Frequently Asked Questions
Q. I sometimes feel hungry between meals. What should I do?
A. First things first. Are we talking about hunger – or cravings? The SlimBuddy approach encourages you to resist cravings but to respond to hunger. So what’s the difference? Hunger is what you feel when your blood sugar levels drop because it is several hours since you have eaten satisfactorily. It’s your body’s signal to you that it’s time to eat. But cravings can happen at any time, including just an hour or two after a meal. They are due to larger than normal peaks and troughs in blood sugar levels that follow the eating of high GI foods such as white bread and white rice which are digested very quickly to give a high blood sugar followed by a low blood sugar – the Chinese meal syndrome. It’s the rapid drop in blood sugar that causes the craving. The good thing about the SlimBuddy approach, with its emphasis on low GI foods, is that you are far less likely to experience cravings.
So what can you do if you feel genuinely hungry? First, make sure you have breakfast. I find that skipping breakfast is one of the commonest causes of hunger. Breakfast is important for stabilising blood sugar levels. If, in spite of eating a good breakfast, you still feel hungry, especially later in the day, here are a few snack ideas which are okay on the SlimBuddy programme:
- Diet fizzy drinks such as diet tonic water, diet cola, made more interesting with ice and lemon
- A little low fat cottage cheese with chopped cucumber or salsa
- A little low fat or non fat yoghurt
- A handful of raw vegetables
- A couple of celery sticks with hummus or no added sugar peanut butter
- A few nuts, e.g. 4 or 5 Brazils, 10 almonds, 15 peanuts
