Freshman 15

An Easy Way To Avoid Second Helpings

August 14, 2014 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Do you skimp on putting food onto your plate thinking that it will keep your calorie count down?

What happens? You eat the skimpy portion – decide you’re still hungry – and then go back, maybe two or three times, for more.

And if you keep the serving dishes on the table right in front of you, it’s way too easy to keep refilling your plate – or just stick your fork out and eat from the platter.

Get Those Serving Dishes Off The Table

If you want to make it a little easier for yourself to save on calories, one thing you can do is to get those serving dishes off of the table. When serving dishes are left on the table men eat 29% more and women 10% more than when those serving dishes stay on the counter.

Why?

It’s harder to grab seconds if you have to get up to get them. Sticking out your fork and shoveling more onto your plate while your butt remains firmly planted in your chair makes it far too easy to refill your plate without much thought about the quantity of food that’s going into your mouth.

Men chow down on more servings than women because they tend to eat fast – impatiently gobbling food while they wait for everyone else in the family to finish. As a result, they end up eating seconds and thirds while other people are still on firsts. Women usually eat more slowly so they’re not as likely to get to the seconds and thirds.

To help avoid the temptation of going back for seconds:

Let this be your mantra: no seconds. Figure out a reasonable portion of food that is within reason but not so skimpy that you’re nowhere near satisfied when you’re finished.
Keep the serving dishes off of the table.
Choose your food, fill your plate from the stove or from the serving dishes on the counter, and that’s it. No seconds.

Do you know someone going off to college? Give him or her a copy of my book 30 Ways to Survive Dining Hall and Dorm Room Food: Tips to Avoid the Freshman 15. You can get it from Amazon (print and ebook), and as an ebook from Barnes & Noble and iBooks.

7 Ways To Cut Down On Pizza Calories

June 5, 2014 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Have you had “a slice” recently? If you did, consider it one of the 46 slices that American men, women, and children eat, on average, in a year. Pizza as we know it originated in Italy, but it can be traced to the Greeks who have dressed up bread with oil, herbs, and cheese since the time of Plato. Neopolitans hopped on the Greeks’ idea of using bread and the Romans developed placenta, a sheet of flour they topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves. Neapolitans then added the tomato into the equation.

We eat a lot of pizza:

94% of Americans eat pizza regularly
Pizzerias represent 17% of all restaurants and pizza accounts for more than 10% of all food service sales
5 billion pizzas are sold worldwide each year; 3 billion pizzas are sold in the US each year
Kids ages 3 to 11 prefer pizza over other food groups for both lunch and dinner
In the US, 61% prefer regular thin crust, 14% prefer deep-dish, and 11% prefer extra thin crust
62% of Americans prefer meat toppings; 38% prefer vegetables36% order pizza topped with pepperoni.

What’s Good, What’s The Not-So-Good?

It’s difficult to estimate the number of calories and fat grams in a slice of pizza because the size and depth of the pies and the amount of cheese, meat, or other toppings vary enormously.

Here’s the good news: pizza can be a healthy food choice filled with complex carbs, B-vitamins, calcium, protein, vitamin A, and vitamin C and calorically okay if you choose wisely and don’t eat more than your fair share.

The not so good news: fat and calories. If your mouth starts to water at the thought of golden brown crust and cheesy goodness — here’s the downer: if you don’t choose wisely, that luscious pizza can be a fat and calorie nightmare.

Mall pizza can be okay — and not okay.

Sbarro’s Low Carb Cheese Pizza has 310 calories and 14 grams of fat.
Sbarro’s Low Carb Sausage/Pepperoni Pizza has 560 calories and 35 grams of fat.
A slice of Sbarro’s Fresh Tomato Pizza clocks in at 450 calories with 14 grams of fat.
Any of Sbarro’s “Gourmet” pizzas have between 610 and 780 calories a slice and more than 20 grams of fat.
“Stuffed” pizzas are even worse—790 calories minimum and over 33 grams of fat per slice.
Most Costcos have a food court that sells pizza, making Costco the 15th largest pizza chain in the US. A single slice of Costco pizza is estimated to have 804 calories, 342 of them from fat.

