Eat Out Eat Well

mindless bites

A Dozen Really Common Reasons We Eat When We’re Not Hungry

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12 reasons for eating graphicEating when you’re not hungry, or when you’re bored, angry, tired, procrastinating, or celebrating can push your calorie intake way up.

The biggest problem is that we often don’t realize that we’re shoving food into our mouths – either because we’re distracted, we don’t want to know, or we just plain old don’t care.

What Makes Us Do It?

1.  “Cheap” calories: the kind you find at all you can eat restaurants, freebie tastes in markets, the basket of broken cookies in the bakery, and “value and super sized meals.”

2.  Bread and extras like butter, olive oil, and olives on the table or bar peanuts or pretzels.  Way too tempting to pass up – especially if you’re hungry or you’ve walked in with the attitude that you “deserve” it because you’ve had a tough day.

3.  Walking into your kitchen or the snack room at work and having your favorite snacks staring you in the face (see it = eat it).

4.  Procrastinating or avoiding doing what you have to do by having a snack.

5.  Watching TV with a bag of chips or a bowl of candy on your lap.

6.  Parties— especially when you drink — causing you to lose count and control of what you’re grabbing to eat.

7.  Food and coffee shops on every corner that offer lots of food, lots of variety, and are open all the time.

8.  The in(famous) sugar/fat/salt combination in baked goods, fast food, candy, fast food, frozen food, and processed food.

9.  Food that your family or roommates insist must be in the house – or that you think they want in the house.

10.  Feeling tired, stressed, overwhelmed, bored, angry, or “out-of-sorts” and turning to food as a “pick-me-up” or for comfort.

11.  Mindless bites – a piece of candy from the open bowl on a desk, a taste of your partner’s dessert, finishing your child’s food (especially dripping ice cream cones).

12.  Being a member of the clean plate club – which also extends to polishing off leftovers and finishing the last bits left in the pan or serving dishes as you clean up.

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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