Eat Out Eat Well

Entertaining, Buffets, Parties, Events

Prep For Your Big Event And Snag An A . . .

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A  for Awesome, because that’s how you’ll feel.

Don’t you hate it: you’ve been so much attention to what you eat and your healthy eating habits are really getting grooved.  You’re starting to feel and look great, but, oh boy, you have to go to something big.  It could be a wedding, a dinner party, or dinner at a fabulous restaurant.

First thought: I’m going shopping for something great to wear.

Second thought: The food is going to be awesome.  Is this going to make me blow my careful eating and, then, forget it — it’s all down hill from there.

The Dilemma

You want to enjoy yourself and be able to have some of the restaurant’s “specialty of the house” or a bunch of hors d’ oeuvres followed by a delicious piece of cake at your friend’s wedding.

What To Do?

Prep like your final exam is tomorrow.

Remember cramming for finals?  Hit the books and collect some information.  Research the menu of the restaurant you will be going to or call your host or event planner to find out what will be served at your event.

Many restaurants have their menus online – or you can stop in for a preview.  If you nicely give your host, the caterer, or the event planner a solid reason for wanting to know the menu, you’ll be surprised at how accommodating most can be.

After you’ve researched what can be ordered and/or what will be served, you can then come up with your plan.   If you want that fantastic dessert perhaps you decide to keep your hand out of the breadbasket.  Do you want to have wine with dinner?  Maybe forego a cocktail (or two) – and its calories – before dinner.  Want the very special hors d’oeuvre?   Maybe dessert gets jettisoned.

The point is:  You are in control and can choose what you want to do.  But planning is important.  Make up your mind what you’re going to do ahead of time and commit to it.

A game time decision means that you’re making decisions when too many enticements are already in front of you.  That’s not easy to do.  So, do your research, come up with a plan, and stick to it.  Allow yourself something special – don’t take that away.  But, maybe stick to one or two special treats, not an ongoing feast.  You’ll feel fantastic, in control, and tremendously proud of yourself.  You’ll have had something delicious -– and your new clothes will still look just as great.  Most importantly, those new healthy eating habits are still intact and have and will continue to serve you well.

Can You Train And Tame Your Hunger?

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Physical – or real – hunger, the kind you feel when your stomach is growling, you’re irritable as all get-out, you’ve got zilch energy, and probably a throbbing headache, means you body needs food for fuel.

Info You Can Use About Hunger

  • Hunger is somewhat unpredictable.  Your actual hunger levels are not the same every day and can be affected by what your body needs and does — like activity, hormone levels, sickness, and other things.
  • Hunger doesn’t necessarily follow a time schedule.  You can adjust the types and amounts of your meals and snacks to influence the next time you will be hungry.  Eating just because the hands of the clock are at noon or 6PM – even though you’re not hungry – can lead to weight gain and unhealthy eating habits.
  • What you eat affects your hunger level.  Carbs, fat, and protein are digested at different rates.  Simple, refined carbs like soda and candy are digested rapidly. They give you quick energy from a surge in your blood sugar – which is followed by a rapid drop in your energy.  Protein foods give you the most sustained blood sugar levels and satiety without the blood sugar spikes.  Eating food that has a balance of nutrients is probably the best way to satisfy your hunger, keep you feeling fuller longer, and give your body the fuel it needs.
  • How much you ate at your last meal affects you hunger levels since larger meals take longer to digest.  Haven’t you ever eaten so much for dinner that you’re not hungry until lunch the next day?
  • You can put off eating for a while –occasionally ignoring your hunger won’t cause a long-term or significant drop in your metabolism. If you do postpone your hunger the urge to eat will come back and may be stronger when it does return.
  • Your stomach is about the size of your fist and can be filled by a palm full of food.  Of course, since your stomach is a muscle, it can also stretch.  When you stretch it out by putting in too much food you probably don’t feel so great (like overly stuffed at Thanksgiving).  When you eat small meals you’ll get hungry more often and perhaps fuel your body more efficiently.  This is the rationale for 5 or 6 small meals a day rather than two or three larger ones.
  • Your body is smart.  Have you noticed that sometimes you are hungry for a specific food?  It might be your body’s way of letting you know that it needs a particular nutrient.  Careful:  sometimes that hunger is head or emotional hunger that popped up because you just passed a bakery and the smell of just-baked chocolate chip cookies is acting like a trigger!
  • All kinds of foods can play a role in satisfying your hunger. Labeling food good or bad puts the food in charge. Depriving yourself of a particular food or attaching special meaning to it can set you up for cravings and overeating.  It gives the food power over you rather than vice versa. Allowing yourself to make good choices from all foods; eating when you’re hungry; and eating portions that satisfy and not stuff you, put you, not the food, in charge.

Next post

When Should I Eat:  a numbered scale to help you figure out how hungry you are and when to eat.

Head Hunger

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Have you ever followed an argument with a friend – or maybe with your Mom – with a trip to the bakery or the closest candy store?

You could already be stuffed to the gills. But, all you can think about is getting that cookie, or candy bar, or bag of pretzels and chowing down – even though you’re not hungry and may or may not actually enjoy what you’re eating.

There’s Real Hunger And There’s Head Hunger

Real hunger or physiological hunger is your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to eat food for nourishment.  It’s when you have that empty, rumbling feeling in your stomach, a headache, maybe some lightheadedness.  It usually occurs two to four hours after your last meal.