Build a Better Slice of Pizza

Although we all have our own pizza preferences, the next time you order try some of these tricks to keep your choice on the healthy side:

Order thin crust rather than a thick doughy or deep dish crust.
Resist the urge to ask for double cheese — better yet, go light on the cheese or use reduced-fat cheese (if they have it).
Ask for a pizza without cheese but topped with veggies and a little olive oil. You can always sprinkle on a little grated parmesan – 1 tablespoon has 22 calories — for flavor.
Instead of cheese go for big flavors: onion, garlic, olives (use them somewhat sparingly because of the oil but they’re a whole lot better than meat). And don’t forget anchovies — a lot of flavor for minimal calories – but you have to like them!
Choose vegetable toppings instead of meat (think about the fat content in sausage, pepperoni, and meatballs) and you might shave 100 calories from your meal. Pile on veggies like mushrooms, peppers, olives, tomatoes, onion, broccoli, spinach, and asparagus. Some places have salad pizza – great if it’s not loaded with oil.
Order a salad (careful with the dressing) on the side and cut down on the amount of pizza. Salad takes longer to eat, too.
If you’re willing (and not embarrassed or grossed out), try blotting up the free-floating oil that sits on top of a greasy slice. Blotting (it’s easy to do this on the kind of hot slice where the oil runs down your arm) can soak up a teaspoon of oil worth 40 calories and 5 grams of fat.

If you know someone who is heading off to college, you might want to get this book for him or her. It gives 30 ways to handle college food — plus 30 bonus tips — all easy to incorporate into the college lifestyle. One thing it definitely does not do is tell you not to eat. On the contrary — food is necessary, social, and fun! Get it now from Amazon (available in paperback and as an ebook) or as an ebook from Barnes & Noble.

Does Alcohol Make You Gain Weight?

September 19, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

It certainly can. Pure alcohol, gram for gram, has almost twice the number of calories as a gram of carbohydrate or protein. One gram of alcohol has 7 calories compared to the 4 calories for carbohydrate or protein – fat has nine calories a gram. Some research is showing that calories from alcohol may be burned less efficiently, but the calories still pack a punch.

There’s another factor, too. If you drink alcohol along with your other daily food, you’re often adding, not replacing, the calories from other food or drinks. If everything else stays the same, you’ll gain weight. And, alcohol can cause disinhibition — it reduces your ability manage your immediate impulsive response to a situation – in other words, it makes you less focused on how much you’re eating.

However, statistically, drinkers aren’t more likely to be obese than nondrinkers. But a number if factors come into play: the amount and type of alcohol; when, where, and the type of drinking pattern; the way your body processes the alcohol; and various psychological factors.

Gender Differences On Drinking Days

A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the food and calorie intake of 1,864 people on days when they did and didn’t drink. On drinking days men (including 10% who were heavy drinkers which would skew the numbers higher) averaged 433 extra calories; 363 of them came from alcohol, the rest from extra food and other kinds of beverages. The men also ate more protein, fat, salt, and meat on drinking days.

Women averaged an extra 299 calories on drinking days, almost all of them coming from alcohol. Although they didn’t eat much more than on nondrinking days, they did eat more fat and less healthy foods.

Good News, Bad News

About 35% of American adults don’t drink, 55% are light or moderate drinkers, and 10% drink more than a moderate amount. It’s estimated that alcohol directly or indirectly causes 90,000 deaths a year in the US, including more than 11,000 traffic fatalities.

But drinking has benefits, too It can be part of social, business and family life and regular drinking, even in small amounts, decreases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Alcohol, like aspirin, reduces blood clotting — a transient effect that lasts for about a day. Alcohol can raise HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels over time and moderate intake helps to reduce the risk of other health problems, including type 2 diabetes, gallstones, peripheral artery disease, and perhaps dementia.

The most serious health risks — alcoholism, heart and liver disease, hypertension, certain cancers, osteoporosis, car crashes and other accidents — come mostly from heavy drinking, but moderate drinking can affect your coordination and ability to drive, operate machinery, or swim.

If You’re Going To Drink, Should You Do It Every Day?

It seems that drinking small amounts regularly and with meals (it slows the absorption of the alcohol) is better than occasionally drinking larger amounts. Some research findings suggest that daily (or almost daily) drinking is best for the heart; other studies have found that drinking every other day is enough to get benefits; and still others have found that it only takes half a standard drink a day. (In the US a “drink” is 5 ounces of wine, 12 ounces of beer, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor, which all contain about 14 grams of pure alcohol.)

What’s Moderate Drinking?

In the US, moderate drinking — as defined in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans — is up to one drink a day for a woman and up to two for a man. (Other countries define moderation and the size of a “standard” drink differently.) The recommended amount is less for women because they tend to be smaller, have proportionately more body fat, and have less body water (alcohol is diluted in body water). Generally, the same amount of alcohol would cause higher blood level of alcohol in women than in men and would also cause more impairment.

A Losing Team Means Lots Of Sugar, Fat, And Calories. No Kidding!

September 15, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

How did your team do this weekend? Did they win or lose?

If you’re being careful about what and how much you eat, you better hope they won (for more reasons than one) or chances are you’ll be joining your fellow fans who will be rummaging around the kitchen or who have the pizza place on speed dial.

That’s not hearsay. According to a study published in Psychological Science, on the Monday after a big football game fans of the losing team like to load up on sugar and saturated fat. Fans of the winning team go for healthier foods.

