Eat Out Eat Well

food for fun and thought

Thinking About Chowing Down At A Barbecue This Weekend?

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Memorial Day Weekend – the “unofficial” start of summer weekends. Hometown parades with floats and kids in baseball uniforms.  Veterans handing out flags.  The lazy, hazy days of summer with lots of soda and popcorn and beer.  Also lots of barbecue and desserts – and lots of seemingly never ending caloric temptation — and bathing suits to get into!

Celebration and Remembrance

Just a bit of a reminder.  It’s wonderful to celebrate the unofficial beginning of summer.  But, there’s a reason for all of the parades and flags. In the states, Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who died in our nation’s service.  First observed on May 30th, 1868 when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, in 1971 Congress extended it into a three-day holiday weekend.

Parades, Picnics, And Barbecues

Memorial Day is a day of national ceremonies and small town parades, but also of barbecues and picnics. For many of us Memorial Day also signals the start of a whole different set of thoughts:  how to avoid the glut of cheeseburgers and hot dogs; the mayonnaise laden potato and macaroni salad; the plates full of brownies and cookies; the dripping ice cream cones (sprinkles are mandatory); the freshly baked blueberry and peach pies; and the beer, wine, soda, and lemonade to wash everything down.

Gotta Have A Plan To Handle The Food . . .

Or you might never take off the bathing suit cover-up.  So, as you remember the people who gave service to their country, please honor yourself by choosing to eat what’s best for you.  Holidays and celebrations present food challenges.  A one-day splurge is a blip that doesn’t account for much.  A one-day splurge that opens the floodgate to mindless eating all summer long is something else.

General Tips For Mindful Eating All Summer Long

  • Before you grab some tasty morsel, ask yourself if you’re really hungry.  Odds are, with a tempting display of food in front of you, you may not be hungry but you just want to eat what’s in front of you for reasons not dictated by your stomach.
  • A good question to ask yourself is:  do I really need to stand in front of the picnic table, kitchen table, or barbecue?  The further away from the food you are the less likely you are to eat it.
  • If you know that the barbecued ribs, the blueberry pie, or your cousin’s potato salad is your downfall, either build it into your food for the day or steer clear.  For most of us swearing that you’ll only take a taste is a promise doomed to fail.
  • If you’re asked to bring something to a party, picnic, or barbecue, bring food you can eat with abandon – fruit, salad with dressing on the side, berries and angel food cake for dessert (no fat in angel food cake).  That way you know you’ll always have some “go to” food.
  • Don’t show up absolutely starving.  How can you resist when your blood sugar is in the basement and your stomach is singing a chorus?
  • Really eyeball the food choices so you know what’s available.  Then make a calculated decision about what you are going to eat.
  • Take the food you have decided to eat, sit down, enjoy it without guilt, and be done with it.  No going back for seconds.
  • If you’re full, stop eating and clear your plate right away.  If it hangs around in front of you, inevitably you’ll keep picking at it.
  • Give yourself permission to eat – and enjoy — the special dessert or a burger or ribs.  If you don’t, you’ll probably be miserable and there’s some chance that you’ll get home and gobble down everything in sight – because you made yourself miserable by not eating the good stuff in the first place!  Eat what you want and enjoy it (no seconds and no first portions that are the equivalent of firsts, seconds and thirds built into one).
  • If hanging around the food gets to be too much, go for a walk, a swim, or engage someone in an animated conversation.    It’s pretty hard to shove food into you mouth when you’re talking away.

What Do Eating And Crossing The Street And Have in Common?

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Do You Look Both Ways?

Didn’t your parents teach you to look both ways before you cross the street?  The very act of looking and analyzing the situation before you step off the curb means that you are being mindful of your surroundings and aware of potential problems – like a car or bike speeding toward you.

What’s That Got To Do With Eating?

The same process – analyzing the environment and being mindful and aware of your situation — should be true with eating.

Before you pop food into your mouth do you check in with yourself and figure out if you’re really hungry?   Is your stomach growling and are you queasy and having trouble concentrating because you haven’t eaten in a long time and your blood sugar is low? Or is your desire to eat being triggered by the wafting smell of the freshly baked bread coming from the open door of a bakery or the sight of just out of the oven chocolate chip cookies?

Those are the kind of triggers that can create an irresistible urge to eat  – even if you’ve just had a good sized and satisfying meal.

