Eat Out Eat Well

Snacking, Noshing, Tasting

What Do You Eat When You’re Snowed In?

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“Chocolate chip cookies.” That’s what a friend said to me as we waited for our kids to get off of the school bus after early dismissal because of snow.

The snow was swirling and the kids were flinging snowballs and kicking snow at each other as we walked down the street to our houses.  “Why do I always want to bake chocolate chip cookies when it snows?” she asked.

For so many of us, comfort food —  those hearty, soul and belly satisfying, sweet and salty foods — seem be the “go-tos” when we’re housebound (and perhaps stir-crazy). They’re foods that are simple, familiar, and often have emotional ties and pleasant memories, especially of childhood.

What Can You Do When Your Cabin Fever And Calories Reach Stratospheric Levels?

You can do lots of things (including choosing your food very carefully), but sometimes wise choices are just not happening and the trips to the fridge go on and on.

You can try countering with some activity. It can do a lot for your mood and might burn some of those excess calories.

Calories Some Winter Activities Burn In An Hour

(numbers are for a 150 pound person)

  • Building a Snowman:   285 calories
  • Having a Snowball Fight:   319 calories
  • Making Snow Angels:   214 calories
  • Snowshoeing:  544 calories
  • Shoveling snow:   408 calories
  • Baking cookies:  170 calories
  • Sledding:  476 calories
  • Cross country skiing:  612 calories

What’s your favorite “snowed in” food?

 

Buffet Table Woes? Keep Your Back To The Table

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Whether it’s a fancy catered affair or pizza, wings, and cold cuts laid out on the kitchen and coffee tables on game day, why give yourself extra opportunities to shovel chips and dip or salami and cheese into your mouth all night long? You’re human, so stay out of hand-to-mouth range – and don’t stare at the delicious stuff, either. You’re far less likely to mindlessly eat if you have to leave a conversation and walk across the room to get to the food.

Keeping your back to the table is one of the easiest strategies to use.  We often eat with out eyes – if we see something delicious, we want to eat it.  So, don’t look at it.  Keep your back to the tempting food as you’re having conversations or watching the game.

Hors d’oeuvres can really sucker punch you, too.  They’re small, but the calories really add up. Make up your mind how many you’ll eat ahead of time or you’ll have shoved down a thousand calories before you know it. Pick the ones you love and avoid the ones you don’t.  Why sacrifice your calories for something you don’t love?  Try to keep a mental count because when you’re talking and drinking it’s far too easy to grab from each passing tray.

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

Free Food: No Money For Lots Of Sweet, Fatty Calories And Little Energy

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You have an early morning meeting.  Sitting in front of you is a platter loaded with bagels, danish, and doughnuts just waiting to be eaten and washed down by copious amounts of coffee.

If you didn’t have time to grab some and if all the platters aren’t picked clean, the remnants will surely end up in the snack room next to the birthday cake (it’s always somebody’s birthday) or the leftover cookies from someone’s party the night before.

Perhaps you shop at Costco on the weekend.  At least three tables will be manned by someone offering you samples of hot pizza, luscious cheesecake, or tooth-picked pigs ‘n blankets just waiting to be quickly and neatly popped into your mouth.

Maybe you then make a stop at the cleaners, the tailors, or the veterinarian.  There it is – the giant bowl piled high with freebie candy.  You can dig deep for the kind you like – Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, mini Snickers, or Tootsie Roll pops.  You name it — it’s usually there for the taking.

Going to a wedding that night?  How do you escape the platters of salami, cheese, mini quiches, and then the desserts covered with icing and whipped cream?

What’s The Problem With Easily Accessible Free Food?

Not a thing if you don’t care about calories, nutrition, and how you’re going to feel after an overload of sugar, fat, and salt. It’s also very attractive if you don’t have a lot of money to spend and your belly is screaming, “I’m hungry.”

Occasional dips into free food probably aren’t going to hurt anyone in reasonable health.  But, consistently finding your hand in the candy or goldfish bowl or on the sample tray in Costco has a caloric downside. And, non-nutritious junk, processed, and high calorie food negatively impacts your concentration, alertness, and energy. Your simple carb freebies will send your blood sugar on highs and lows worthy of a roller coaster ride.

Easy To Understand – Hard To Do

It’s one thing to understand all of that. The problem is that most of us find it pretty darn hard to ignore the food that’s just there for the taking. It’s everywhere – and we value cheap calories. When was the last time that you resisted the peanuts, pretzels, or popcorn sitting on the bar counter?  What about the breadbasket – that’s usually free, too.

We don’t have to eat any of this stuff.  But we do.  Why?  Some of us have trouble passing up a giveaway; some of us see it as a way to save money, even with possible negative health consequences; and some of us use “free” as an excuse to eat or overeat junk food or the sweet, salty, fatty foods that some call addicting.

And the calories?  Just because it’s free doesn’t mean the calories are, too.  It’s all too easy to forget about those calories you popped in your mouth as you snagged a candy here and tasted a cookie there.

