If you’re trying to lose weight—or to keep from gaining—you need to be careful not to eat too many calories. But it’s no fun to stop eating before you feel satisfied, or to be hungry again long before it’s time to eat. Fortunately, there are several things you can do to limit calories without sacrificing satisfaction.

Last week, I talked about foods that promote satiation, or the feeling of being comfortably full after a meal. If you’re just joining the conversation, I suggest you go back and review that episode first. This week, I am going to focus on factors that affect satiety, or how long you can go before feeling hungry again. If you’re trying to limit your calorie intake, you’ll want to be using both of these factors (satiation and satiety) to your advantage!

What Factors Affect Satiety?

When studying satiety, researchers might give people certain foods and then ask them to rate their appetite after 1, 2, or 3 hours, comparing the length of time it takes for people to feel hungry after they eat various combinations of foods. Another way to study satiety is to give people a certain meal or snack and then measure how much they eat at the next meal. Here’s what researchers have found:

Protein. Compared with carbohydrates and fats, protein appears to offer the greatest satiety for the fewest calories. For example, you might feel full immediately after eating a big bowl of salad greens but the feeling of fullness probably wouldn’t last very long. Adding protein to the salad, in the form of some chicken, fish, eggs, or tofu, would keep you satisfied for quite a bit longer.

Fiber. Fiber is another factor that increases satiety, or the length of time before you feel hungry after eating. For example, a glass of apple juice and an apple have the same number of calories and roughly the same amount of carbohydrates and sugar. But the apple has more fiber. As a result, the apple enhances your satiety—it will keep you satisfied for longer than the glass of apple juice would. So, in addition to including some protein in your meals and snacks, try to include fiber as well. Legumes, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and nuts are all good sources of fiber.

Visual Cues. In last week’s episode, I pointed out that some of the factors affecting satiation are purely environmental. Eating calorie-dense foods on smaller plates, for example, can cause you to stop eating sooner. Environmental or visual cues also play a role in when you decide to start eating. Researchers went into typical office environments and put dishes of chocolate candy either right on top of the desk, out of sight in a desk drawer, or a few feet away on a shelf—so not only was it out of sight but you actually had to stand up to get to it. You can probably guess what happened. People only ate half as much chocolate when it was in the desk drawer as they did when it was out on the desk. When it was on a shelf a couple of feet away, they ate the least of all.

By the way, this effect works in reverse, as well. Making vegetables, fresh fruit or other healthy snacks more visible and convenient can increase your intake of these foods. But my point here is that you will feel the urge to eat sooner and more often if you are surrounded by food. Out of sight is not only out of mind but out of mouth as well.

Use Satiety AND Satiation to Your Advantage

I hope I’ve given you some insight into the difference between satiation and satiety, and the types of foods that promote each. If you’re trying to cut calories, be sure to use both to your advantage. When planning your meals and snacks, include foods that are lower in calories but satiating—such as raw vegetables and broth-based soups. But in addition, be sure to include foods that provide lean protein and fiber, which enhance satiety so you don’t get hungry again as quickly. I’d certainly try to limit foods (such as jelly beans or soda) that don’t provide satiation or satiety. Finally, do what you can to get your environment working for you and not against you!

Originally published at QuickandDIrtyTips.com

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Today, we’re going to talk about the factors that make you feel full and those that keep you full. (They are not the same thing!) This topic has obvious relevance to anyone who is trying to lose weight or even to keep from gaining weight: Putting down your fork is easier if you feel satisfied at the end of a meal. Likewise, cutting down on snacking will be easier if you’re not hungry all the time. But these same concepts will be equally useful to anyone who is struggling to gain or maintain their weight.

The Difference Between Satiation and Satiety

First, we need to differentiate between satiation and satiety, two related but distinct factors that influence how much you eat. (Or, at the very least, they influence how much you want to eat.)

Satiation occurs during a meal. It’s that point at which you feel that you’ve had enough to eat and don’t desire any more. Satiety, on the other hand, describes your experience after a meal—how long before you start to feel hungry again. Both satiation and satiety are influenced by a number of factors. When you understand these factors, you can use them to your advantage.

What Factors Affect Satiation?

Research shows that a variety of factors—some physical and some purely psychological—influence how much food it takes to make you feel full.

Volume. Not surprisingly, foods that take up more space in your stomach tend to be more satiating. If you’re trying to lose weight, you want foods that take up a lot of space relative to the calories they contain—such as raw vegetables and broth-based soups—because these will make you feel fuller with fewer calories. If you’re struggling to keep weight on, you might want to limit these types of foods, because they can fill you up before you’ve consumed enough calories. A bowl of chicken soup and a salad might be a good choice for someone trying to limit calories. Someone who’s trying to maximize calories, on the other hand, might be better off with grilled chicken and vegetables. Here’s an interesting study by Barbara Rolls at Penn State that illustrates this principle.

Time. Foods that take longer to eat can also reduce the number of calories you eat before you feel satisfied. When our stomach gets full, it sends a signal to the brain to stop eating. But this signal can take several minutes to arrive. When you’re eating very quickly, you can consume an awful lot of excess calories in the interim. And regardless of how many calories we’ve eaten, the desire to eat generally diminishes after we’ve been eating for a while. So if you’re trying to feel full on fewer calories, choose foods that require more time to eat. Go for nuts in the shell rather than shelled nuts. Have an apple, rather than applesauce or apple juice. Eat with chopsticks. Chewing your food thoroughly also helps slow you down, and has other benefits as well.

But satiation isn’t just about the foods you choose. Environment also plays a huge role in how much you eat and your subjective experience of how full you feel.

Visual Cues. A few years ago, Dr. Jim Painter of Eastern Illinois University, recruited a bunch of students for an ice cream eating experiment. As you might imagine, it was not hard for him to find willing subjects! The students were instructed to help themselves to as much ice cream as they wanted. They were encouraged to go back for seconds—or even thirds—until they were completely satisfied. Meanwhile researchers recorded how much they ate. It turned out that the amount of ice cream it took for them to feel satisfied depended on how big the bowl, spoon, and ice cream scoop was. When the bowls and spoons were small, it took a whole lot less ice cream to make the students feel full.

Jim and his colleague BrianWansink have done dozens of studies of this sort—some of which I’ve discussed in previous episodes. You might think that the biggest influence on how full you feel at the end of a meal is how much you’ve eaten. But the reality is that visual cues such as the size of your plate or the amount of food you’ve been served, or the size of the package or serving platter you’re serving yourself from—even the amount of food that the people around you are eating—all have a dramatic impact on how much you eat before you feel full.

Understanding and controlling these factors can make it a lot easier to eat less without feeling deprived! There are lots of resources and information available at mindlesseating.org.

To recap, satiation is the point at which we’ve eaten enough to feel full. But when it comes to managing your calorie intake, satiation is only half the story. You might feel pleasantly full after a low-calorie salad and be perfectly happy to stop eating. But if you’re hungry after just 45 minutes, you haven’t completely solved the problem.

Next week, I’m going to talk about factors that affect satiety, or the speed at which you get hungry again after eating. As with satiation, it turns out that there are a lot of factors that influence satiety—and only some of them have to do with food!