Food Blog 2/26/14

[aldersprig]

Coffee, 2T whole milk, 1t sugar, splenda
Clementine
Cheerios, 1/2 cup
Coco multigrain pop cake, x3
egg salad
Puffed grain cake x2
Peanut Butter, 1T
Yogurt, Siggi's, Strawberry
Muesli 1T
Gym! 30 minutes treadmill
Enchiladas
Tofu Fries
Wine, 6 fl oz

Another day of really-really hungry.
Tomorrow I'm going to put lettuce and tomato on my egg salad sandwich, and see how that does.

Enchiladas were rice-and-tomato base. Tasty, normally very filling.

hopefully, the hormone spike settles soon and my body believes that we're not going to starve.

Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

I would really recommend having protein with your breakfast. Looking at the logs you've posted already, that doesn't look like something you usually do. I personally wouldn't go any meal without protein, but breakfast is the most important! The protein fills me up and settles me for the day, so it might be worth trying for you.

P.S. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to dictate what you eat, just offering a helpful suggestion :)

[inventrix]

Disclaimer added after writing: this is really long and mostly consists of me rambling about personal food experience. Disregard as you wish. xD;

I would actually second this, as someone who has a long history of Really Bad Breakfast Habits. >.>

From my experience, having at least a moderately significant portion of protein for breakfast helps make the energy/not-hungriness last longer. Two tablespoons of milk in coffee doesn't quite count, I don't think, but I would get like a latte or do half-milk half-coffee on work mornings to get at least half a cup of milk as minimum protein. (It doesn't sound like you put milk in your cereal, at least?) **edit: rereading this after posting, I realized I should clarify that "I would get" means "the thing I used to do" and not "what I would do if I were you"

Having breakfast kickstarts your metabolism in the morning to expect food, but starches and sugars get used up quickly, leaving you hungry much sooner. In fact, most of what you ate during the day seems to be grain-based starches, which I also eat a lot of (for various reasons) and can attest that they a) do not stave off hunger for very long, and b) require consuming larger quantities to reduce hunger.

I've found generally two categories of foods make me personally feel less hungry without having to eat a lot of them.
1) Dense proteins - these don't immediately process as filling, so you need to stop before you stop feeling hungry and it kicks in after a few minutes.
2) "Tough" vegetables - things that require a lot of chewing, like carrots. (Baby carrots! :D ) The act of chewing something thoroughly facilitates the I-have-eaten-and-am-not-hungry response, plus it makes it a lot harder to absently eat too much.

Continuing the anecdotal data:
- Crunchy starches help briefly but generally result in "oh geeze I just ate that entire bag of pretzels/chips" or "wait I thought I just opened these rice cakes today" or similar revelations.
- Fruit is better but not by a huge amount, although crisp fruits like apples are generally better than soft juicy fruits due to taking more effort/chewing to eat.
- Chocolates and cookies do not help at all. Unless it's like a big chewy oatmeal cookie. Those are a little better than most fruit on the fillingness scale but are also probably much higher calorie.
- I have more recently discovered that a glass of milk is really good, although like most protein-centric and low-chewing "snacks" it takes a little for the not-hungry to kick in. I also usually put a cocoa mix in it because I need mah sugaz 8D

In short, my food experience has led me to conclude that grains and starches are basically the worst thing you can snack on if what you want is to stop being hungry. I eat as high a percentage of them as I do because my body uses up sugars too quickly and I wind up with cravings or "oh god I feel awful and my hands won't stop shaking", but basically whenever I'm just really hungry and want to not be hungry, I go for proteins.

[aldersprig]

Two caveats, although I'm not arguing with your points (or Clare's):

I'm hungry all the time right now because it's a day from my period; the same food will more-than-fill me in a week (from experience).

Grains are a lot easier to keep packed at work than proteins. ;-)

[inventrix]

Can you even add caveats to someone else's personal anecdotes? ;o

[aldersprig]

....you have a point. Probably not.

Sorry <.< Read first thing in the morning, and even though I noted all your I am not telling you what to dos... still misread.

[inventrix]

xD It's all good~ Some days/mornings are like that. Plus I really got carried away with my first post ("WOO DATA!") <.

[aldersprig]

*giggle* I usually like woo data abut I get a little touchy about my food intake sometimes.

And today my skin is so thin you can see my stomach acid.

[aldersprig]

Not arguing with your points, but see my comment to Trix below

It's also worth noting that I'm actively working on losing weight, so my calories are restricted AND it's reasonable I'll be hungry sometimes, /and/ my dinnertime is with people, so my daytimes are when I can more easily control my calories.