Eat Out Eat Well

eating triggers

See It: Eat It

By Leave a Comment


Not Hungry To Hungry In No Time Flat

How can it be that you’re sitting in your house at about 9PM, nice and content from a good dinner.  You’re satisfied and not hungry.  Whoops, hold the phone.  An ad comes on television for a fast food burger topped with melted cheese and bacon.  Really crispy French fries tag along and so does a strawberry milkshake.  Bingo.  You are hungry and cannot get the thought of that burger, shake, and fries out of your head.  (If we really looked into this, your hunger might be head hunger not stomach hunger.)  It’s a bit of I want what I want and I want it now syndrome.

Can An Ad Change Your Eating?

Can food ads really change the way you eat? You bet they can – or a whole lot of multi-million dollar advertising campaigns wouldn’t exist.

According to the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, there’s no doubt that food marketing affects eating behavior. Continued exposure to many ads over time stimulates your desire for what’s being touted. They found that the foods that are advertised the most are what people say they like and buy the most. That wouldn’t be so bad if the marketing efforts were for healthy foods instead of junk – or, to be a little nicer, food of lesser nutritional quality.

What Is The Norm?

Advertising psychologically affects what you think is the norm. The visual and emotional effects of TV advertising, along with a story line and music, really gets to you — especially when you’re tired and plopped down in front of the TV.  Your ability to control your impulses is decreased.

There’s more:

  • Advertising affects your preference for various categories of food.
  • When you see more fast food commercials you want to eat more fast food than people who don’t see as many commercials.
  • People who are exposed to food ads end up eating more food overall.
  • When people see an ad before tasting a food they like the taste of that food more.
  • Food marketing affects what might be considered “typical behavior,”   for instance, when people see fast food ads and then believe that their neighbors eat fast food more frequently than they do.

What’s The Message (Is It Good Or Bad)?

Food marketers have a lot of power.  The tricky thing is to harness that power for a good purpose rather than for hawking nutritionally poor food with a large caloric bang for the buck. Unfortunately, the majority of ads tip the unhealthy end of the scale by advertising fast food, drinks, and snacks  often accompanied by unhealthy eating messages such as young men should eat big portions of meat so they “eat like men” and that it’s a good idea to have a “fourth meal of the day” (sweetened cereal at night springs to mind).

Kid Stuff

Kids are impressionable and for them, food marketing packs a very powerful punch. A recent study (2/10) in the American Journal of Public Health showed that childhood obesity is directly related to children’s exposure to commercials that advertise unhealthy foods.

According to Rudd, the average child sees 15 food commercials each day.  It takes only one commercial to make them want a particular food. Grocery store marketing takes direct aim at kids with TV characters on packages and shelf displays at their eye level. The internet is jam packed with food marketing on children’s websites and with online games that feature food products within the game.

Fortunately, there is an Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children which will make food marketing recommendations to Congress this summer, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest has developed “Guidelines for Responsible Food Marketing to Children” (www.cspinet.org).


SocialDieter Tip:

Food marketing is everywhere – and it affects your eating behavior. Be aware that it’s going to get to you – if you let it.  Try to cut down your exposure.  It’s insidious so heads up.  Don’t be taken in.  Some of it is up front – like TV commercials –and some isn’t – like product placement in television shows and the movies.  How can you not crave a fast food burger and fries or a glazed donut when you watch your favorite character happily munching away? The thought gets in your head and it just yanks your chain until you raid the fridge or head out to grab whatever it is that advertising has successfully planted.  Steer clear of the commercials or have diversionary tactics or food.  96% fat free microwave popcorn, Skinny Cow ice cream cones or cups, fruit, 100 calorie English muffins with fat free or low fat cream cheese and all fruit or sugar free jam are some suggestions for reasonable calorie controlled snacks.  Or, take the dog for a walk – just stay away from the corner deli.

Don’t swallow what an ad is preaching (and trying to sell).  Inform yourself about your choices – check out the nutritional content by going online and reading labels.  Give yourself license to make healthy picks – in restaurants and in the supermarket.  The choice of what you eat is yours – not the food company’s or the ad agency’s.

Why Do You Eat — Even When You’re Not Hungry?

By Leave a Comment

Have you ever looked down to see crumbs all over your lap with a telltale wrapper clutched in your hand, and asked yourself, “Why did I eat that?”  Or, maybe after your second helping of spaghetti followed by ice cream, followed by a horrendously full stomach you’ve thought, “I’m such an idiot, why did I eat all of that?”

Why, Oh Why?

Why do we eat so much – often when we’re not even hungry? There are a bunch of reasons. They’re not difficult to understand – the hardest part is forcing yourself to take a good look at your habits and routines.

What Time Is It?

You might not realize it, but your body generally likes routines and your brain likes structure. One reason you’re hungry at noontime is because you’ve taught your body to expect breakfast, lunch and dinner around the same time every day. So you eat at the appointed hour – hungry or not.

