Eat Out Eat Well

Manage Your Weight

Do You Still Eat More Even When Your Stomach Is Full And Your Pants Are Tight?

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Have you ever had a day when it seems like all you do is eat and eat and eat some more?  You eat everything – a bagel for breakfast, a donut for a midmorning snack, and at lunch with  friends or coworkers and before you know it the breadbasket is empty.  You might follow it up by some coffee and a snack in the afternoon.  Maybe it’s a workday and you amble down to the hall to the vending machine or the snack room only to find that it’s someone’s birthday so there’s that delicious birthday cake sitting in the middle of the table.  A little nibble of some cheese around six.  Uh oh.  Dinner plans that night – how can you eat even more?

There Always Seems To Be Room

You get to the restaurant.  It’s gotten a great review and you’re with good company, too.  How can you not go for it?  The food is supposed to be phenomenal.  You’re not hungry, but you eat and eat.  Appetizer, bread, salad, entrée. Stuffed and double stuffed.  Then it’s time for dessert and it sounds so appealing. The chocolate lava cake or the key lime pie is what this restaurant is known for. You really feel like you can’t stuff in another morsel, but guess what – you order one of the spectacular choices and eat it – every last fork full including the crumbs.

Why Do You Continue To Eat?

The signal to stop eating is usually not because your stomach is full (except in some extreme cases).  According to Brian Wansink, PhD, author of the book, Mindless Eating,  a combination of things like how much you taste, chew, swallow, how much you think about the food you are eating, and how long you’ve been eating all come into play.

Incredibly, the faster most people eat, the more they eat. Eating quickly doesn’t give your brain the chance to get the message that you’re not hungry any more.  Research shows that it takes up to 20 minutes for your body and brain to both get the message — the satiation signal — and realize that you’re full.  Think how much more you can eat in that time span of 20 minutes – a burger, fries, pie, pizza, ice cream – even though your stomach is really full but your brain may not yet have gotten the message.

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. It takes  13 minutes to finish in a workplace cafeteria and 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.

Some Strategies

  • Slow down when you eat.  Give your brain a chance to catch up.  How many times have you devoured what you’ve made or bought for lunch in almost no time flat — and then, almost immediately, decided that you’re still hungry?  Twenty minutes to half an hour after you’ve ended up eating a whole bunch more — even though your stomach is probably full —  your belly feels like it’s going to explode and you can’t, in good conscience — unbutton any more buttons on your pants.  You realize that you should have stopped before the seconds.
  • Eat more slowly, chew more thoroughly, pace your whole eating pattern to a slower beat.  Give your brain a chance to synch its signals with the messages generated by putting food in your stomach.
  • Try getting up from the table and doing something else – and promise yourself if you’re still hungry in 20 minutes you can have more.  If you’re in a restaurant, it’s the perfect time to excuse yourself and go to the rest room or claim that you have to make a call.

In most cases, after the 20 or so minutes, your belly and brain are both happy and in synch and you won’t want more to eat. What you save:  excess calories and an uncomfortably expanding stomach.

 

 

Calories: Hate Them Or Love Them, But What Are They?

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What’s A Calorie?

Technically, a (small) calorie is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) at one atmosphere of pressure.  (Aren’t you happy you now know that?)  Food or dietary Calories are actually kilocalories (1,000 calories = 1 kilocalorie and raise the temperature of one kilogram of water one degree Celsius).  It gets kind of confusing because food labels and diet plans often use the words “calorie” and “Calorie” interchangeably.  Calorie with a capital C means kilocalories (sometimes you see kcal for kilocalories on the nutrition label).  Those are the kind that are used in reference to food, but they’re often improperly written with a lower case “c.”

What’s The Point Of Measuring Calories?

We get the energy we need to survive from food — which powers us like gasoline does for a car.  Food is made up of different nutritional components, or building blocks, each with a different amount of energy. The components,  called macronutrients, are carbohydrates, protein, and fat.  A gram of carbohydrate contains 4 Calories, a gram of protein has 4 Calories, and a gram of fat has 9 Calories. (FYI, alcohol has 7 Calories per gram.)  So if you know how much fat, protein, and carbs  are in a food, you can figure out how many Calories, or how much energy, is in it.

How Many Calories Are In A Pound?

There are 3500 Calories in a pound.  If you take in 3,500 Calories beyond what your body needs for energy, your body stores it as a pound of fat – its way of saving energy for the next theoretical famine waiting in the wings. Your body needs a certain number of Calories to sustain itself  – for the energy necessary for metabolism and physical activity.  If your body uses  up 3,500 calories more than you take in and use, you lose a pound.

Energy In And Energy Out

To keep in your body in balance and not lose or gain any weight, the magic formula is: energy in = energy out. If you take in (eat) the same number of calories that you burn (through activity and physiological processes) you maintain your weight.  If you eat more than you burn you gain weight, if you eat less than you burn, you lose weight.

Does The Type Of Calorie Make Any Difference?

The short answer is NO.  When Calories are used as an energy source, it doesn’t matter whether they come from carbs, protein, fat, or alcohol.  When you eat them they are converted to energy. If they’re in excess of what your body needs for energy, the extra calories are stored as fat.

If you understand your body’s energy needs,  you can figure out what kind of food you need to eat. How many calories your body needs is mostly determined by your height, age, weight, and gender (the main components of your basal metabolic rate) and your level of activity. Any physical activity burns calories.  The average person (155 pounds) burns about 100 to 105 calories for every 2000 steps s/he takes.

Where’s The Sugar Hiding?

