How to Curb Cravings and Eat More Vegetables with Ease
May 20, 2022
If you have followed us for a while, you have learned that eating 8-10 fruits and vegetables daily will significantly reduce your risk of chronic disease. You may have also learned how eating a variety of plants for 30+ a week will also reduce your risk of chronic disease. Doing those two things, no matter what will improve your health.
Now, if you are ready to dive in a little deeper, let’s learn why it matters how you eat your meals.
It's Really Easy, Always Eat Your Veggies First.
If you take two meals that are exactly the same (including the same nutrients and calories) and eat them in a different order, they both can have vastly different impacts on your body. In a 2015 study by Cornell published in the Journal of Diabetes Care, they found that if you eat items of a meal containing starch, fiber, sugar, protein, and fat in a specific order you can reduce your overall glucose spike by 73% as well as your insulin by 48%. This applies to everyone, whether you have diabetes or not.
What's the recommended order of eating your food?
- Fiber from vegetables
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Protein second (from meat or beans)
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Then fats (healthy fats like nuts, or avocados)
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And finishing with starches from grains and bread and sugars from fruits.
How Exactly Does this Help Us?
Doing this will help to flatten your sugar highs and reduce your risk of fatigue, hunger, cravings, inflammation, brain fog, and moodiness.
The effect of this order has a lot to do with how our digestion works. If starches or sugars are the first things to enter your stomach, they get into your bloodstream rapidly and uninterrupted, which could spike your blood sugar. Unfortunately, with a large spike comes a big crash and that is where the moodiness, fatigue, cravings, and hunger come in. And over time this contributes to inflammation and other problems that promote chronic disease.
However, consuming veggies first, then carbs significantly changes what happens. Any starch or sugar that we eat after consuming vegetable fiber will have a mitigated insulin response in the body. This indicates more controlled blood sugar levels as when more fiber is present, it slows down glucose metabolism and absorption into the bloodstream.
Get Rid of that Daily 3 PM Crash
Even just deconstructing a sandwich and eating the veggies before the protein and bread portions can improve your digestion, reduce a blood sugar spike, and consequently get rid of the 3 P.M. crash that happens when your glucose levels dip.
Eating this way easily gets you to eat more vegetables
And not just more fruit. Remember, pretty much anything green is a vegetable, so if it helps simplify things, just try to eat one serving of something green before your meal.
Simply start your meal with a small handful of:
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Broccoli
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Celery
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Artichoke
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Asparagus
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Green beans
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Okra
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Brussel sprouts
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Salad
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Cucumbers (even though cucumbers are fruit, it’s low sugar status makes it fit in the vegetable category for our purposes)
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Peas (they are technically legumes, but legumes are also categorized as vegetables, so eating any type of beans first works as well).
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Or any other vegetable! (carrots, radishes, tomatoes, bell peppers etc)
A Snack of Vegetables Before A Meal Is A Gamechanger
The time frame for eating this way can be 0 minutes, 2, minutes, 10 minutes, or up to 2 hours. You have about a 2-hour window to reap the full benefits. That is because it usually takes about 2 hours for fiber to go through our stomach and into our small intestine. This much time means that if you are going to go out to dinner, you can snack on carrots and hummus before you leave and still be able to flatten your glucose spike.
Eating More Vegetables Will Curb Your Cravings
At first, you may be eating more calories by eating this way, and that is ok. Because it is more important to eat vegetables first than it is to count calories. And overall, things will start to even out. The Cornell University research team found that if we eat starches and sugars first, then ghrelin, our hunger hormone, returns to pre-meal levels after just two hours. However, if we eat vegetables first and starches and sugars last, ghrelin stays suppressed for much longer (anywhere from 3-6 hours).
Do you have to eat this way all the time? No. The most important thing is not to stress about it and try not to live in absolutes. Do what makes sense for you. If you are eating a Buddha bowl where veggies, protein, fats, and starches are all mixed in, take a couple of bites of the veggies first then eat the rest of the dish mixed. Don’t stress about it. The most important thing is that it is best to eat your veggies first and then the starches and sugars as late in the meal as possible. Even though you will want to eat the starches and sugars first because your body craves sugar and fast energy. However, if you use this hack, your cravings will be curbed later on.
Other Helpful Tips
Ideally, you will want a 1-to-1 ratio of veggies to starches and sugars that you will eat later. But any amount is better than nothing. Prioritize eating veggies in raw or cooked form. And remember that it is also great to mix some protein and fats with your starter. For example, dipped in nut butter, guacamole, or hummus, or drizzled with dressing on top. It should be something quick that you find tasty. Be creative!
References:
Inchasupé, Jessie. (2022). The Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing your Blood Sugar.
Machalinski, Anne. (2015). Food order impacts glucose and insulin levels. Cornell Chronicle. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/06/food-order-impacts-glucose-and-insulin-levels
Shukla, A. P., Iliescu, R. G., Thomas, C. E., & Aronne, L. J. (2015). Food Order Has a Significant Impact on Postprandial Glucose and Insulin Levels. Diabetes care, 38(7), e98–e99. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc15-0429
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