See It, Eat It

Your body anticipates what and when food is coming. Doesn’t your mouth water thinking about Mom’s Christmas cookies or the hot cheesy pizza from your hometown hangout? How difficult is it to not eat once your mouth is watering and the thought of that food gets into your head?

Variety Is The Spice Of Life

You could chow down on a large meal but, as full as you might be, still make room for dessert.  Why? Probably because your desire for something sweet hasn’t been satisfied. Monotony often leads to searching for something different.  Ever been on a diet where you eat the same thing all of the time?  What generally happens when you can’t stand it any more?  Enough said.

Doesn’t That Smell Delicious?

Sight and smell can start a cascade of appetite signals.  The wafting scent of something delicious is one way your body knows that food is close by. This can trigger insulin secretion – which makes you think you’re hungry. If you think you’re hungry, you eat.

Booze

Beer, wine or liquor can impair your judgment, which often results in eating more.  Watching what you eat is harder if you’ve been drinking.

It’s Cold Outside – Or In The Restaurant

Ever walk into a restaurant and feel like you’re going to freeze? Restaurants often intentionally keep the thermostat set low because the colder the temperature, the more you tend to eat.  Heat can act as a satiety signal. Your metabolism tends to drop when it’s time to eat and eating warms you up.

Candy, Pasta, Cereal, Bread, Cookies; Refined Carbs and Sugars; A Whole Lot Of White Stuff

If you eat a meal that’s filled with refined carbohydrates like white pasta or white rice, in only a few hours your body may crave food again. Simple carbohydrate foods are digested quickly which causes blood sugar to spike and then drop. When your blood sugar crashes, you’re a lot more interested in food because your body is sending messages to take in food to help raise blood sugar levels again.

Habits and Routines

Doing the same thing each day, taking the same route home, going into a restaurant with a certain specialty, walking into Mom’s kitchen and heading straight for the cookie jar, are all habits or routines.  For instance, many people find that changing up the route home – avoiding passing right by their favorite bakery or ice cream parlor – will eliminate the craving for a food that had become part of an afternoon routine.

Holidays, Traditions, and Celebrations

Somehow special events scream, “All filters, guards, restraints, and rational thinking are dismissed for the event, day, or season.”  Think about the last wedding you went to, Thanksgiving dinner, or last year’s mega Christmas party.  Did you eat and drink more than you wanted to – or should have?  Why? For many of us a special occasion signals eat and drink without constraint.

Happy, Sad, Spurned, Rejected, And Any Emotion In Between

Yep, emotions. Emotional eating is a frequently a way people suppress or soothe their stress, anger, fear, boredom, sadness, loneliness, and a whole spectrum of negative emotions. These are things that can be caused by major life events or by the hassles of every day life. High calorie, sweet, and fatty foods, often in large quantities, tend to be the choice of emotional eaters.

SocialDieter Tip:

Most of us have times when we eat when we’re not hungry.  Sometimes it’s a one shot deal – or maybe it’s something that happens annually, like at Thanksgiving or Christmas.  We can learn to manage by balancing caloric intake and increasing activity levels.  But, if emotional eating triggers smothering stress or unhappiness with food – or if eating becomes a form of procrastination or relief from boredom, extra weight can begin to pile on.  It may be time to take stock of your habits and routines and to come up with a plan to shake things up a bit.

What Should I Eat?

By Leave a Comment

What Do I Want To Eat?

What Do I Want To Eat?  That’s a question we all ask ourselves.  Including me.  A lot. Standing in front of the fridge with the door open.  Staring at the shelves in the pantry.  In front of the deli case.  Trying to decipher a menu.  With no clear idea, the danger zone looms setting  up the perfect scenario for being easily swayed by all kinds of food that, perhaps, is not really the best for you.

What Should I Eat?

Then there’s the other question — one I get asked all the time as a weight management coach:  “What SHOULD I eat?”

What’s the answer?

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t have a specific one.  I can’t tell you, or my clients, what to eat. That’s your personal decision. What I can and do say is that deprivation doesn’t work.  Certainly not for long lasting and healthy weight loss and maintenance.  Restriction and deprivation mean a pendulum swing – restriction on one end and indulgence on the other.  How many times have you foregone a food that you love only to gorge on it when you hit an emotional low and toss resolve out the window. Constant dieting doesn’t work either.  It messes with your metabolism, and because dieting, by its very nature, means deprivation.  A healthy lifestyle is an essential component of long-term weight management.

What can you do to get out of the dieting cycle and manage your weight?

There’s no way around it:  the formula is energy taken in (calories) should equal energy output (physical movement and metabolism).  If you eat more calories than you use up, you gain weight.  To maintain your weight, your energy (calorie) intake and caloric expenditure (activity and metabolism) have to be in balance.  An imbalance means you either gain weight or lose weight.

