eat out

Is There A Way To Know When I Should Eat?

April 11, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

When should I eat? That’s the age-old question that many of us ask ourselves most days of the week! What would you say: “when I’m hungry” or maybe “when I want to”?

It’s not always an easy question to answer even though it seems like it should be intuitive. It can be, if you learn to listen to your body’s cues. You can also learn to stop, check in with yourself, and use a tool like the hunger scale to help you evaluate how hungry you really are.

Your Need For Fuel

Physical hunger is a basic survival mechanism. It lets your brain know that your body needs nourishment and energy and then prompts you to eat for fuel. We’re born with this ability; think about babies and how they cry when they need food and how they stop eating when they’re full.

But many of us eat so frequently that we never get to the point of letting our bodies knock on the door to tell us that they’re hungry and really need to be fed. We just eat.

Those of us who struggle with our weight might not even know – or remember – what hunger feels like. If you eat just to eat – rather than in response to hunger cues — you can become disconnected from the signals that let you know when you’re actually hungry and when you’re full.

The Hunger Scale

There’s a hunger scale you can use to help identify how hungry you are and when it’s reasonable to eat. The scale goes from 1 to 10 with 1 being ravenous and 10 being so full that you feel sick.

The Scale:

You’re ravenous and too hungry to give a hoot about what you eat
You’re starving and absolutely must eat immediately because you’re irritable, cranky, and have no energy
You’re hungry and the urge to eat is strong
Your hunger pangs are signaling the first signs of hunger; you’re a little hungry
You’re satisfied – not hungry but not full and you’re not aware of food in your stomach
You’re fully satisfied and are aware of food in your stomach
You’re very full, your stomach feels stretched, and you’re past the point of satisfaction but can still find room for more
You’re uncomfortable because your stomach is too full and you really wish you hadn’t had those last few bites
You’re stuffed, very uncomfortable, and your clothes feel very tight – that belt buckle or snap on your jeans doesn’t stand a chance
You’re beyond full and feel sick, miserable, and you don’t want to move

Calorie Savers

Try asking yourself, “What number am I at?”

If you’re above a number 5 you’re not physically hungry and something else is triggering your eating.
If you’re at number 4 you can wait to eat or eat a little bit.
If you’re at a 3 – it could go to 2 — it’s a good time to heat – have you noticed that food tastes pretty good when you’re hungry?
If you’re at number 1 you really need to eat — but pay attention to what you’re doing. When you’re starving you don’t care too much about what or how much you eat – and usually end up shoveling food in as quickly as possible – which can result in overeating (pigging out) and ending up at a 7 and up.
You should generally stop eating if you’re at a 6, sometimes a 7.
Gauge your hunger. If you’re only a little hungry, only eat a little. Preventive eating – or eating because you might be hungry in a little while – can cause you to pack in a lot of calories.

You’ll be able to find 49 more calorie saving tips in my soon to be released book. Sign up in the box on the right to be notified by email when it becomes available and get your free copy of “How To Decode A Restaurant Menu’s Words And Phrases” as a bonus.

What Do You Eat On A Road Trip?

August 15, 2012 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN 2 Comments

Have you noticed that a lot of renovated gas stations now have mini-marts or convenience stores with clean(er) bathrooms and coffee that comes regular or decaf but also dark velvet, hazelnut, and vanilla?

Are Gas Stations The New Convenience Stores?

Convenience stores sell about 80& of the gasoline purchased in the United States each year.

Many gas stations now view gas as a loss leader – a sale they’re willing to take a loss on or only make a very small profit. They want to lure people into their mini-mart or full-fledged convenience store to shop.

Most stations don’t want to — or can’t — cut gas prices and there isn’t much they can do to jack up demand. In general, people are driving less gas stations need something to woo their competitors’ customers – so they use food.

Some station owners say they make more on a cup of coffee than on gas. They advertise their convenience marts and other services – a gas station near my house has a dry cleaner drop-off — and work to build a base of customers who, although they could get gas anywhere, choose to buy it where they know there’s an open pump and clean bathrooms.

Road Trip Food Stops

If you’re planning a road trip you’ll most likely stop for a snack or a meal along the way. With the proliferation of service stations or rest stops with incorporated mini-marts you probably don’t even need to leave the major roads to find a place to eat. But, can you get something decent to eat?

Walk into most of the rest stop mini-marts and you’re assaulted by an array of vending machines, candy racks, franks on rotating grills and pre-wrapped sandwiches, donuts, coffee, and every bottled drink under the sun. You’re a captive consumer and after driving for some time you’re probably want something to:

Keep you energized and awake
Help with the boredom
Reward you for endless hours of driving (especially if you have complaining or fighting kids with you)
Perhaps bring back memories of summer road trip food you had when you were a kid (as a parent I can admit that you often give in and buy all kinds of stuff for your kids because they’re driving you crazy)

The Trap And The Danger

An endless stream of high carb, high fat, high calorie, and processed food is just begging you to plunk down your money so you can immediately indulge (watch how many people start eating the food they’ve bought before they even pay) or to take with you (in case there’s a famine around the next turn).

The real danger – aside from the damage to your waistline – is that high-carb processed foods spike then crash your blood sugar —making you really tired and cranky.

Drowsy drivers are most definitely not safe drivers.
Cranky drivers make life miserable for everyone in the car – not a great tone to set if you’re going on vacation.

