While contemplating the hunger and fullness problem, I realized that some foods actually helped me recognize my own hunger and feelings of fullness. I began to identify them, calling them easy-to-manage foods, or easy foods for short. Easy-to-manage foods are attractive only when I am truly hungry. They are also easy to stop eating. When you look in the refrigerator and see an easy food, you might say to yourself, “That would be nice, but maybe later.” I would skip these foods in favor of the foods I was highly attracted to.
The taste sensation provided by an easy-to-manage food is mildly stimulating rather than exciting. These foods keep the taste buds satisfied but calm. Easy foods can adequately satisfy the natural longings we have about food, but they don’t compel us to overeat. Longings for sweet, salt, fat, crunchiness, and creaminess are acceptably met within the confines of easy-to-manage foods.
I suspect that, for normal eaters, most foods are easy-to-manage. For overeaters, far fewer foods fall into this category. The following are the easy-to-manage foods according to my own reactions. I hope that I’m average in my reactions, so that many overeaters can find this list very useful.
Easy-to-manage foods include:
- Fruits—fresh or frozen fruit, canned fruit, applesauce, reconstituted dried fruit
- Easy Dairy 4—milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream, and their non-dairy equivalents
- Vegetables / Oil—steamed or sautéed vegetables, salad with dressing, vegetables with dip
- Whole Starches—potatoes, beans, grains, rice, cooked cereal
Explanation of the preceding list:
Fruits:
Any fresh, canned, or frozen fruit is an easy-to-manage food. Added sugar is fine, even the canned fruit in heavy syrup. Fruit, especially with added sugar, can satisfy that natural longing for sweet. Applesauce and other fruit sauces are easy-to-manage. Reconstituted dried fruit is also included. I’ll explain my thoughts about dried fruit a little later.
Easy Dairy 4:
Milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, and sour cream are the four easy-to-manage dairy foods. They may even be high in fat, such as sour cream. I greatly prefer whole milk yogurt and 4% cottage cheese. Easy dairy foods can satisfy the taste desire for creaminess, but they aren’t overly attractive. They are very useful because they combine well with other easy foods. For example, yogurt and fruit go well together. Yogurt, juice, and fruit can be blended to make a smoothie. A dollop of cottage cheese in the middle of a dish of applesauce makes a mildly sweet/mildly salty treat. A sour-cream-based ranch dip is a nice accompaniment for raw veggies. Cooked cereals, such as oatmeal, are served with milk. A baked potato or a dish of lentils is deliciously topped by sour cream. Vegans or lactose intolerant individuals can take advantage of the soy and other non-dairy products that correspond to these foods.
Vegetables / Oil:
Vegetables are also easy-to-manage foods. Salad vegetables provide crunchy chewing. Some of us have a great desire to chew, munch, and crunch. We often overeat because of this oral need. Notice that I separated potatoes from the vegetables and placed them in the whole starch category. They fill the same place in a meal as cooked grains and beans. Vegetables also serve an important function in this list of easy foods. They can be vehicles for the oil and salt that we naturally crave. Vegetables may be sautéed in oil or sprinkled with oil dressing. Oil or fat helps greatly in hunger satisfaction and prevents that gnawing hunger we experience when our diet is too low in fat. I link vegetables with oil because oil can cause difficulty with the whole starch category that is next.
Whole Starches:
Whole starches include potatoes, grains such as rice or cooked cereal, and dried beans. Typical offerings in this category are: baked or boiled potatoes, rice, baked beans, lentils, and oatmeal. The whole starches give that stick-to-the-ribs feeling and provide warmth to the body.
Whole starches are starchy foods that are usually steamed or boiled. The baked starches, such as bread, are placed in a different category. My use of the term “whole starch” should not be confused with the term “whole grain.” I realize that "whole starch" is not a typical term, but it was the best I could come up with.
When whole starches are prepared with generous amounts of oil or fat, the food becomes too attractive or overly stimulating to the taste buds. Under these conditions, the whole starch becomes a difficult-to-manage food. French fries and potato salad are prime examples of this. The commercial salty snack food items capitalize on this attraction to combined oil, salt, and starch.
More about easy-to-manage foods:
It’s tricky to categorize food. For example, I consider oil to be an easy-to-manage food as long as it is linked to vegetables. But what about mayonnaise and margarine? Both derive from vegetable oil. So, are they easy foods also? If you read on into the next section, you’ll see how I tried to solve this predicament and others.
The easy-to-manage foods that I’ve listed could comprise a reasonably healthful diet. I doubt if anyone would overeat if their diet were made up of these choices. Easy foods just don’t beckon unless you’re truly hungry, and they get tiresome after hunger is satisfied. That type of feeling about food is important for overeaters to experience and appreciate. Yet, easy foods do satisfy the basic longings we have about food.
Easy-to-manage foods help us to know when we are hungry. You might say they are a litmus test for true hunger. If you don’t want to eat an easy food, you really don’t need to eat. Beware that you might feel hungry but still not want to eat an easy food. You might think the food is too boring, or you may be mildly repulsed at the thought of eating it. In either case, the hunger you’re feeling is probably what I call first-stage hunger. I’ve come to understand that those initial feelings of hunger are not lasting. When the stomach empties out, we experience a hunger that soon passes. Then we can enjoy a delightful lightness. When real hunger returns, easy foods will once again start to look good to eat.
Easy foods also help us to know when to stop eating. It is hard to eat beyond fullness with easy-to-manage foods. They taste good at first, but as soon as you start to fill up, easy foods lose their attraction. This is a normal reaction. Don’t give up on these foods because you experience this type of reaction. Remember, we’re trying to develop normal reactions to food.
