Welcome to the fourth installment of my series on reconnecting with how food feels in your body, designed to help you choose to stop eating before you’re full. The slightly less than full ideal is described as:

• when you’re just satisfied

• content with a little room leftover, or

• about 80% full

Stopping with a little room leftover is a natural way to promote weight loss, without the need for complicated calorie counts, macro tracking, or other external tools to regulate your food intake.

It simplifies the process, by putting you back in control and bringing back the connection between food, your mind, and your body.

It means taking a mindful approach to food, where staying present during meals is crucial to building and maintaining that connection.

Last week I introduced the power of eating slowly as a method for getting more enjoyment out of your food while developing an awareness of fullness cues so that the markers of satisfaction don’t get lost in the rush. Click here if you missed it.

Strategies for slowing it down include setting aside your cutlery or sipping water between bites, using a meal timer to draw things out to 15 minutes and beyond, or eating to match the slowest person at your table.

Other suggestions include eating undistracted so that you can ramp up your appreciation of the smells, textures, sensations, thoughts, and feelings that go along with each meal. Ditching face-time with your phone is essential to promoting a mindful meal experience.

The next step in further developing a more mindful approach to mealtime involves being more intentional with WHAT you put on your plate.

Some foods will promote an earlier sense of satisfaction or satiation. With a slow mindful approach AND the right foods, the goal is to be able to end your meal just as you fulfill the needs of your body, without consuming more than your body requires to function optimally.

This is ideally before you’ve scraped the last morsel off your plate out of habit.

Other foods will do exactly the opposite—they will hijack your sense of satiation and are designed to make you overconsume. These are labeled Ultra Processed Foods (UPF) and they are intentionally designed to interfere with your appetite off-switch.

They are created in labs where whole ingredients are stripped down to their desirable parts. The remaining bits are stitched together with added salt, sugar, fat, and chemicals to create Franken-foods that do nothing to satisfy you in the moment and keep you reaching for another handful, bagful, bowlful, spoonful, mouthful, or crumb until there’s not enough left to satisfy even an ant.

Instead, choose to fill your plate with whole minimally processed foods, which will help you when it comes to satiation. These foods take more time to chew, contain more fiber, more protein, and more fluid—all of which will help you understand the volume of food that you’re eating.

Whole, minimally processed foods still look and feel like the original. To fall into this category, they can be chopped, cooked, steamed, sauteed, roasted, and undergo some processing, but they still retain their original parts.

They are things that you could make in your kitchen if you wanted to, because you would have the tools and basic ingredients to do so. Canned foods are fine, frozen foods are fine, dried foods are fine—provided that when you look at them or their ingredient label, you still understand what you’re eating and they aren’t laden with excess salt, sugar, and/or fat in a way designed to override your senses.

Focusing on whole, minimally processed foods, here are the specifics on building a plate that will promote your satisfaction sensations. These tips will help you reduce your caloric intake while improving your overall nutrition so you can move more efficiently towards your body and health goals:

Tip # 1: Choose your plate size wisely

The size of your plate will dictate your portion size. “Trick” your hungry brain into starting with a smaller portion by starting with a smaller plate. It will look just as full as your standard serving, but it’ll be less food. If you make your way slowly through it, you’re likely to feel that ideal sense of contentment, with a little room leftover, after eating the smaller amount.

Tip # 2: Prioritize protein

Protein-rich foods can feel more filling, while also leading to longer-term satiety because of their impact on satiety hormones. Protein is also the macronutrient that takes the most energy to digest, scoring highest when it comes to the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). As you build your plate, start with at least a palm-sized portion of protein. Aim to include a low-fat protein with every meal and snack—excellent options include egg whites, whole eggs, low-fat Greek or Skyr yogurt, cottage cheese, lean meats, poultry, fish, etc. Although protein powder is considered a processed food, it is dense in protein, making it more satiating in the moment and satisfying in the long run.

Tip # 3: Always pick a plant

Including a robust variety of plants in your diet is essential for good health, but plants are also important when it comes to satiation, satiety, and regulating energy intake. Plants include fruits, veggies, beans, and legumes and they are important to sensing how much you’re eating because they generally make you chew, contain lots of fiber, and are filled with fluid. All of these will help you feel satisfied before becoming full.

Tip # 4: Focus on fiber

Foods high in insoluble fiber, sometimes called roughage—the type that doesn’t break down in the digestive tract—will create bulk as it enters your stomach, inducing satiation. Think broccoli, carrots, celery, etc or other plants with rigid walls or cellular structures that if eaten raw, take some time to munch thoroughly.

Foods high in soluble fiber—the kind that turns to gel—slow stomach emptying and generally delay digestion, leading to longer feelings of satiety. Foods high in soluble fiber are things like oatmeal, beans and legumes, and tomatoes.

To increase fiber in other slightly more processed food groups, choose whole grain options whenever you can, as these will be higher in fiber than their more processed counterparts. This includes whole grain pasta over white pasta and whole wheat bread over white bread.

Tip # 5: Fill up with fluid-containing foods

Foods that contain liquid, such as yogurt, soup, and even veggies and fruit, will take up more space in your stomach, which will help you identify satisfaction cues more quickly. Drinking water or other low-calorie beverages might also help improve your sense of satiation as you make your way through your meal. Some people like to have a big glass of water before they eat to ignite stomach stretch receptors so they’re more aware of the amount of food that follows.

If you’re remembering that lecture you were given about not drinking water with a meal because it will dilute your stomach acid and hinder digestion, you can chalk that up to old, inaccurate news.

To tie it all together, build your perfect plate by starting with a slightly smaller version to automatically pare your portion down to 80% of your usual meal amount.

Choose to fill your plate with protein, plants, and fiber rich foods that have some volume will help you monitor your sense of fullness.

Slowing down and tuning into fullness cues while eating will help you to determine what it feels like to be satiated and once you learn this, no matter what you eat or where you eat, you can self-regulate—you will have the power, not the food.