This is Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the nutrition divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

Today we're continuing our discussion of satiation and satiety.

If you're trying to lose weight or to keep from gaining, you need to be careful not to eat too many calories.

But it's no fun to stop eating before you feel satisfied

or to get hungry again long before it's time to eat.

Fortunately, there are several things you can do

to limit calories without sacrificing satisfaction.

Last week I talked about foods that promote satiation which is the feeling of being

comfortably full after a meal. If you're just joining the conversation I suggest

you go back and review that episode first. This week I'm going to focus on factors that affect satiety or how

long you can go before feeling hungry again. If you're trying to limit your calorie intake,

you'll want to be using both of these factors,

satiation and satiety, to your advantage.

When studying satiety, researchers might give people certain foods and then ask them to rate their appetite

after one, two or three hours. What they're doing is comparing the length of time that

it takes for people to feel hungry again after they've eaten various combinations of foods.

Another more objective way to study satiety is to give people a certain meal or snack

and then measure how much they eat at the next meal.

Here's what researchers have found out about satiety. Compared with carbohydrates and fats,

protein appears to offer the greatest satiety for the fewest calories.

For example, you might feel full immediately after eating a big bowl of salad greens,

but the feeling of fullness probably wouldn't last very long.

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