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Sugar is sweet but it’s also sneaky, masquerading under many different names. Read one of those jam labels that says, “All Fruit” or “Spreadable Fruit” on the front.  Then turn the jar over and read ingredients. Most likely you’ll find juice concentrates (often as the first ingredient) and maltodextrin — both forms of sugar.

How Good Is Your Sugar Vocabulary?

According to Environmental Nutrition foods with all of the following names are sugars (these are common sources, there are other sugars that aren’t listed here):

  • Dextrose
  • Corn syrup
  • High fructose corn syrup
  • Maltodextrin
  • Fruit juice concentrates
  • Malt syrup
  • Molasses
  • Invert sugar
  • Honey
  • Sorghum
  • Agave
  • Maple syrup
  • Cane sugar

Added Vs. Natural Sugars

The sugars that you eat can occur naturally or be added. Natural sugars are found naturally in the food — like fructose in fruit and lactose in milk.  Added sugars are the many kinds of sugar and syrup – including sweeteners like honey, agave, and maple syrup, for example — that are added into food at the table or during the food’s preparation or processing.

Common Sources Of Added Sugars

Some sources are obvious – others require a bit of checking of the ingredients label.  Here are some examples of foods that usually have added sugar:

  • Regular soft drinks
  • Sugar; syrups (do you put maple syrup on your pancakes?); and candy
  • Cakes; cookies; pies; donuts; pastries; breakfast and snack bars
  • Fruit drinks like fruitades and fruit punch; sweetened teas, sports drinks, and flavored water
  • Dairy desserts and milk products like ice cream; sweetened yogurt; pudding; and flavored milk
  • Many cereals; toast with jelly/jam; and many breads — both home made “quick breads” and store-bought sliced breads
  • Sweeteners added to coffee, tea, cereal; canned fruit

Not More Than Half Of Your Discretionary Calorie Allowance

What’s daily discretionary calorie allowance?  It’s the number of calories you have left to use after you meet your nutrient needs — without exceeding your energy needs.

In other words, they are the calories that you can use up eating different types of foods after you’ve eaten enough to meet your body’s nutrition needs — but not so many that they would contribute to weight gain.

Discretionary calories can come from any source of calories (protein, fat, carbohydrates, alcohol).  The American Heart Association recommends that no more than half of your daily discretionary calories come from added sugars.

For most American women that’s no more than 100 calories a day, or about 6 teaspoons of sugar.  For men, that’s no more than 150 calories a day, or about 9 teaspoons of sugar.  (FYI there are about 10 teaspoons of sugar in a 12 ounce can of regular soda.)

 

Are You A Fast Eater? Even If You’re Not, Read This

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Slow down when you eat. Moms around the world often say the same thing: slow down and chew your food. (Doesn’t that often go with don’t grab?)

Why?  By slowing down you allow the feeling of fullness to register and it may even mean that you eat fewer calories. You might even have time to really taste and enjoy your food, too – although Mom might say it’s just good manners.

Is It Gone Before You Realize You’ve Eaten It?

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

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 study showed that the hormones that give you a feeling of fullness, or satiety, are more pronounced when you eat slowly. People in the study who were given identical servings of ice cream released more of those hormones when they ate the ice cream in 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes.

You Might Eat Less

Eating slowly leads to eating less, too – not just because your plate is cleared before all the food is gone because everyone else is tired of waiting for you to finish.

According to an article published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association people who ate at a slow pace compared to when they ate very quickly said they were fuller and ended up eating about 10% fewer calories.

An analysis of surveys completed by 3287 adults ages 30-69, found that combining the two behaviors of eating until full and eating quickly can have a significant impact on being overweight

Stroll, Don’t Race

Haven’t you ever said, “I shouldn’t have had that second cookie (or third) as your stomach begins to expand like a balloon?

It can take up to 20 minutes for your body to register that it’s full.   The problem is that during that interval when you’ve really had enough food but don’t necessarily recognize it, a lot of us continue to shovel food into our mouths – and end up feeling absolutely stuffed.

Do what Mom said.  Slow down, take your time eating, and chew. Give your body a chance to figure out if it really needs more food.  Then maybe you won’t have to take a nap – or unbutton your jeans.

 

Do You Know How Many Calories Are In Your Wine Glass?

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Do you love a glass of wine (or two) with dinner – or maybe some champagne at Sunday brunch or at your friend’s wedding?  What about that wonderful, sweet, thick dessert wine to polish off a fantastic meal?

You may have your preferences – most of us do – but whether it’s red, white, dry, sweet, or sparkling, it is really easy to overlook the calories in those long-stemmed glasses.

What Is The Standard Serving Size Of Wine?

A standard portion of table wine (red or white) is 4 ounces.  But, how many ounces are really in the glass of wine that you usually drink?  Probably five to eight!

So, on average, if 4 ounces of red or white table wine has about 100 calories, you are drinking anywhere from 100 to 200 calories of wine – in one glass. Think about how many glasses of wine and in what size wine glass you drink with a meal.

If you have dessert wine after dinner it’s about double the calories per ounce — although the standard serving is less:  usually 2 to 3 ounces.  So add on about another 100 to 150 calories for each glass of that smooth dessert wine.

Calories In Wine

So it’s easier to compare, here are the number of calories in one ounce of various wines:

  • Champagne: 19 calories
  • Red table wine (burgundy, cabernet): 25 calories
  • Dry white wine (Chablis, hock, reisling): 24 calories
  • Sweet white wine (moselle, sauterne, zinfandel: 28 calories
  • Rose: 20 calories
  • Port (about 20% alcohol): 46 calories
  • Sweet dessert wine: 47 calories