Head hunger or psychological hunger doesn’t have physical symptoms and can happen at any time. It can be triggered by emotional situations, habits — like watching TV, working on the computer or driving in the car — or by food cravings or as a form of procrastination.   Whatever triggers your head hunger can make you think you’re hungry when you’re really not.

Emotions:  Common Triggers For Eating

Emotions are common triggers for eating. Head hunger is emotional eating usually in response to gremlins like stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, or boredom.

Head hunger also serves as a distraction – the eating it provokes can be a way to distract yourself from difficult situations, projects, and encounters.

The thing is, these feelings and situations are a part of life and eating won’t make them go away.  Eating in response to head hunger often keeps you from figuring out what’s causing the feeling in the first place.

“I want chocolate” might really mean “I need comfort” or “I worked my tail off and I really need to be recognized for it.” Those trips back and forth to the fridge or the vending machine might be the ultimate form of procrastination – is there a project that needs to get done that you’re struggling with?

What To Do

Wouldn’t it be great if it was as simple as figuring out what’s causing your head hunger and dealing with it.  The fact is, that’s the answer. Eating can’t really satisfy your emotional needs, and left unmet, those needs will trigger your head hunger over and over.  So, you overeat, you mentally beat yourself up, you feel awful, and the whole process is triggered once again.

To break the pattern, first stop beating yourself up when you eat in response to head hunger — as opposed to eating because you’re starving and your stomach is growling like crazy. Devise a plan to figure out what caused you to eat in the first place. Try keeping a written record of what happened and how you felt before your head hunger took charge. Looking back at a series of entries might give you a clue.  Once you get a handle on your triggers, come up with a plan to deal with them and make a “go-to” list of ways to reward, calm, comfort, and/or distract yourself without eating.

 

Other People May Make You Eat More

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Reservations for eight? You might eat 96% more! No kidding.  We tend to continue eating for a longer period of time when we’re with people compared to when we eat alone.  Maybe it’s because we mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, or the good manners we learned in fifth grade, or because we’re just having fun and enjoying great food. We do tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others and the longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Friends and family also influence how much you eat. Sometimes you can get so involved in conversation that all the monitoring of what pops into your mouth goes out the window.  Have you ever looked down at your plate and wondered where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza?  How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert?  Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink.  Those calories count, too.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions. They eat fast, you eat fast.  They eat a lot, you eat a lot.  Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

How Much More?

Wansink reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase how much you eat when you eat with others.  Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

  • 35% more if you eat with one other person
  • 75% more with four at the table
  • 96% more with a group of seven or more

Why?

The pattern of eating more when we’re in larger groups than when we’re eating alone is common in adults. One reason is a phenomenon called “social facilitation,” or the actions that stem from the stimuli coming from the sight and sound of other people doing the same that that you’re doing. When you’re eating in groups, social facilitation can help override the brain’s normal signals of satiety.

Some Helpful Tips:

  • Think about who you are eating with – and why.  If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.
  • If you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with your salad (dressing on the side, please) friends rather than the pepperoni pizza group.
  • You tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions.  So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you’re trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

What Are You Drinking To Toast The New Year?

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So many of us toast to the New Year with drink in hand – alcoholic or not.

Here’s a quick primer so you can make some informed choices:

  • A standard drink is 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or 12 ounces of beer.
  • Nutritionally:
  1. 12 ounces of beer has 153 calories and 13.9 grams of alcohol
  2. 12 ounces of lite beer has 103 calories and 11 grams of alcohol
  3. 5 ounces red wine has 125 calories and 15.6 grams of alcohol
  4. 5 ounces of white wine has 121 calories and 15.1 grams of alcohol
  5. 1 1/2 ounces (a jigger) of 80 proof (40% alcohol) liquor has 97 calories and 14 grams of alcohol
  • Alcohol has 7 calories per gram but doesn’t fill you up the way food does, so you can drink a lot and not feel stuffed.
  • Alcohol lowers your inhibitions and your resolve not to eat everything at the buffet table often flies right out the window.
  • Eating something before drinking can help blunt alcohol’s intoxicating effects.
  • Drinking light beer rather than regular saves about 50 calories a bottle.
  • Mixed drinks and fancy drinks significantly up the calories.   For instance,
  1. A frozen margarita has about 45 calories an ounce
  2. A plain martini, no olives or lemon twist, has about 61 calories an ounce
  3. An 8-ounce white Russian made with light cream has 715 calories.
  4. The alcohol, heavy cream, eggs, and sugar in a cup of eggnog has about 343 calories and 19 grams of fat
  5. Mulled wine, a combination of red wine, sugar/honey, spices, orange and lemon peel has about 210 to 300 calories per 5 ounces, depending on how much sweetener is added.
  • Watch your mixers — per ounce club soda has no calories, tonic has10, classic coke has 12, Canada Dry ginger ale has 11, orange juice has 15, and cranberry juice has 16.
  • And, if you’re toasting to health and happiness in the New Year with champagne – it’s a comparative caloric bargain at about 19 calories an ounce! To your health!

My very best wishes for a very happy and healthy New Year.

I invite you to receive more healthy eating facts, tips, and trivia by signing up for delivery of My foodMAPs directly to your email inbox or RSS feed.  Just enter your email address in the box in the left hand margin (on the MyfoodMAPs home page).  While you’re at it, please sign up for my monthly newsletter, Eat Out, Eat Well.  I look forward to keeping you informed and entertained.