Don’t throw in the towel just yet.  There are ways to help figure out how to eat  good and tasty food and not pack on the pounds.  Each of us has food that we feel we can’t live without and food memories that are associated with tradition, culture, and nurturing.  It’s hard to separate food for sustenance from any of these emotionally charged food behaviors.  And why should you?  Doing so certainly sounds like a set-up for discomfort and what may be taken as either lack of willpower or failure.

Some Questions To Ask Yourself

No eating strategy will work if you are not happy and physically and mentally satisfied (satisfaction can mean both feeling comfortably satiated and intellectually satisfied that you are eating well).

Armed with knowledge about what is healthy food and what is not, and what your body needs in terms of a ballpark number of calories and nutrients, here are a bunch of questions you can use to mentally evaluate your food choices – before you make them.  It sounds like a big deal, but it’s really not – you probably ask yourself some of these already.  It’s a workable system of “foodie checks and balances.”

Foodie Checks and Balances

There are a series of questions you can ask yourself when you’re contemplating your food choices. By doing this you gain valuable information to use to make you feel good and to control your weight.

  • What is my tried and true meal that can be my fallback or my go to meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner? What type of food did I grow up with?  Did that type of eating give me energy, strength, and clarity?  There’s something to be said about eating the way our ancestors did (even if its only one or two generations ago).
  • How do I feel when I eat this food? If you feel like garbage after eating red meat or drinking a glass of milk, stay away from those foods.  Just because someone else eats them doesn’t mean you have to. A journal comes in handy so you can jot down what you eat and how you feel and look at the associations.
  • Is it delicious?  Why waste your calories on something that doesn’t taste good? Ditto for something with little or no nutritional value.  There are two sides to this coin.  Just because something is good for you doesn’t mean that it has to taste bad.  There are many ways to prepare foods.  Try a different preparation.  The other side of the coin is that maybe you’ll never like a certain food.  Who cares if it’s a nutritional superstar.  There are plenty of them.  Why eat what you don’t like.  This is not force feeding.  There are lots of delicious and healthy foods to go around.  Choose something else.  Don’t waste your nutritional budget on something that you don’t like.
  • Is it good for me?  Is it healthy?  Not “Is it good for my family, my spouse, or my friend.” As above – don’t waste your calories on something that doesn’t do anything for you. Some foods may be delicious (to you) but be downright unhealthy.  Give up on the empty and unhealthy calories.  What’s the point of eating stuff that does either nothing for you, or that may be bad for you?
  • If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now? Ever eat a big bowl of pasta at lunch and then need to prop your head up on a book to try to stay awake (or more likely, grab a monster cup of coffee).  Ever stop at a gas station on a long road trip to grab a candy bar – only to find yourself nodding off a while later?  Dangerous.  I once had pasta for dinner right before a movie and fell asleep during the trailer only to wake up when prodded by my husband and son when the movie credits were rolling.  Pasta makes me sleepy, so does candy.  What about you? Food certainly can have an effect on your levels of awareness and clarity. Learn to identify the relationship between certain foods and how your body physically and emotionally reacts to them.  Some make you sleepy, some make you crabby, some make you alert, and some give you energy.  Which foods do what for you?
  • Is this the right portion size for me? Portion control is essential for weight management.  Learn to eyeball portion sizes and commit to a personal “no seconds” policy.
  • Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . . (you supply the answer – some typical ones are: everyone else is eating it, or my kids love it, or Grandma made it, or it’s the specialty of the restaurant, or “I had a tough day, I deserve it”).

Create a habit of asking yourself these checks and balances questions when you’re faced with food choices:

  • How do I feel when I eat this food?
  • Is it delicious?
  • Is it good for me?
  • Is it healthy?
  • If I eat this, how am I going to feel half an hour or an hour from now?
  • Is this the right portion size for me?
  • Do I really want to eat this or am I doing it just because . . .?

Have A Game Plan

SocialDieter Tip: Having a game plan ready before you eat will help you stay out of harms way but also allow you to eat portion appropriate healthy and delicious meals.

The choice is yours. What are some of the questions you ask yourself before eating?

What Do You Eat During A Snowstorm?

By Leave a Comment


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 from school because of snow.  Walking down the street to our houses, the snow was blowing sideways and the kids were ecstatic to be flinging snowballs at each other.  “Why do I always want to bake chocolate chip cookies when it snows?” was her question.

Who knows?  Although I’ve found no scientific study to back this up, I think we retreat to comfort food when we’re housebound – food that is simple, familiar, and often has emotional ties and pleasant memories, especially of childhood.

With the major snowfalls in the East this past week, there have been lots of recipes posted on the web for snow ice cream, maple syrup over snow – most of which caution using freshly fallen clean snow! Most of the recipes and food talk has been about hearty, belly satisfying food and sweet, perhaps soul satisfying food.

Right now my view from my windows is of snow coming down heavily and blowing sideways.  I can’t help but wonder if my friend – or maybe her kids – made chocolate chip cookies today.

The good thing is that having a snowball fight or shoveling snow (for a 150 pound person,15 minutes of shoveling burns about 100 calories) is one way to burning off some those comfort food calories.