Things To Think About Before The Freebies Land In Your Mouth

You might want to come up with your own mental checklist that, with practice, will help you decide if it’s worth it to indulge.  If you decide to taste the salami and have a cookie and a piece of cake, at least you’ll have made a conscious choice.  Ask yourself:

  • Is the food fresh and tasty?  It might be if you’re at a catered wedding or a private party, it’s more questionable if it’s being handed out at the supermarket or sitting in a large bowl at the cleaners.
  • Is it clean?  How many fingers have been in the bowl of peanuts on the bar counter or have grabbed pieces of cheese or bunches of cookies off of an open platter?
  • Do you really want it – or are you eating it just because it’s there?
  • Is it loaded with fat, sugar, and salt that add up to mega calories?  Every calorie counts whether it’s popped in your mouth and gone in the blink of an eye or savored more slowly and eaten with utensils off of a plate.
  • If you fill up with the non-nutritious free food, are you skimping on the nutritious stuff later on because you’re simply too full to eat it?
  • If you start nibbling on the free food, does it open the flood gates so that you continue to indulge? Loading up on simple sugars – like those in candy, cookies, cake, and many processed foods – causes your blood sugar level to spike and then to drop – leaving you hungry and pretty darn cranky.

You Do Have Choices

  • You don’t have to eat food because it’s free.  No one is forcing you to make some more room on the serving tray or breadbasket by sampling one (or more) of each variety.
  • If you sample the candy, pizza, cheesecake, popcorn, or pieces of cookie, are you giving yourself permission (perhaps in disguise) to overindulge in food you might not ordinarily eat?
  • Be aware of the cascade.  Sometimes you can’t eat just one – it’s more like eat one and you can’t stop.
  • If you know you’re going to be tempted, plan to indulge. Do it mindfully, not mindlessly:  build it in.  Eat a lighter lunch and don’t go shopping or to an event when you’re starving — a sure ticket to chowing down on almost everything in sight.
  • Have your own personal policy for bowl dipping – the quick hand dips into the candy bowl at the receptionist’s desk, the jelly beans on your friend’s table, the chocolates on the counter. Aside from the calories think about all of the other hands – and where those hands have been – that are also dipping into the same bowl.

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

Did You Forget These Calories?

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Are you keeping a record – virtual, written, or in your noggin – of how may calories you’re eating?

Even if you’re not (and some people find it very hard to do – actually loathe doing it) you probably take note of what you eat each day – at least most of what you eat.  But, all of us have things that we eat, and consequently calories we take in, that easily slip being added to our mental or written calorie ledger sheet. The reasons for the oversight vary but either:

  • we truly forget
  • we find keeping track of them to be an onerous task
  • we don’t want to address the fact that we ate what we did.

Calories That Are Way Too Easy to Forget

There are some kinds of calories that are particularly easy to forget.  Here’s some ideas – perhaps you’d like to take the opportunity to think about the mindless, sneaky calories in your life.

It’s easy to forget to include the calories in:

  • the candy bar you buy at the gas station and eat it in the car
  • the 3 tootsie rolls you snagged from the receptionist’s desk
  • the couple of samples of cheesecake at Costco
  • the crusts of the grilled cheese sandwich or the ends of the pizza that you finished from your child’s plate
  • the cookie batter you tasted and the dough you licked from the bowl and beaters
  • the leftovers you polished off because there was too small an amount to save
  • the  extra hors d’oeuvre you mindlessly popped into your mouth
  • the ice cream you licked from your child’s ice cream cone to prevent it from falling on the street
  • the peanuts and goldfish you nibbled on at the bar
  • the bread you practically inhaled from the breadbasket
  • the glass of juice from the fridge in the snack room
  • the extra coffee and cream in your tea and coffee
  • the extra wine in your glass that is half again the size of a “regular” portion
  • those “I’ll just have half a cookie” moments

How many more can you add?

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

Is Your Coffee Or Tea Giving You A Muffin Top?

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Morning coffee.  Coffee break.  Afternoon tea.  A nice cup after dinner. Many of us love – need – our coffee or tea.  Hot, cold, it doesn’t always matter.

But, as you dump sugar and pour cream into mugs, thermoses, and those too hot to touch cardboard take-out containers, have you ever thought about how many calories you’re actually adding to an otherwise very low calorie drink? Probably not. They’re calories not usually measured and all to easy to forget.

What Do You Put Into Your Coffee Or Tea?

How much milk or half and half do you add to your coffee or tea? How much sugar? Bet you don’t have a clue.  We all do a freehand pour.  Try measuring how much you pour and you might be really surprised.

Here’s The Facts

Black brewed coffee and tea both have around two calories in an eight ounce cup. Not a bad deal.

Here’s the potential trouble:

  • Heavy cream, 1tbs:  52 calories
  • Half-and-half, 1 tbs:  20 calories
  • Whole milk, 1 tbs:  9 calories
  • 2% (low fat) milk; 1 tbs:  7 calories
  • Non-fat milk, 1tbs:  5 calories
  • Table sugar, 1tbs:  49 calories; 1tsp:  16 calories

Wow – It Can Add Up

Say you have three grande (Starbuck’s) – or large (Dunkin Donuts) – size coffees a day.  Each is 20 ounces or 2.5 times the size of a traditional 8 ounce cup.

If you add 4 tablespoons of half and half and three teaspoons of sugar to each — which sounds like a lot but is very east to do — that’s:

  • 128 calories for what you add and around 5 calories for the coffee for a total of 133 calories for each grande/large cup of coffee
  • If you have three of those that’s 399 calories a day
  • Do that every day for a year and that’s the equivalent of 145,635 calories a year.

Of course not everyone will drink this amount of coffee with this amount of half and half and sugar.  But, it does make you stop and think about how many calories you really are putting into your coffee.

In Case You’re Tempted By Something More

Here’s the nutritional information for some other Starbuck’s and Dunkin’ Donuts drinks:

  • Starbuck’s Hot Chocolate, grande (16 oz), 2% milk with whipped cream:  370 calories; 16g fat ; 50g carbs; 14g protein; 25mg caffeine.  Without whipped cream: 290 calories

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