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- The Foods That Will Keep You Full
Hello again!
Congratulations to the Premium subscribers who won a cookbook in the holiday thank-you drawing! I am still waiting to hear back from one of the winners—if your email address resembles n******[email protected], please be sure to check your Spam or Promotions folder for an email from me with the subject heading, “Cookbook.”
In this week’s newsletter, you’ll find a couple of articles related to weight loss and weight management. One is an introduction to the “satiety index,” measuring which foods will keep you full the longest. The second is a good look at many of the problems that surround the use of BMI as a measure of healthy weight.
I’ve just started outlining a new book on weight loss, given how popular weight-loss drugs have become over the past year, and how much more we are learning about alternative (non-drug) ways to lose weight and stay healthy. So stay tuned, and I’ll keep you updated on the book’s progress in the new year.
For Premium subscribers, this issue also contains bonus content that includes a couple more healthy holiday recipes to round out the year! These are ones that I’ve vetted and have either made or would make for myself and my own family.
Not a Premium subscriber? You can upgrade now and get bonus content in every issue, along with special discounts and exclusive features!
Please note that there will be no newsletter next week due to the holidays. I’ll see you again in the new year! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
To your health,
Yasmine S. Ali, MD
Weekly Heart-Health News: The Highlights
My Take:
You might recall that in last week’s newsletter, I featured an article on “Why Am I Always Hungry?”
This article on satiety is the follow-up to that. Because feeling hungry in spite of eating well (or so I thought) is something I struggle with myself, I started looking into the reasons why and what could be done about it. In doing so, I came across the “satiety index,” which actually dates back to the mid-1990s when a group of scientists did the research to assign “satiety scores” to different foods.
In other words, which foods make you feel full the longest, and which ones hardly fill you up at all?
Know what the reference food was for these scientists? The food choice that does almost nothing to fill you up?
White bread. That’s right: white bread got the lowest score.
What this means for you:
When you click on the article above, you’ll see an illustrated chart. On the right-hand side of the chart are foods that really fill you up: salmon, lamb liver, watercress, asparagus, and many leafy green vegetables. Those are the foods you want to include the most in your diet.
On the left-hand side of the chart, you’ll find foods that do very little to keep you full (and often add a lot of empty calories in the process): donuts, raisins, sugared cream, and dark chocolate. Those are the foods you want to eliminate or minimize.
The article also goes into a lot more detail in the text, so if this is something that piques your interest, I recommend a full read.
My Take:
Ever since we started including body mass index (BMI) as a basic measurement on patient intake, I’ve been concerned about some of the problems with it: how it neglects to take into account lean muscle mass, for instance.
Now, with BMI being used as a cutoff point for prescribing certain obesity medicines (weight-loss drugs), it’s more important than ever to realize that BMI is really a flawed measurement tool, and doesn’t tell the whole story—at all.
We have better options to measure obesity now, and this article mentions some of them. Options such as waist circumference, bioelectrical impedance analysis, and more.
What this means for you: Have a look at the article above and see how it might pertain to you. You may want to ask your doctor to include some of these other measures of body fat and healthy weight. Remember that you don’t have to rely just on BMI now.
Here’s how to measure your own waist circumference, which is believed to be a much better indicator of belly fat (which affects your abdominal organs and tends to be more associated with chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease):
(If you have any trouble accessing these articles, just reply to this email and I will send them to you.)
Holiday Recipe Time!
Healthy recipes to grace your holiday table:
Whipped herb dip and Watercress salad to keep you full!
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