When you try to lose a few pounds, do you ever get so hungry that you feel like you’re starving?

If you are in that small group of people with diabetes who isn’t trying to lose weight, please go on to something relevant to you. And if you know how to lose weight without hunger, please add your tips as comments here.

But practically everyone else who has diabetes constantly grapples with the question of being hungry. One of my correspondents, Linda, tells me that she constantly feels like she is starving.

“I even have the headache to prove it,” Linda says. She recently upped her calorie intake from 800 to 1,000 calories per day.

But even her current calorie level is on the low side. Most people agree that women need at least 1,000 calories per day and men need at least 1,200 calories per day. With a diet that restricted she might not be getting enough protein either.

Linda is trying to find a way of eating for the rest of her life. She says that the thought of never eating out with friends or having a pizza again depresses her.

Maybe she’s being too hard on herself. When we follow a short-term diet, we can avoid friends and pizza. But a lifelong eating plan has to make room for them.

A few days ago at a party I ate two delicious slices of pizza and lived to tell this tale. I even kept my weight in check by eating less the following day.

For me the biggest help in controlling my hunger and therefore my weight came when I started taking Byetta a couple of years ago. Some people who use insulin find that Symlin also promotes satiety. But I know that these drugs don’t make everyone feel full and that some people can’t afford them, particularly if their health insurance doesn’t cover it.

For most people what and when we eat is more important than any drug. We need to focus on those foods that promote satiety.

We can get help here from Dr. Susanna Holt’s satiety index, which ranks different foods on their ability to satisfy hunger. But she tested only 38 different foods.

By far the most satisfying is boiled potatoes. She told me that the bulk and the blandness of potatoes could account for much of its high satiety.

This is also key to the “Volumetrics” diet of Dr. Barbara Rolls of Penn State University, which Pam Cobo brought to my attention in her comment on one of my earlier articles here.

“Basically, I create high volume (translation = big bowls) of food that is low in calories and glycemic friendly,” Pam wrote. “The large volume appeals to the brain, the mouth, and the tummy. You feel absolutely full.”

Fish is another high satiety food, ranking second behind boiled potatoes in Dr. Holt’s satiety index. It’s also a myth that red meat – beef – is more filling than white meat. The level of satiety was significantly greater after a fish meal than after a beef or chicken meal in a 1991 study that my favorite Certified Diabetes Educator just brought to my attention.