Why Am I Always Hungry?

The first time I saw this diagram was nearly a year ago and it has never left my memory. Over the past few months I have noticed how refined foods such as white bread and sugar have effected hunger throughout the day. This simple illustration shows how all highly processed foods, fats and oils look in the stomach. I'll be right back, gotta grab an apple.

OK, I'm back, less starving than I was a minute ago. If you look at all of the diets that have been successful and popular, most of them have fruits and veggies in common. Atkins, not so much because it's an all-protein diet. The challenge that I've found is getting veggies to taste good. Fruits are naturally delicious without anything added, but veggies are usually better when you make them bad...like broccoli with cheese sauce, fried green beans with butter, creamed peas, spinach au gratin. At this point, I'm finding it more challenging to make veggies fun. Well, fun is a strong word. I don't know if they've ever been fun. Here are some tricks I've learned:

1. Bake kale with a spritz of olive oil for crispy chips with a touch of sea salt
2. Hide spinach in smoothies, soups, baked eggs
3. Mash sweet potatoes with a touch of cinnamon, almond milk and agave nectar and bake for fake pumpkin pie
4. Use romaine or Boston lettuce leaves to wrap the healthy ingredients you would normally put on bread, like tuna salad, grilled chicken, lean steak
5. Soak dates -- use the water as a healthy natural sweetening liquid and puree the soaked dates with water to make a paste as a solid sweeter for recipes (paste with spaghetti squash and cinnamon is great)