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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

[...] psychological programming of expecting food to provide instant fuel [...]

Is this a real thing? Eating makes me less hungry but not more energetic no matter what I eat.

I think maybe I wasn't clear. Normally when you eat, you expect to not feel hungry any more. In particular, if you are targeting a calorie deficit or weight loss you look forward to that "joy of food" sensation, a big part of which is the glucose that absorbs almost instantly and raises your blood sugar, and more of which absorbs over time beginning immediately. If you are on a low carb meal you will miss that feeling entirely. You won't feel from fat (though you will if you have plenty of protein and fibe) and you won't have the blood pressure spike that most of us associate with "food good" (note I don't mean the extreme spike you would get from eating pure sugar necessarily, just any higher than baseline peaking).

So the psychological programming is getting used to not expecting that spike (and possibly that 'full' feeling), and still feeling you sated your self.

What if you eat a clean salad loaded with raw veggies? - that always does it for me. Or a fruit/greens smoothie.

The fiber in the salad will of course help you with the full feeling. Many vegetables are chock full of carbohydrates, so it depends on your goals. If that's the only source of carbohydrates you are probably doing great, if it adds on top of bread and breakfast cereal and some noodles, etc, then the veggies are just adding more carbs.

Its not the type of food really thats the problem, it's processed foods and "low fat" diets.

Processed carbs are easily digest and throw up your blood sugar levels. Insulin is released to counter this, which converts it into body fat. Raw "veggies" are better than smoothies because typically sugar is thrown in with it. Eating an apple is much healthier for you then drinking concentrated apple juice.

The "low fat" diets are also a problem because to substitute the fat they add carbs, usually processed carbs. Keto diets limit the carb intake to about 80g per day and typically people on that diet feel more energy because the body is burning fat for fuel but importantly they are not in energy saving mode.

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