Why does this matter? High glycemic foods cause a spike in your blood sugar - this causes hunger, among other things.
The best 'hack' to controlling your hunger is to manage your blood sugar level. By avoiding high glycemic value foods you will curb your hungry. By eating low GI foods you will eliminate your hungry whenever you want. low glycemic value foods have the opposite effect - this is the way to completely control your hunger as I do.
For example, I eat a handful (about 8-12) Almonds when I'm hungry (esp. at night). Almonds have a very low glycemic index, and just eating a small amount will stop your hungry/craving. But it's not just almonds - any low GI value food will have this effect.
Some other suggestions on great low GI snacks:
Apples, Cherries, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Grapes, Peaches
Non-Fruit low GI:
Almonds (but not all nuts), Yogurt, Lean Chicken/Turkey, Tuna, Black Beans, Brown Rice (much better than White Rice),
High Glycemic Foods:
Refined sugars (aka anything baked), Watermelon, Pineapple, Jams, Bananas
Keep in mind you shouldn't try to eliminate these foods, but if you are cutting weight then it's good to avoid eating too much of a high GI item to manage your hungry. Personally I try to avoid them still (after losing/getting back into shape), because I never have a desire to binge out anymore.
Incidentally, I recently lost over 24 pounds in 6.5 weeks using these food hacks. I also started playing hockey again (one of the hardest, most thorough workouts out there it turns out), and that caused me to want to be in better shape, so now I'm working out a lot more too. I'd suggest adding in activities you love, hiking, mountain biking - whatever it is just be more active.
Anyway, I discovered this GI 'hack' from my biz partner who is a gym owner and a nationally ranked crossfit athlete, hope that helps!
Good luck!
My snacks are usually a small handful of almonds and a piece of fruit. Also, you can combine a somewhat high GI fruit like an apple with a handful of nuts, and the fat content will end up lowering the speed at which your body will absorb the sugar from the fruit, which evens out your blood sugar level. There are other fibrous foods that will do this as well.
Thanks for both of your comments. They were enlightening.
I'd say average. Bananas don't have an high GI either, it seems.
Keeping a steady, non-spiking blood sugar level will result in no hunger pangs.
The best way I've found to lose weight is to remove sugar, refined flour, processed foods, and grains from my diet. I've replaced them with fruits and veggies. When you reduce your carb intake to under 100 grams per day, your body goes into fat-burning mode (called "ketosis").
There's a lot of science that grounds this - for more check out www.primalblueprint.com or panu.com.
Also a simple hack to lower the glycemic index of anything you eat is to consume it with additional fat or fiber. So a salad\baby greens with olive oil or the higher percent fat nuts like Hazelnuts, Walnuts, Macademia & Brazil.
Anytime you can choose healthy fresh food - fruit or otherwise - you are doing your body good.
It's just important to keep in mind that even fruit can cause you to be more hungry if you aren't careful.
I think the key to what you are describing is that you were exercising at the time - taking in something like a banana during that would actually do exactly as you describe - boost your sugar level when you need it the most, aka throw some fuel on the fire.
But again, I'm just a guy that has had tremendous luck with monitoring my GI and my hunger and have a few really knowledgable friends that have helped me along the way.
So are you saying that if you eat something with a high GI then your blood sugar rises, and this makes you hungry? This seems counterintuitive as high blood sugar usually makes you not-hungry?
This link actually shows watermelon has a very low GL, suggesting that it shouldn't result in blood sugar spikes:
http://www.tshc.fsu.edu/he/nutrition/nutrition_specialneeds/...
But I also want to really stress that it is VERY important to consume enough foods that come from animals.
Why?
Vitamin B12 http://www.amazon.com/Could-Be-B12-Epidemic-Misdiagnoses/dp/...
It's vital for your health and it burns up especially when stressed.
Took me a long time to find/learn about this.. at that point I was not feeling my limbs really well anymore, started running into walls, could not concentrate, find words, blurred speech, etc.
It's truly a silent crippler, hence my focus on this particular vitamin in this reply.
The cravings are a mental phenomenon. The mind seeks to be distracted and regards the mouth and tastebuds as an entertainment system. (A sort of lower level alternative to reading aggregator sites.)
Being too full is actually uncomfortable to the body, although one may not notice it initially due to the eating high.
Any reason why a smoothie with various fruit and maybe some yogurt wouldn't serve the same purpose? I really enjoy these but haven't been making them for some time. Posts like this give me a little motivation but what's the reason for the lack of variety?
I like to make my body work for its calories, which is mostly a response to hypoglycemia. Anything I can do to make calories (specifically carbohydrates) harder to digest, the better. Brown rice, whole grains, and whole fruits are far better than their alternatives.
Even your typical smoothie (bananas, yogurt, and strawberries) contains numerous nutritional benefits; add some of your favorite brown rice, some kale, celery, and honey (you won't taste the difference). You have a healthful and delicious smoothie full of antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, vegetable AND dairy protein, and complex carbs.
Breaking fruits down into juice definitely changes the GI index of the carb. Check out the difference between eating a whole apple and drinking apple juice. Apple juice is almost like pure sugar, where the fiber in the whole apple causes your body to digest it much slower.
The peaks in blood glucose are what's really bad for you, and especially bad for me. Therefore, I look out for them and stay the hell away.
Unfortunately, the cause may be difficult to determine.
Fortunately, there is a great hack that probably addresses the cause: fruit. Lots of fruit. Always raw. Preferably on an empty stomach. Not too much variety.
Fruit is loaded with just about every nutrient your body wants, many of them difficult to get any other way. Chances are that if you're not eating enough fruit, your body needs nutrition and these needs manifest themselves in your cravings.
It works for me. I've been eating lots of fruit for years, and the only time I crave junk food is when I haven't eaten enough fruit earlier in the day. For long coding sessions, I always keep plenty of the hacker's perfect snack, bananas, on hand: the almost perfect food, self-contained, needs no refrigeration or preparation.
[Written while munching on some delicious fresh sweet watermelon. No junk food could compare to this.]