Diet Doctor, long known for it’s advocacy and education surrounding the Keto Diet and living a low carb lifestyle, has launched a new company named Hava. Hava seeks to fill a void for people who feel they can’t sustain a life-long commitment to the Keto Diet by focusing on satiety.
This innovative approach and our product are still being developed; it’s still a work in progress. However, the potential is massive.
Low carb remains a great option, perhaps the best available today. However, satiety may become an important part of the future of eating for metabolic health and body composition. And since poor metabolic health underlies all our top chronic diseases, satiety may be part of the future of eating for health and quality of life.
Diet Doctor
I define satiety as the satisfaction you feel from being full after eating. The difference between just feeling full and satiety for me is actual satiety lasts a long time. It’s not the 30 minutes to an hour after lunch where you are struggling to make it to dinner. It’s a feeling that lasts for several hours. For me, if I’ve eaten a meal I define as satiating it will last me 8 hours or maybe even until the next day. I will continue to feel like I can’t physically eat anything because I’m full.
I understand there’s a need for something different for people who can’t stick to strict Keto. I certainly don’t stick to strict Keto. But, I don’t have to and I expect most other people don’t have to either. Keto was designed to help people with certain neurological disorders like Epilepsy. The diet just so happened to also be great for losing weight.
The problem I have with a system that focuses on satiety is that satiety is nebulous. It’s different for everyone. What makes one person feel satiated for a long period of time may not be the same for another. Hava appears to use a numerical score to tell you how satiating a particular food will be. Here are a couple graphics from their web site hava.co.
Reducing foods to a simple point system, like Weight Watchers, teaches people to ignore the actual food they’re eating and instead concentrate on the points. In this case, people are going to look at this “Satiety Score” and may over or under eat a particular food because they will think it will make them satiated.
I think should not think about food in such abstract terms. A statiety score of 91 tells me nothing about the artichoke. Will one artichoke make me feel full or will two? Will three slices of green broccoli pizza (this is an abomination in the first place) be as good as two servings of artichoke?
We need to get away from such scoring systems. Forget calories. Forget macros. It all gets in the way of food you should be eating. For too long we’ve been taught to stay away from meat, particularly red meat, and consume the emptiest of foods (breads, cereals, rice, and plants). We should have been doing the exact opposite. Listen to what your body tells you about what you’re eating instead.
Eat a 16 oz. steak with nothing else and see how you feel. One pound of steak may make you feel so full you can’t eat another thing. But, that doesn’t mean you have to only do that. Food is naturally enjoyable. Maybe you like asparagus and want to eat it with your steak. You can. Reduce the size of your steak slightly and eat your asparagus.
The key is to prioritize those foods that are lower in carbohydrates, typically foods high in protein, and fill in the edges with almost anything you want. The demons in your diet are anything with sugar, refined carbohydrates, and processed foods. You don’t have to count your macros, calories, or satiety score if you do this. And you won’t have to pay anyone for their diet advice. That will save you the money to buy yourself another steak.
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