Eat Out Eat Well

Calorie Tips, Healthy Eating, Food Facts

No Seconds: Here’s A Useful Tip

By Leave a Comment

Do you skimp on putting food onto your plate thinking that it will keep your calorie count down?

What happens?  You eat the skimpy portion – decide you’re still hungry – and then go back for more.

If the serving dishes are right in front of you there’s potential for making caloric matters much worse.

Get Those Serving Dishes Off The Table

If you want to make it a little easier for yourself to save on calories, one thing you can do is to get those serving dishes off of the table.  According to an article in the May 2011 Nutrition Action Healthletter, when serving dishes are left on the table men eat 29% more and women 10% more than when those serving dishes stay on the counter.

Why?

It’s harder to mindlessly shove food into your mouth if you have to get up to get it. Sticking out your fork and shoveling more onto your plate while your butt remains firmly planted in your chair makes it far too easy to refill your plate without much thought about the quantity of food that’s going into your mouth.

According to the article, men chow down on more servings than women because they tend to eat fast  — impatiently gobbling food while they wait for everyone else in the family to finish. As a result, they end up eating seconds and thirds while other people are still on firsts.  Women usually eat more slowly so they’re not as likely to get to the seconds and thirds.

Pay Attention To What Goes Onto Your Plate

To help avoid the temptation of going back for seconds:

  • figure out a reasonable portion of food that is within reason but not so skimpy that you’re no where near satisfied when you’re finished
  • fill your plate with that portion from stove or from serving dishes on the counter
  • eat and enjoy knowing that you’ve selected a healthy meal that’s satisfying but neither too skimpy nor too large.

This article is part of the 30 day series of blog posts called: 30 Easy Tips for Looser Pants and Excellent Energy.

Do You Always End Up In The Cookie Or Chips Aisle In The Supermarket?

By Leave a Comment

Is your route around the supermarket always the same – and does it usually include the aisles that get you in trouble? You know – the aisles with the home made baked goods or the chips and pretzels or the freezer cases with an incredible selection of mouth-watering ice cream flavors.

Think about it – why do you always go up and down the aisles the way you do?  For that matter – why do you choose one market over another?  Is it the price, the ease of use, or maybe subconsciously, or consciously, you know that the store you use as your “go-to” carries your favorite foods. Those foods may be the freshest produce, the leanest meat, or the best convenience foods, home made cookies, and freshly baked cakes.

Do You Usually End Up Walking Out Of The Market With A Bag Of Cookies Or Chips That You Hadn’t Planned On Buying?

Do you almost inevitably end up with donuts, cookies, or chips in your cart? Do you also walk around the supermarket in the same pattern slowing down in the aisles that house your favorite foods?

Whatever your “trigger” or “treat” food of choice might be, tossing it into your cart when it calls your name as you walk down the supermarket aisle becomes a habit – a habit that often translates into weight gain.

The routine of traveling a certain route – the one that propels you past the food that has become your caloric downfall — becomes so ingrained that you function on autopilot. You may not even think about going to the place that sells your craving/trigger/indulgence food – you seem to just find yourself there.

It’s not dissimilar to being unable to pass the popcorn or candy counter when you get into the movie theater.  The array of bright candy boxes and the smell of popcorn is in your face and buying popcorn or candy is the thing that you’ve always done.  It’s become your habit when you go to the movies. You don’t really think about it – you just do it.

The same thing is true with tossing those cookies or chips into your shopping cart – ‘fess up — isn’t it true that 9 times out of 10 you’ll end up with them in your cart?

Do You Need To Change-Up Your Route?

Snacks and treats aren’t always bad things. But, when they become  habits and choices that lead to weight gain it’s time for some reassessment of your shopping and eating habits.

If your supermarket shopping is followed by grumbling over the fact that you bought and ate (whatever it is) once again — often in the parking lot or on your way home — perhaps it’s time to reconsider your route and your routine.

Change it up. Go to a different store or try walking around the supermarket in a different direction. We all get used to doing certain things in a certain way – which may be fine – unless it’s not. If your routines are causing you to eat poorly, do something different.

You might not even realize how your shopping patterns affect what you buy and ultimately what you eat.  What kind of changes can you make?

This article is part of the 30 day series of blog posts called: 30 Easy Tips for Looser Pants and Excellent Energy.

Bread, Butter, Oil: Do You Eat A Meal Before Your Meal?

By Leave a Comment

Olive oil for bread sopping and dipping is giving butter some stiff competition. At one time it was butter on bread – big slabs, small pots, or foil wrapped rectangles.

Now olive oil — green or golden, plain, herbed, or spiced — frequently takes center stage. It can be plopped down on your table or poured with a flourish from a dark tinted bottle.  Some restaurants offer a selection for dipping – and attempt to educate you about the variation in flavors depending upon the olives’ country of origin.

Butter, Oil, And Bread Can Add A Big Caloric Punch

  • A tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, a tablespoon of butter has 102 calories, one pat of butter has around 36 calories.
  • Butter and oil are all fat; olive oil is loaded with heart healthy monounsaturated fat, butter is filled with heart unhealthy saturated fat.
  • Bread varies significantly in calories depending on the type of bread and the size of the piece.
  • Most white bread and French bread averages around 90 to 100 calories a slice. Most dinner rolls average 70 to 75 calories each.

Who Takes In More Calories – Butter Or Olive Oil Eaters?

