Filling Up With Less

Filling Up With Less

With her supersize appetite, O’Nan’s weight spiraled to 360 pounds. She tried dieting, but nothing worked. O’Nan did some research and stumbled across a little-known book called “Volumetrics” (harpercollins.com), which promised that she could manage her weight by choosing foods that the program calls “low in energy density,” foods that make you feel satiated, or full, but that are also low in calories. She swapped her serving of fast-food fries for an even larger portion of boiled redskin potatoes in a garlic-dill sauce.

What Rolls found is that feeling full is intrinsically linked to certain foods. The nutritional principle behind those foods is called energy density, or ED. It may sound counterintuitive, but foods low in energy density make you feel fuller. Think fruits, soups and vegetables, all of which have high water content, “the secret ingredient” to satiety, says Rolls. (But drinking water alone won’t help you feel full; it will only quench your thirst.) Rolls’s research shows that a person eats about the same volume, or weight, of food every day. The trick is to fill your plate with low-calorie foods that leave you satisfied.