How can I eat food that is healthy and filling but still function?

I came in here to say what's already been said: Protein, protein, protein. I had a "I must lose weight" epiphany a few years ago where I decided I needed to cut way back on calories. I promptly cut way back on protein and fat - and I felt just the way you describe: shaky. So instead, I focused on INCREASING two things: protein and greens. (I just figure leafy greens are super healthy so I should get a lot of them.) For me, this has worked really well: I haven't cut carbs out by any means, but I'm a geeky number-happy calorie counter, and I'm aware that carbs - like fat - add up pretty quickly, so with both carbs and fat, I just keep things to sensible amounts. This has a lot to do with portion control, too. I used to think: "Hey, whole wheat pasta's healthy. I'll just have a nice big bowl of pasta!" I had no idea that a serving size is 2 ounces - which is NOT a lot of pasta. When I eat proper servings of carbs, they aren't a problem for me. Your mileage, may, of course, vary. As others have pointed out, your go-to meals are really light on protein, so I would suggest concentrating on that. For every meal, get yourself some good protein. Eggs are great for breakfast; for variety, a bean-and-cheese breakfast burrito or something with a lot of Greek yogurt might be good. For lunch and dinner, again, start by making sure you've got some good protein. The suggestions above are great - lean chicken, tuna, lentils. Add a bunch of green veggies and an actual serving size of starch (a single slice of bread, 2 ounces of pasta, a regular-size potato). See how that makes you feel. Finally, if you really want to know what's going on with your blood sugar, you can buy a glucose meter and some test strips for well under $100. (A lot of drugstores offer a starter kit that includes the meter, calibrating solution, and some strips.) I've seen a number of folks online http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-toy.html. It might be interesting to take a really experimental approach: for a couple of weeks, write down what you eat for every meal. An hour after you eat, write down what you feel, and then measure your glucose levels. You could get some great insights into what works well for you.

My desire to eat fewer carbs basically stemmed from my frustration at what happens to me when I eat something besides carbs, but I now know that I should change my eating habits through addition, rather than subtraction. I am at a healthy weight; I just wanted to stop relying on carbohydrates so much (although losing a few pounds would be fun too). Thanks everybody for your input--more protein it is!

Chiming in to say that your "low carb" substitutions were, in fact, not low carb. I am on a ketogenic diet and do not eat oats, oatmeal, a lot of fruit, much pasta sauce, or even tons of vegetables because these all contain more carbohydrates than fats or proteins. You are looking for meat, cheese, eggs, maybe some nuts. For example, a can of tuna with mayo on celery sticks would be a pretty easy low carb meal. Or cheesy scrambled eggs.

Dont change your diet just because the news states its unhealthy. Are You healthy? Do you look good in your clothes? As somebody whose allergic to things like annatto extract and has no thyroid if you are healthy and your body likes your current food intake dont change it because the world says you should. I see nothing wrong with what you eat. I bet you can just walk 15 min a day instead of changing your diet and be even healthier then changing your food intake . PS this is based on what you posted you eat.

Oatmeal and eggs for breakfast are great, and cinnamon and fruit of all sorts make the oatmeal taste good. After several months on a lower carb diet. I have lost over 20lbs and am much less hungry than when I was eating lots of carbs, also my blood sugar which was high has returned to normal on my last blood test. More protein, stuff you like, whatever that is, and less carbs, not none. You should be feeling much better soon if you stick with it.

I thought about doing the Atkins diet, but I'm weary of consuming so much fat. But conversely, I've tried healthy snacking--raw carrots, celery, etc--and veggies and fruits just don't satisfy me like something fatty does. Read his book before you eliminate the diet from consideration. It's a good book, and the "Atkins = fat" meme is more mythical than anything. (Mostly from the news programs delighting in showing fat guys eating nothing but racks of lamb and bacon) It has been a while since I read the book, but if memory serves, he is mostly agnostic on fat. IE, follow his restrictions and ignore fat. If you start losing weight, great. And then if you don't lose weight, you cut some fat out. The whole diet can be simplified down to this: carbs whack out your blood sugar, making you even hungrier and less satisfied, and protein and fat will make you feel much more satisfied and coincidentally you end up eating far fewer calories. The diet has multiple steps, and it ends up with you eating what amounts to a completely normal, somewhat paleo, diet, where you maintain the weight loss that the earlier steps helped with. Breakfast might be eggs and ham, plus 8 oz of OJ and half an apple. Dinner would be a chicken breast with a big salad and a couple ounces of rice. We need carbohydrate foods for some vitamins and minerals, but the vast majority of the carbs we eat are meaningless crap that do nothing but fatten us up. (Think of pizza, and try to imagine eating a plate full of melted cheese and pepperoni or sausage, with all the grease pooling in the plate. Seems a little disgusting and dense, and probably hard to even finish eating. But somehow, if you put that on a slab of bread, it turns delicious and you want more. The bread soaks up the grease and reduces its ability to make us feel full.) (Also, corn is not a vegetable. It's a grain, and it's what they use to fatten up cows. That fact helped me understand a LOT about diet.) (if you do decide to go with an Atkins type of diet, stick with "real" foods and shy away from things like low-carb cookies and low-carb ice cream. They aren't as low-carb as they purport to be.)

As Margaret Cho said once, they are the thing that allows you to make serotonin, and hence, want to live. Something is missing there. Serotonin comes from tryptophan, which comes from protein. (Over-simplified). Carbs may stimulate the release of serotonin, but that's also part of what causes the crash- they make your brain squirt out more serotonin, hence the comfort food label, but when that's over you are left with less serotonin and a sugar crash. My completely amateur research indicates that feeling good (or awful) depends not just on the level of serotonin, but on the rate of change. SSRIs dampen that rate of change by trying to keep the levels in the brain high. But there is also another anti-depressant (not available in the US) that is actually a selective serotonin reuptake enhancer. It purportedly works by dampening the ups, which eliminates the downs.

Seconding callmejay, fat is fine food and once you get used to it you'll be far more satiated than with so much carbs. I'd suggest a ratio more like 20-25% protein, 10-25% carbs, and 50-65% fat based on personal experience and research, though.

I've already commented once, but I'm dismayed at all the focus on protein and whole grains, when I have been convinced that fat should make up the bulk (65%) of your calories. (Protein should be 30%, carbs 5%, mostly from non-starchy veggies.) Please at least read http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf I used to have the same exact symptoms as you. Now I don't (except rarely if I haven't eaten anything in 5-6 hours.)