Ask HN: Food hacks for eating well?

I hear this claim a lot and it always sounds simplistic. The most reliable refutation a quick google turned up was:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/digestion/AN01776/

from a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic. I quote:

"There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, drinking water during or after a meal can actually improve digestion. Water and other liquids help break down the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track."

Food stays in your stomach as long as 5 hours. Water must get absorbed/passed on much more quickly. (I couldn't find numbers.) I imagine your stomach is pretty smart about maintaining a proper environment for digestion.

Carbohydrates (and pretty much anything else addictive) are "crave-inducing" because of a physiological reaction they cause. It triggers chemicals in your body and brain, not at all unlike cigarettes or other drugs. For refined carbs, it's insulin in the blood, which is followed by serotonin in the brain. The serotonin creates a relaxing effect.

It would be easy to engineer any food to have this effect by adding some sort of drug to it. Sprinkle some heroin on broccoli and you'll probably start craving that pretty quickly. Obviously though, you don't want that. What you want is to have no craving at all.

There's a good chance that your brain is not producing enough serotonin without the carbohydrates. This could be due to a number of things, lack of sleep, exercise, or even sunlight, too much stress, chronic depression. Sadly eating carbs produces bursts of serotonin followed by a deficit, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Once some other factor gets you into the cycle, the carbs themselves will keep you there.

Assuming there aren't deeper factors at play, the following may help:

1. Don't eat any refined carbs for a month. Keep unrefined ones to a minimum as well.

2. Get exercise, sleep, and spend time outside where possible.

As for #1, it's much easier to accomplish this at the grocery store than at home. A Snickers bar is a lot less difficult to ignore on a shelf at the store than on a shelf in your pantry. Never go to the store when hungry.

All of this assumes that you don't have some deeper mental health issue at play. Overeating is often a method of self-sabotage employed by people who are depressed, in which case you may need professional help. But I'd at least try cutting out carbs first because it's free and can't really hurt.