If you are on a diet, how would you answer this question? Are you fat because you're hungry or are you hungry because you're fat? This appears to be a "which came first the chicken or the egg" type question but surprisingly to most dieters, the answer is both. Why? It is simple really, if you are over weight you have more body surface area that radiates heat and thus requires more calories to fuel this heat.

Nutritionists agree that foods that satisfy your hunger the fastest will help you to cut down on calories. They call this the satiety value of food. Some foods are quick to satisfy hunger but are short term in the digestive system and ultimately cause us to eat more often. Foods that remain in our digestive process longer have a higher satiety value.

Foods that have a high satiety value level include: meat, milk, and fish. Examples of foods with a low satiety value level would be eggs, green vegetables, and bread. An adequate combination of the high and low satiety value level foods is your best defense in curbing your appetite while on a diet.

The five tips will help you achieve a balance of satiety value food intake and help you curb your appetite.

1) Stop eating just short of receiving the full signal from your brain or stomach. For reasons not totally understood people that tend to put on weight easily have trouble recognizing the full signal from their brain until they have way over eaten.

2) Develop socially entertaining mental habits. Often dieters will become bored because they have few entertainment value interests and will turn to eating to fulfill this boredom. Find new hobbies or socialize with friends more to avoid this lack of entertainment stimulus.

3) Eat foods that require vigorous chewing. Generally foods that you must chew more before swallowing will stay in our digestive process longer. Foods such as meat, crisp celery, and uncooked carrots are great examples of these type of foods.

4) Do not drink too much water with meals. Drink only enough to help you swallow chewed food. Drinking more water than necessary will give you the notion you are full too soon and will be a false signal. Water remains in our digestive process the shortest of any other drink and will be quickly depleted from our system.

5) Cut down on your consumption of alcohol. Alcohol has a tendency to trick our metabolism system into believing it needs more food and sends us the hungry signal. In actual reality the body does want food to help absorb the alcohol, but often this signal is perceived as a false hungry signal instead.

6) What if you could make tasty meals yourself that would speed up the process of losing weight? By combining 'negative calorie' fruits and vegetables into salads and other dishes at mealtime, you can accelerate your weight loss in a delicious way.

Negative calorie foods are not new and have been discussed in weight loss circles for years. They are essentially fruits and vegetables that make your body use more calories (units of heat) to digest than they contain themselves. When you eat them as part of your diet, the net result is a negative calorie balance. This will help you lose weight faster.

Here is a short list of popular negative calorie fat burning foods:

* Asparagus

* Apples

* Beets

* Broccoli

* Cabbage

* Carrots

* Cauliflower

* Celery

* Cucumbers

* Garlic

* Grapefruit

* Lettuce

* Oranges

* Papaya

* Pineapples

* Raspberries

* Spinach

* Strawberries

* Turnips

* Zucchini

As you can see there are many fat burning foods to choose from that will not only help you decrease your appetite but also help you lose weight fast. The way to achieve faster weight loss with these foods is to eat more of them more often.