Top Tips to Keep you Feeling Full

By Dietitian, Juliette Kellow BSc RD

Always eat breakfast

After an overnight fast, it’s important to refuel your body to boost low blood sugar levels. If you skip breakfast, blood sugar will remain low, leaving you starving by mid-morning and craving sugary foods. There’s good evidence, too, that breakfast eaters tend to be slimmer and find it easier to control their weight than breakfast skippers.

Don’t skip meals

Skipping meals will leave blood sugars low, making you feel tired, irritable and hungry.

Fill up on fibre-rich foods…

they’re guaranteed to keep you feeling full for longer. Swap white, processed carbs for brown ones such as wholegrain cereals, wholemeal bread, brown rice, wholewheat pasta and jacket potatoes. Add more beans and fruit and vegetables into your diet, too ­– aim for five servings of fruit and veg daily.

Include protein-rich foods at every meal

Protein is a great ‘filler’ so make sure you include foods like lean meat, chicken, eggs, fish, reduced-fat dairy products or beans with every meal.

Make more of your calories

Bigger portions tend to fill us up more so find ways to add bulk, without adding calories.  There are low calorie foods that make you feel full. It might be as simple as having a large bowl of salad with dinner or adding stock to a stew to turn it into a soup.

Opt for crunchy foods

Chewing helps to improve satiety so swap soft foods that don’t require much chewing for crunchy ones that really work your mouth. For example, swap minced beef for a steak, mashed spuds for a jacket potato, a banana for an apple, or scrambled egg for a hard-boiled egg.

Chew sugar-free gum

Research has shown that people feel less hungry when they chew sugar-free gum.

Don’t drink your calories

Research shows that drinks don’t have the same effect on satiety as food so, for example, stick with whole fruit instead of juices.