Are There Certain Foods I Should Try To Eat More Of To Help My Weight Loss?

Leslie Bonci answers the question: 'Eating More Food to Lose Weight?'

ByABC News
December 22, 2008, 3:55 PM

February 1, 2009 -- Question: Are there certain foods I should try to eat more of to help my weight loss?

Answer: When people are trying to lose weight oftentimes it's a message of takeaway. I can't eat this. I shouldn't eat this. This is bad. Change it. Get that out of your head and start thinking instead of things that you should be consuming regularly; for instance foods that have a chew to them. If you have to chew something your mouth is engaged in the process you feel a little bit more satisfied; the difference between an apple and just having a beverage.

Secondly, it's the fill factor. It's the fact that when you eat something like a large salad or a large bowl of soup or chili or stew, it takes up room in your stomach for a longer period of time, so you feel fuller. The third is we need to think about satiety.

Satiety is the way that something makes you feel while you're eating it and actually between meals. And that means that it's part of every time we eat, having some protein on the plate. It could be tuna, it could be chicken, it could be turkey, it could even be a lean meat. We've got to chew it, it has taste to it, it makes us feel fuller between meals.

And last but not least, it is the appeal. It is the appeal that when we look at it, if we're picking a frozen dinner, perhaps we take a look and say I know I'm going to starve, because that is just simply not going to be enough calories, that's not going to work. If it looks good to us, we will feel better, we will feel fuller and we will be more successful.