How Much Fat? How Many Calories?

Researchers looked at food consumption habits on typical Mondays for people living in over two dozen cities. They compared that data to people’s food consumption on Mondays after NFL games in cities with NFL teams who had played games over the weekend.

They found that people living in cities where the football team lost ate about 16% more saturated fat and 10% more calories compared to how much they typically ate on Mondays.

People in cities where the football team won ate about 9% less saturated fat and 5% fewer calories compared to their usual Monday food.

These changes happened even when non-football fans were included in the study sample. And, they didn’t find these results in cities without a team or in cities with a team that didn’t play that particular weekend.

The after effects were even greater in the most football crazed cities; the 8 cities with the most devoted fans, people gobbled up 28% more saturated fat after a loss and 16% less after a win.

A Down To The Wire Game Turned Up The Food Effects

The trends were especially noticeable when a game came down to the wire. When their team lost, especially if the loss was unexpected, or by a narrow margin, or to an equally ranked team — the effects were the most noticeable. The researchers think that people perceive the loss, perhaps unknowingly, as an identity threat and use eating as a coping mechanism. A winning team team wins seems to give a boost to people’s self control.

To further test their findings, in an experimental setting the researchers asked French participants to write about a memory they had when their favorite soccer team either won or lost a game. Then they asked them to choose either chips and candy or grapes and tomatoes as a snack. The people who wrote about their favorite team winning were more likely to pick the healthier snacks.

What You Can Do

Previous studies have shown how sports can influence — among other things — reckless driving, heart attacks, and domestic violence. But, according to the researchers, no one had ever looked at how sports results can also influence eating.

The researchers suggest a technique to use tp help keep your fat intake and calories under control if you root for a team that doesn’t have a winning record — or even if you just live in a city with a team that tends to lose.

After a loss, write down what’s really important in your life.
They found that this technique, called “self affirmation,” eliminated the eating effects that occurred after football losses.

Want more tips — especially if you eat in dining halls of any kind? Get my new book, now available on Amazon — 30 Ways to Survive Dining Hall and Dorm Room Food: Tips to Avoid the Freshman 15.

Did You Eat Too Much? Blame Your Buddies At The Table

September 12, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

How many people do you usually sit with when you’re eating? Not all the people surrounding you in a cafeteria or restaurant, but the number of friends or family at your table?

Amazingly, the number of people you eat with can make a big difference in how much you end up eating. If you have eight people at your table you might end up eating 96% more than if you ate alone!

That’s not to say that you should limit the number of friends you eat with—it should just make you aware that friends, unintentionally, can influence how much and how fast you eat.

How Come?

You tend to eat for a longer amount of time — and eat more — when you’re with people you like compared to when you eat alone. It could be because you mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, or you’re using the good manners you were taught in fifth grade about not letting someone else eat alone, or maybe you’re just having fun and enjoying your food. Whatever the reason, most of us tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others –and– the longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

We also tend to mimic the other people at the table. It’s almost as though how much you eat and how fast you eat is contagious. If your friends eat fast, you eat fast. If they eat a lot, you eat a lot.

Friends and family influence how much we eat, too. Sometimes you get so involved in conversation that all monitoring of what you pop into your mouth goes out the window. Have you ever looked down at your plate and wondered where all the cookies went or how you managed to work your way through the mile high dish of pasta or the four pieces of pizza? How many tastes did you take of everyone else’s meal and dessert? Those tastes aren’t like invisible ink. Those calories count, too.

How Much More Do We Eat When We’re With Others?

In his book, Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink, PhD reports on a study that shows how strong the tendency is to increase how much you eat when you eat with others. Compared to eating alone, you eat, on average:

35% more if you eat with one other person
75% more with four at the table
96% more with a group of seven or more

What’s The Reason?

It’s a common pattern for adults to eat more when they’re in larger groups than when they’re eating alone. One reason is a phenomenon called “social facilitation,” or the actions or behaviors that result from the sight and sound of other people doing the same thing that you’re doing. When you’re eating in groups, social facilitation can help override your brain’s normal signals of satiety.

What You Can Do

Think about who you’re eating with – and why. If you want to have a blast and don’t care about how much you eat – eat with a big group and chow down.
If you want to be careful about what and how much you eat, think about eating lunch with your salad (dressing on the side, please) friends rather than the pepperoni pizza group.
Without even thinking about it, you tend to adjust your eating pace to that of your companions. So, sit next to the slow eaters rather than the gobblers if you’re trying to control how much goes into your mouth.

Want more tips — especially if you eat in dining halls of any kind? Get my new book, now available on Amazon — 30 Ways to Survive Dining Hall and Dorm Room Food: Tips to Avoid the Freshman 15.