We can control our appetite with food preferences and lifestyle

   European University of Lefke (EUL) Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics Faculty Member, Assist. Prof. Dr. Tuba Günebak shared information about the tricks of appetite control.

“Appetite is a phenomenon that can be affected by daily food intake, preferred foods, meal frequency and physiological cycles. There is a complicated, yet admirable system in our body that controls appetite. We have a hunger-satiety centre in our brain called a hypothalamus (starvation centre in the lateral hypothalamic nucleus and a satiety centre in the ventromedial nucleus) and Günebak added that appetite is under the control of neuronal systems that are stimulated by the release of certain neuropeptides. Günebak, “So, can we control our appetite with some changes in our food preferences and lifestyle?” By answering the question “Yes”, she listed the ways to control our appetite as follows:

• Placing exercise in our daily lives is an important move for appetite control. Research has indicated that regular exercise suppresses hormone levels that stimulate food intake, thereby increasing appetite. For this reason, putting exercise into your life is an important step. Try to take brisk walks for at least 20 minutes. Try to capture a total of 280 minutes of exercise time in a week. Studies show that exercise for at least 20 minutes a day, 280 minutes a week supports the slimming process.
• Increase your nutrient uptake with food. Foods rich in pulp are legumes, whole grain foods, vegetables and fruits. Prefer the vegetables and fruits that match the season.
• Start the meal with soup. However, not with cream soups. Prefer lean or very low-fat soups enriched with green lentils, chickpeas such as chickpeas, quinoa, chia seeds, black wheat.
• Be sure to consume a large bowl of lean salads at every main meal. It was found that adding salad to the meal reduces the amount of food consumed in that meal by 12%.
• The semi-skimmed milk or yogurt you will consume during the day will help you control your appetite with the whey and casein proteins they contain. In addition, consuming foods rich in calcium has been shown to support the slimming process. For those who do not consume or prefer to consume milk and their products, dark green leafy vegetables such as broccoli, Brussel sprouts, walnuts, hazelnuts, spinach, purslane, cress, arugula can be preferred.
• Take care to take quality, but low-fat protein. You can add eggs to each breakfast, a palm-sized grilled or fat-free, low-fat meat or skinless chicken breast or fish to your main meal. If you prefer to consume the egg by cooking it in a frying pan, try cooking it in the non-stick pan, adding 1-2 tablespoons of milk after whipping your egg instead of adding oil. Adding plain oatmeal to your omelette is also a good choice. Oatmeal not only helps you control your blood cholesterol level with the beta-glucan it contains, it also protects your intestinal activities from constipation and increases your saturation. Good preference from fish is oily fish such as salmon and sea bass, as they are rich in omega-3 fatty acids. The best choice of poultry is turkey meat. Especially breast meat.
• A few oilseed consumption will be beneficial in terms of appetite control. Both the fatty acids and minerals they contain are supportive in this sense. The amount is 2 for walnuts, 6 for nuts or almonds.
• Do not completely remove oil from your life, but reduce its amount and take it under control. For example; the amount of oil you will use to cook one kg of vegetable food should not exceed 1 tablespoon.
• Don’t forget to drink water. Have your water with you in your home, office and glass bottle. Try to drink at least 8 glasses a day.
• • Pay attention to the consumption of snacks. The time between the main and snack should not exceed 3 hours. In studies, it has been stated that increasing the frequency of meals is useful not only on appetite control, but also in the regulation of blood LDL cholesterol (malignant cholesterol), total cholesterol and insulin levels.
• Some fruits that you can consume in the snack and that may benefit the appetite control are apples, citrus fruits, blueberries, pineapple and avocado. Avocados support the slimming process with “monounsaturated fatty acids”, “bromelain” in pineapple composition, antioxidants with blueberries, and low citrus glycaemic indexes.
• Take care to eat slowly and chew well. After the 20th minute since the intake of food begins, according to some studies, the satiety centre is stimulated at the end of the 25th minute and the food intake stops. Therefore, the slower we take care to eat and chew well, the more controlled the amount of food we will fit in this 20-minute physiological period, the less energy we receive from the meal.
• Brush your teeth after food consumption so that the taste of food is not in your mouth and mind.
• As herbal tea, you can use your choice of green tea and cinnamon tea. It is both antioxidant with the catechin in green tea composition and supports edema removal. Cinnamon increases the ability of insulin to attach to the cell membrane with bioactive components in bicelis. In this way, it supports and facilitates job control. Coffee lovers should not forget that caffeine increases the excretion of calcium in the urine. Therefore, drinking more than two cups of coffee per day is disadvantageous in terms of bone health.

• Also, a note for mothers; uncontrolled food intake in breastfeeding increases the adipose tissue (adipose tissue) rate of the newborn, hormone levels released from the adipose tissue and brain and increase appetite; Therefore, it has been determined that he can prepare the baby to become an appetite individual in the future. In our society, there is an effort to increase milk production by feeding new mothers a lot. However, uncontrolled food consumption during breastfeeding prepares the baby for the future as an obese candidate.