Candy

Candy is an impulse purchase in convenience stores — 49% of shoppers say that their candy purchases were unplanned. Candy sales are steady, generating a high margin (typically 35-40%). People will always want to treat themselves and candy is an affordable luxury.

Candy sold in convenience stores accounts for approximately 15% of all candy sold at the retail level. Chocolate bars are the winner followed by gum; bagged, repacked peg candy; candy rolls; mints and drops; non-chocolate bars; and novelties/seasonal candy.

Check out the placement of candy the next time you’re in a mini-mart or convenience store. It’s positioned to grab your attention. It’s vividly colored wrappers reach out to you from high-traffic areas of the store: the checkout area, in the aisle that leads to the check out, and near or on the way to the cold cases holding the drinks.

Coffee

According to the National Coffee Association, more than three out of four adult Americans say that they drink coffee either daily or regularly and convenience stores are one of their preferred destinations with people stopping to buy coffee more than they fill up their cars.

Industry data show that about 95% of all convenience stores sell coffee — about 78% of hot beverage sales. The second best seller is specialty coffee and cappuccino – about 13% of hot beverages.

Unlike candy, coffee isn’t an impulse purchase. Nearly 96% of customers intend to buy a cup of coffee before they walk in. The average visit is about two minutes so it makes putting other impulse-buy merchandise — like candy, baked goods, and chips — near the coffee bar as a way for the store to get you to spend more money. Some retailers find that people who typically purchase coffee will also buy bottled water; a grab-and-go breakfast item; or a packaged snack like an energy, protein, or granola bar.

Some Ideas About What To Buy And What To Eat

Before you go into the mini-mart at least have your own mental list of some good, better, and best choices of food to buy. The danger is that the candy, chips, fries, and donuts call your name the minute you walk in the door. If you know that you’re going to head straight for the nuts, or popcorn, or even a pre-wrapped sandwich, that’s great, as long as the giant chocolate chip cookie and the bargain 32 ounce soda for 99 cents doesn’t grab you first. Try to decide what you’re going to buy (hopefully, a good choice) before you go in – and then stick to your decision.

Some Choices To Think About

Go for the nuts. Some stations have fruit (oranges and bananas come in their own wrapper and don’t have to be washed) and almost all have dried fruit — balance the sugar with the fat and protein in the nuts.

Sometimes you can find individual bowls of Cheerios or whole grain cereals. Grab a little container of non-fat/low-fat milk or a container of yogurt.

Popcorn is a great choice and some stations stock fat-free soy crisps, and Kashi products.

Protein bars can be good, better, and best. Check the labels for higher protein and lower sugar. Some can be the equivalent of a candy bar.

If you’re really hungry choose a sandwich or burrito over donuts, cookies, and pastry.

Beef jerky or beef sticks are good high protein snacks. So are hard boiled eggs – just make sure they’re refrigerated and haven’t been sitting around for a couple of days!

Crackers with cheese or peanut butter and trail mix help round out the list. If you must go with crunchy stuff stick with pretzels. If it absolutely must be chips, look for baked varieties. Remember that the salty stuff will make you thirsty so stock up on water.

How Big Are Your Dinner Plates — And Why It Matters

May 1, 2012 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN 1 Comment

Have you eaten in some restaurants where the plates are so big that the server can’t find room to comfortably fit everything on the table?

Maybe your plates are so big that you have trouble getting them into the dishwasher.

Does it make a difference other than for convenience? You bet it does.

The Size Of Your Dinner Plate Can Affect Your Weight

We eat off of big plates. Since 1960 the overall surface area of an average dinner plate has increased 36 percent. The average dinner plate we commonly use today measures 11 or 12 inches across. A few decades ago plates measured 7 to 9 inches.

In Europe, the average plate measures 9 inches while some American restaurants use plates that are around 13 inches in diameter.

Portion Sizes Have Increased Along With Plate Size

1960 sized portions would look a little lost on today’s large plates. Plop a small portion of spaghetti and meat sauce in the middle of a large plate and the temptation is to add more – usually pasta – to fill up the plate. That’s how you feed both your eyes and your stomach.

The additional problem – aside from eating more food at the meal — is that with more food piled on your plate, the idea gets embedded in your brain that a larger portion is better and that it takes a larger amount to fill your plate. Your brain then figures that If you need that much food to fill your plate then it takes that large amount of food to make you feel good.

Some Easy Things To Do

When you switch to a smaller plate you eat a smaller serving.

Control your portion sizes by decreasing the size of your plate. Try switching from a dinner plate to a salad plate or look for vintage plates that are smaller in diameter. Research has shown that by switching to a 10 inch plate from a 12 inch plate you eat 22 percent less.

Incredibly, smaller dishes can also help you feel full even though you’re eating less. Studies show that people are more satisfied with less food when they are served on 8 inch salad plates instead of on 12 inch dinner plates. But don’t go too small because eating too small a portion might send you back for seconds.

Keep This In Mind

We eat an average of 92% of what we serve ourselves. Since we pile more food onto larger plates, the larger plates means we eat more food. A two inch difference in plate diameter — decreasing the size of our plates to ten inches from 12 inches — would mean a serving that has 22 percent fewer calories. It’s a smaller serving but not small enough to leave you still hungry and heading back for seconds. For an average size adult who eats a typical dinner of 800 calories, the smaller portions that would result from using a smaller plate would lead to a weight loss of around 18 pounds a year.