own preconceptions about food, but also what the food looks and smells like, how long it takes to chew,  the texture of the food, how it feels when it hits our stomach, and not only this, the hormones that are released in response.
Leptin is a hormone that tells us when we've had enough. Ghrelin is a hormone that makes us feel hungry.
Because our feeling of satiety is dependent on a release of hormones, there can be a time lag between us finishing a meal and feeling full. This signal of fullness, just like the  signal of hunger is a prompt. If we feel full we should stop eating - our body has had enough. If we feel hungry, then that's a time to eat. Ignoring these prompts can cause problems in the long term. But how many of us were told to finish the food on our plate regardless of whether we felt we wanted it or not? How often have we continued to eat because something was just too delicious? And how about eating without being hungry - out of boredom, or the need for 'reward' or 'compensation', or because someone else is eating? Or eating because we "don't like to see waste"? (Ultimately it's all going to end up in the same place regardless of whether it's passed through you or not!)

How to use satiety for your benefit

• Mindful or 'intentional' eating will aid satiety. Implmenting a few of these principles when you eat will help you stay fuller for longer:
  • don't eat when you're doing something else (especially driving, but also whe cooking, watching TV etc)
  • don't eat off-piste - unscheduled snacks tend to be high in calories, not very saitsfying, and we tend to lose any concept of how much we've eaten
  • pay attention to what you eat. Look at it, smell it, thhink about the texture, take time over it, chew more.
• Fibre is essential as part of a healthy diet. You'll find it  all fruits and vegetables and in grains too. There are partiuclar types of fibre which are indigestible - which means they'll head straight through your system - just remember that sweetcorn that turns up a day later! This type of fibre will help to fill you up - but you won't access the full calorie load. You'll get plenty of fibre if you aim to include as many wholefoods as you can in your diet.
• Proteins and fats take longer to be processed in the stomach, and therefore will help you feel fuller for longer. Liquids filter through the stomach faster than more solid food, and carbohydrates are processed faster than fats and proteins.
  
• Try to avoid excessive calories in drinks - as mentioned, liquids filter through the stomach faster meaning they provide lower satiety, but with all the calories.
  
• Alcohol is an appetite stimulant. Also alcohol tends to be present in settings with food - restaurants, bars, pubs. Not only this, alcohol itself has a high-calorie and low-satiety substance.