Eat Out Eat Well

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

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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.

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Slow Down You Eat Way Too Fast

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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

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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.

Mindless Bites: They Pack On The Pounds

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Are you having a bit of trouble getting your pants to close – or maybe it’s difficult to zip up your jacket?

In part you can blame those mindless bites – those “shove it in your mouth without thinking about it” bites.  Oh come on, most of us — at one time or another — have:

  • Snagged some candy from the bowl on a co-worker’s desk
  • Made the last bit of leftovers from the pot disappear into our mouths
  • Spooned up generous samples of cookie dough batter and followed that up with licking the beaters
  • Finished the crust off of a kid’s grilled cheese sandwich
  • Sampled handfuls of bar food while having a drink
  • Liberally sampled the free “want to try” foods while shopping
  • Had “just a taste” of a friend’s or partner’s dessert
  • Gobbled up the freebie cookies or candy that arrives with the restaurant check.

The Twenty-Five

Here’s the big problem.  Each of those mindless bites adds up to — on average — 25 calories (sometimes more, sometimes less). And, because they’re mindless, unless you religiously write down each oneas soon as you eat it, you forget about it and its calories.  Since mindless bites are quick pops into your mouth, you don’t even have a chance to savor them and they probably don’t even register as food.

Do the math. If those bites average out at about 25 calories, four mindless bites a day above and beyond your daily calorie needs means possibly gaining slightly less than a pound a month (it takes 3500 calories to gain a pound  — and yes, you need a deficit of 3500 calories to lose a pound). Ouch!

What To Do

So, be aware of what you’re eating – especially when you’re not really eating a meal.  Start keeping track of when and where you’re most likely to indulge in mindless bites.  You’d be surprised at how much you shove down your hatch while you’re walking, talking, socializing, working, watching games, and driving.

Awareness is the first step but writing down what you eat – as soon as you eat it – presents you with a record that’s hard to refute.

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

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Are You Serious About Your Goal Or Resolution — Or Is It More “Sorta-Maybe”?

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If it’s sorta-maybe I’ll try to do XYZ, you aren’t alone.   People flunk resolutions 101 for two main reasons:

  • they aren’t really serious or clear about what they want to do but have caved into either inner pressure or external pressure from family/peers/friends, or
  • what they’ve decided to do isn’t too realistic because it’s too overly ambitious or just will not fit into day to day life (no, you cannot lose 20 pounds in a week and keep it off).

What You Can Do To Increase Your Chances Of Success

Fuzzy ideas lead to fuzzy results.  So get clear about what it is you want to do and the time frame you’re giving yourself.

On the other hand, be realistic. Boxing yourself into a corner by swearing you’ll never eat chocolate again is just setting your self up for failure.  Your goal is not a closed-ended-not-to-be deviated-from deal.  Make a list of what you think you can realistically do – and then choose your tactic.

Forget the negative stuff, too.  Isn’t there enough negativity?  Pick a positive goal, a positive end-point, and reinforce that in your brain. Try starting with “I will” rather than “I won’t.”

Are You Committed?

Are you committed to working on your goal?  A goal is just a plan without results if you’re not committed to working on it.

Once you’ve figured out what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, and the time frame within which it will be accomplished, map it out and write it all down. Writing it – and it doesn’t matter whether it’s written online or on a napkin, reinforces your commitment and makes it harder to lie to yourself.

You’ll end up having a realistic goal with an accomplishable plan that you can achieve within a specific time frame. Commit to carrying out your plan and you’re well on your way.

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