DrAbs: What do you recommend I add to my diet to limit the amount of carb and starch intake and still feel full?

 Short answer: Chickpeas, spinach, eggs, halibut, shrimp, lobster, crab, goat, deer, duck, salmon, turkey, tuna, chicken, (I'd prefer you don't eat whale, eat spirulina instead), all because of their high tryptophan content. If you are vegetarian or vegan, Try hummus and falafel. These you should find filling as you eat them more consistantly. Care not to over do it though on the chickpeas(or tryptophan supplements), a rapid increase in tryptophan can exacerbate latent infections. 


Long answer: Part of feeling full is satisfaction from the  meal(stomach expansion, presense of simple sugars on the taste buds)  which takes around 20-40 minutes after you begin eating to kick in while  the other part is energy availability which tends to show up after about an hour and a half of digestion. Carbs generally signal for satisfaction because they enhance insulin which pumps proteins in your blood into your muscles, all except the amino acid tryptophan which  doesn't compete as well for uptake into the brain as other amino acids  do. Tryptophan is then utilized to make serotonin and other important  metabolites like melatonin, dmt, and niacin(vit b3). So i'd recommend  you don't overload your system with too much protein at once so that  your body can't uptake tryptophan into the brain (supposedly more than  35 grams) and especially if you havn't contracted your muscles in a way  which would increase your muscle protein needs more than for baseline  protein turnover :).  Whoever told you to limit carb and starch intake doesn't know the science. In fact the brain utilizes around 20 grams of  sugar an hour and it's dificult to provide this through metabolic  processes without eating carbs or starchy vegetables in your diet.  Besides that, cold/ resistant starches and soluble fibers like inulin  are utilized by the gut to make butyrate which you wouldn't wish to  forgo longterm as a vegan who doesn't get it from butter. Check out inulin rich foods and toss some of them into your diet at the very least if you feel the need to avoid carbs and starches,(greenish bananas, asparagus, jerusalem artichokes)  though I would recommend you keep them in your diet. If you're worried because of diabetes, you can cool starchy vegetables like potatoes off in the frige before you eat them, and eat your bananas greener.

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