Hidden cameras in Italian restaurants have shown that people who put olive oil on a piece of bread consume more fat and calories than if they use butter on their bread. But the olive oil users end up eating fewer pieces of bread than the butter eaters.

In a study done by the food psychology laboratory at Cornell University, 341 restaurant goers were randomly given olive oil or blocks of butter with their bread. Following dinner, researchers calculated the amount of olive oil or butter and the amount of bread that was eaten.

The researchers found that olive oil users:

  • used 26% more olive oil on each slice of bread compared to block butter users (40 vs. 33 calories)
  • ate 23% less bread over the course of a meal than the people who used butter
  •  took in 17% fewer bread calories:  264 calories (oil eaters) vs. 319 calories (butter eaters).

What Are Your Bread And Butter (or oil) Habits?

Do you mindlessly chow down on bread and butter or oil before a meal either because you’re hungry or because it’s there for easy nibbling?

The bread and butter or oil pre-dinner (and maybe during dinner) eating habit creates a real caloric bump – often without much added nutrition.

If you choose to indulge think about limiting the amount or don’t even let the breadbasket land on your table.  Harder breads and breadsticks are often less caloric than softer doughy breads.  The choice to eat and slather or dip is yours – just be mindful of the calories that add up quickly and are pretty easy to overlook.

This article is part of the 30 day series of blog posts called: 30 Easy Tips for Looser Pants and Excellent Energy.

Photo

Slow Down You Eat Way Too Fast

By Leave a Comment

Do you wolf your food down so quickly that it’s gone before you realize you’ve eaten it all – and then you’re still hungry and staring at an empty plate?

Mothers around the world often say the same thing: slow down and chew your food.  Well, what do you know, there’s something to it.
According to an article in the New York Times, studies show that people who eat quickly eat more calories than they would if they ate a bit more slowly. The people who ate more slowly also felt fuller.
A recent study showed that hormones that give you feelings of fullness, or satiety, are more pronounced when people eat slowly. Subjects given identical servings of ice cream released more of these hormones when they ate it in 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes.
It leads to eating less, too. According to an article published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association people who ate at a slow pace compared to when they chowed down very quickly said they were fuller and ending up eating about 10 percent fewer calories.

An analysis of surveys completed by 3287 adults (1122 men, 2165 women), ages 30-69, concluded that eating until they’re full and eating quickly are associated with being overweight and that these combined behaviors might have a significant impact on being overweight.

Twenty Minutes Or Less

Research has shown that Americans start and finish their meals — and clear the table — in less than 20 minutes.  A study published in the journal Appetite, found that people eating lunch by themselves in a fast food restaurant finish in 11 minutes. They finish in13 minutes in a workplace cafeteria and in 28 minutes at a moderately priced restaurant.  Eating with three other people takes about twice as long – which can still end up being a really short chunk of time.

Once again, Moms are right – slow down when you eat. (Doesn’t that often go with don’t grab?) Slowing down allows you and your brain to register a feeling of fullness and may even mean that you eat fewer calories. You might even have time to really taste and enjoy your food, too.

This article is part of the 30 day series of blog posts called: 30 Easy Tips for Looser Pants and Excellent Energy.

Practice Makes Perfect (Or At Least Good)– Especially With Habits

By Leave a Comment

What gets you to Carnegie Hall?  Practice.  What makes your new healthy behaviors stick?  Practice.

If you’ve resolved to form new healthy habits, ones you want to keep and that fit in with your lifestyle, you need to keep repeating those new behaviors over and over again.  It’s like learning a language or a new game.  You need to keep practicing.

Why? Our brains are lazy. They like to default to what’s easy for them – and usually that’s an old habit (both good ones and bad ones).  That default is what takes the least amount of energy and it’s nice and comfortable. Doing something that’s very familiar can be done without much thinking or energy — like eating a certain thing everyday at the same time or going for a daily run at the same time and on the same route.

The way to create a new habit and to make it “stick” is to create a new “default” pattern to replace an old one. That requires the repetitive practice of doing the same behavior over and over again – like creating a path through grass or weeds by walking on it day after day.

Some Additional Tips

You might like to try one change at a time instead of making too many resolutions or setting too many goals. Create one new habit and then begin to work on another. Since our brains are, in a sense, kind of lazy, they don’t like too much disruption or change at a time.  They’re used to doing something one way, so pick one change at a time and create a habit around it.

Be committed and willing to work on your goal(s).  Decide if you’re really willing to make change(s) in your life. Are you serious or half-hearted about what you want to do? “Kinda,” “sorta” goals give you “kinda,” “sorta” results. Realistic, achievable goals produce realistic results.

Start Small And Specific. So many of us are guilty of all-or-nothing thinking and overly ambitious goals. Guess what happens?  We shoot ourselves in our collective feet and call ourselves failures.  Do it often enough and a “no can do” attitude gets solidly embedded. Make resolutions you think you can keep. If, for example, your aim is to exercise more frequently, schedule three or four days a week at the gym instead of seven. If you would like to eat healthier, try replacing dessert with something else you enjoy, like fruit or yogurt or a very small portion of a favorite indulgence — instead of seeing your diet as a form of punishment.

Unhealthy behaviors develop over time. Creating healthy behaviors to replace those unhealthy ones also requires time. Be patient.  And practice.

This article is part of the 30 day series of blog posts called: 30 Easy Tips for Looser Pants and Excellent Energy.