Hungry after carbs

[PPumpkinPatch]

Dose any one else experience being STARVING after eat a carb heavy meal? I can eat a whole plate of delicious pasta but in 10-30 minutes I am extremely hungry. It's only after carbs, at least that is what I have come to notice. I cut out heavy carb meals and just stick to fat and protein and no longer get hungry within 30 minutes. I can only find any articles about being starving on a LOW carb diet and I don't understand.

[Dominique]

Not all carbs are alike: they differ based on their fiber content, their glycemic index etc. And people also differ based on their ability to process carbs, depending on their genetic heritage, their insulin sensitivity etc. For instance, people who are overweight tend to have a lower sensitivity to insulin, and are therefore less well-equipped to handle carbs than their leaner counterparts. The good news is you seem to have found what works and doesn’t work for you, so you can eat accordingly.

[analystk · Accepted solution]

I never ate a pasta meal that didn't make me more hungry.  For me, genetics and health played a role in how food made me feel.  I also found some research behind satiety and discovered that there is a "satiety index" where the scientists doing the research ranked the food based on how full it makes people feel.  They used white bread as the baseline, giving it a score of 100, so any food with a score above 100 is more filling than white bread, and anything below is less filling.  Foods like chips, candy, cake, ice cream and peanuts score below 100, while just about everything else scores above 100.  White pasta and cereals all score only around 120%.  The most filling food they tested is potatoes (323%), Ling fish (225%), Oatmeal (209%), Oranges (202%), Apples (197%), Brown pasta (188%), and Beef (176%).

If you're anything like me, white pasta and bread never made me feel full and I was always hungry 30 minutes later.  But, I always found things like fish, potatoes, apples and some vegetables very nutritious and uplifting.  On the genetics and health side, I got tested and found out that I have a gluten intolerance, and getting off pasta and bread last year was like a cure for my life-long problems with concentration and depression.  So, wheat based carbs didn't feed me, and they triggered a bunch of other problems in my body.