What’s The Issue?

There are many situations — like the bakery trigger — when you eat in response to external cues (what you see, hear, smell, or even think) rather than mindfully checking in with your body and determining if you’re actually hungry. It’ sort of like looking both ways before you cross the street and then making your choice to cross or not to cross, isn’t it?

Check It Out And Then Make Your Decision

Let your body talk to you – and then listen to it.  Before food starts traveling the path to your mouth, stop and ask yourself if you’re really hungry or if you have head hunger  — the urge rather than the need to eat because your emotions and external cues are telling you that you should. Do you really need to eat or are your emotions sending you “feed me” messages?

Stop for a moment and look both ways before you decide to take the eating path — and then step off the curb into the street if you deem it safe and decide that’s what you want to do.

Kids Need To Learn About Food

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by FoodRevolution. Browse more data visualizations.
Food Revolution Day on the 19th of May is a chance for people who love food to come together to share information, talents and resources and to pass on their knowledge and highlight the world’s food issues. All around the globe people will work together to make a difference. Food Revolution Day is about connecting with your community through events at schools, restaurants, local businesses, dinner parties and farmers’ markets. The intent is to inspire change in people’s food habits and to promote the mission for better food and education for everyone.

 

Are You Really Hungry Or Is It All In Your Head?

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Argument.  Stress. Overwhelm. Fatigue.

Cookies in the shopping cart.  Candy bar from the gas station.  Chips from the vending machine.  Raiding the refrigerator for leftovers followed by ice cream.

Sound familiar?

You could be stuffed to the gills but all you can think about is getting that cookie, candy bar, chips, or leftovers and chowing down – even though you’re not hungry and probably won’t enjoy what you’re about to eat.

There’s Real Hunger And There’s Head Hunger

Real hunger or physiological hunger is your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to eat food because your body needs nourishment.  It’s when you have that empty, rumbling feeling in your stomach, a headache, maybe some lightheadedness and difficulty concentrating.  It usually starts around four hours (plus or minus) after your last meal.

Head hunger or psychological hunger doesn’t really have physical symptoms and can happen at any time. It can be triggered by emotional situations, habits you associate with food or eating (like watching TV, working on the computer or driving in the car), by food cravings, or can be a form of procrastination.   Whatever triggers your head hunger can make you think you’re hungry when you’re really not.

Emotions:  Common Triggers For Eating

Emotions are common triggers for eating. Head hunger is a form of emotional eating that is usually in response to stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, fatigue, overwhelm, or boredom.

Head hunger also serves as a distraction because the eating it provokes can be a way to distract yourself from difficult situations, projects, and encounters.

The feelings and situations that create head hunger are a part of your life.  Eating won’t make them go away.  Eating in response to head hunger often keeps you from figuring out what’s causing the feeling in the first place.

“I want chocolate” might really mean “I need comfort” or “I worked my tail off and I really need to be recognized for it.” Those trips back and forth to the fridge or the vending machine might be the ultimate form of procrastination – is there a project that needs to get done that you’re struggling with?

What To Do

Wouldn’t it be great if it was as simple as figuring out what’s causing your head hunger and dealing with it.  Actually, that’s the answer. Eating can’t really satisfy your emotional needs.  Left unmet, those needs will trigger your head hunger over and over.  So, you overeat, you mentally beat yourself up, you feel awful, and the whole process is triggered all over again.

To break the pattern, first stop beating yourself up when you do eat in response to head hunger (as opposed to eating because you’re starving and your stomach is growling like crazy).

Devise a plan to figure out what caused you to eat in the first place.  Try keeping a written record of what happened and how you felt before your head hunger took control. Looking back at a series of entries might give you a clue.  Once you get a handle on your triggers, come up with a plan to deal with them and make a “go-to” list of ways to reward, calm, comfort, and/or distract yourself without resorting to eating when you’re not actually physically hungry.

Allow yourself to figure out what “real” hunger actually feels like and the feelings that accompany true hunger.

Do You Eat To Procrastinate?

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Procrastinate:  to delay or postpone action; to put off doing something.

Do you find yourself wandering to the refrigerator/vending machine/food truck/coffee shop . . . when you have something to do that you really don’t want to tackle?

Email viewers — you might have to go to the web to view the video.  Just click on the MyFoodMAPs link.