Appetite and Satiety
Have you ever felt like eating even when you were full? Your hunger may have been satisfied but your appetite was not. Hunger, appetite, and satiety are factors that affect athletic performance and how easy it is to meet your weight goals. Let’s dive into how you can use appetite and satiety to your athletic advantage.
What are hunger, appetite, and satiety?
Hunger is a physiological phenomenon that occurs when biological changes in the body signal to your brain that you need food to maintain energy levels. Appetite, on the other hand, is the desire to eat. Appetite is caused by hunger, but your emotions and environment can trigger it even if you aren’t physiologically hungry. Satiety is the state of feeling full, and it suppresses hunger until it’s time for your next meal.
Influences on appetite:
Your emotional state significantly influences your appetite. Extreme stress, boredom, and sadness can cause an increase in appetite. Inversely, stress, depression, and distraction can cause you to lose your appetite despite your body being hungry. Your environment also plays a role in your appetite. Seeing or smelling delicious food can activate your appetite, even directly after a meal. This is why you’re able to eat dessert after stuffing yourself at dinner. Additionally, gastrointestinal conditions such as gastroparesis, which causes food to remain in the stomach for long periods, can decrease your appetite below normal levels and make it difficult to eat enough to sustain yourself.
Exercise and appetite:
A common belief is that exercise increases appetite, but the relationship between the two is quite complex. Exercise depletes calories and causes hunger, as the body needs to make up for the resources it expends. Runners, for example, tend to experience hunger and have an increased appetite after completing a run. However, exercise has been shown to suppress appetite as well. High-intensity exercise has been shown to decrease ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone, and increase peptide YY, an appetite-suppressing hormone. The result is a decrease in appetite that lasts for several hours. Due to the conflicting information in these findings, you should pay attention to your body and its needs. The effect exercise has on appetite varies from person to person, and many factors are at play. Regardless of appetite, it’s important to refuel your body after exercise by eating enough protein, carbohydrates, and other nutrients.
Appetite, satiety, and weight gain/loss:
Depending on whether you want to lose or gain weight, you can use appetite and satiety to your advantage. Different foods have different satiety levels, meaning that some foods make you full faster than others. Susanna Holt, PhD, created a satiety index of common foods published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Holt). Here is a chart from the publication comparing 38 different foods, separated into six different categories.
In this study, each food was compared with the satiety index (SI) score of white bread, measured at 100.
Here are the foods with the highest SI scores in the study:
Boiled potatoes (323 ± 51%)
Ling fish (225 ± 30%)
Porridge (209 ± 36%)
Oranges (202 ± 34%)
Apples (197 ± 32%)
Brown pasta (188 ± 45%)
Beef steak (176 ± 50%)
Here are the foods with the lowest SI scores in the study:
Croissant (47 ± 17%)
Cake (65 ± 17%)
Doughnuts (68 ± 20%)
Mars bar (70 ± 25%)
Peanuts (84 ± 19%)
Yogurt (88 ± 23%)
On average, the fruit, carbohydrate-rich, and protein-rich categories had the highest satiety scores. The bakery products, snacks/confectionery, and cereal categories had the lowest satiety scores.
If your goal is to lose weight, you should eat foods with higher satiety scores that will fill you up faster and require you to eat less. Implementing foods with a low energy density and high volume, such as fruits and vegetables, will help you consume less calories. The high water content in these foods has been shown to increase feelings of fullness. In addition, you should avoid sugary and salty foods, which have a high energy density. Sugar and salt are appetite stimulants that will make you more likely to eat more afterward. Avoid processed foods like cereals that often contain hidden salt and sugar. Lastly, paying attention to what food is in your environment can help you with emotional appetite triggers. Replacing the cookies and potato chips in your pantry with apples and carrots, for example, will put a limit on how much you will eat. This is obviously a lot easier said than done but manipulating your environment is key to weight loss.
If your goal is to gain weight, you should eat foods with lower satiety scores. This doesn’t mean you have to eat primarily baked goods and snacks, though. Nuts, Greek yogurt, eggs, and dried fruit (which work because of their low water content!) are some high-energy foods that will help you eat more. Avoid drinking too much water directly before a meal, as it will fill you up and cause you to eat less. Another tip is to add a variety of flavors to your meals. Varied flavors such as salty, sweet, and sour stimulate their own appetite centers in the brain, helping you to eat more before getting full.
Conclusion:
In short, hunger and appetite are two different phenomena that occur in the body. While hunger responds to the body’s need for energy, appetite is influenced by a number of psychological factors. Regulating the emotional and environmental factors of appetite will prevent you from overeating or not eating enough. If you’re an athlete trying to bulk up or slim down, knowing the satiety levels of different foods will help you make better choices depending on your weight goals.
Sources:
Carter, Erin. “Decreasing and increasing appetite through exercise.” MSU College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 18 December 2015, https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/decreasing_and_increasing_appetite_through_exercise. Accessed 14 April 2024.
“High-Calorie Snack Ideas for Weight Gain.” Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, 29 October 2023, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/high-calorie-snack-ideas-for-weight-gain. Accessed 14 April 2024.
Holt, Susanna H. A., et al. “A satiety index of common foods.” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 49, no. 9, 1995, pp. 675-690. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15701207_A_Satiety_Index_of_common_foods. Accessed 14 April 2024.
“Hunger and Appetite.” GI Society, https://badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topics/hunger-and-appetite. Accessed 14 April 2024.
Mateo, Ashley. “Why Am I Always Hungry? | Increase Appetite.” Runner's World, 11 February 2021, https://www.runnersworld.com/nutrition-weight-loss/a28085840/why-am-i-always-hungry/. Accessed 14 April 2024.
“Satiety: how does it work?” Sugar Nutrition Resource Centre, 6 October 2020, https://www.sugarnutritionresource.org/news-articles/satiety-how-does-it-work. Accessed 14 April 2024.
Skarnulis, Leanna. “Satiety: The New Diet Weapon.” WebMD, 25 September 2009, https://www.webmd.com/diet/features/satiety-new-diet-weapon. Accessed 14 April 2024.
Zickl, Danielle. “Why Am I Not Hungry? | Does Exercise Suppress Appetite?” Runner's World, 7 February 2020, https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a30778341/exercise-can-suppress-appetite-study/. Accessed 14 April 2024.