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mindless eating

A Dozen Reasons We Eat When We’re Not Hungry

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Eating 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.

Here are a dozen reasons and triggers for “mindless” eating:

  1. “Cheap” calories – the kind you find at all you can eat restaurants, those freebie tastes in markets, “value meals,” and three courses for the price of two.
  2. Bread and extras like butter, olive oil, and olives on the table or peanuts or pretzels at a bar.  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 rotten day.
  3. Opening your cabinet or refrigerator door and having your favorite snacks staring you in the face.
  4. Procrastinating or avoiding doing what you have to do by having a snack.
  5. Family gatherings that serve traditional and/or highly caloric foods that you wouldn’t normally eat – and a whole bunch of angst that causes you to eat.
  6. Watching TV with a bag of chips or a bowl of candy on your lap.
  7. Parties and events — especially when you drink — causing you to lose count and control of what you’re grabbing to eat.
  8. Sitting near a vending machine or the snack room at work – and the candy bowls on a lot of desks.
  9. Buffets – anywhere and everywhere .  Oh, the heaps and piles of good looking food. Enough said.
  10. Feeling tired, bored, angry, or “out-of-sorts” and looking for food as a “pick-me-up.”
  11. Having a stressful – or boring –meeting especially when there’s a table full of food nearby.
  12. Getting home, having no plan for dinner, and just picking and nibbling a ton of calories all evening.

What are your reasons?

Calories Don’t Count When . . .

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  • You buy a candy bar at the gas station and eat it in the car
  • You snag 3 tootsie rolls from the receptionist’s desk
  • You grab a couple of samples of cheesecake at Costco
  • You finish your child’s grilled cheese sandwich
  • You taste the cookie batter and lick the bowl and beaters
  • You finish the leftovers because there’s too small an amount to save

How many more can you add?

Calories Do Count

Obviously, the calories do count, it’s just that all too frequently we neglect to add them – remember them – or acknowledge them (that would mean having to admit that you ate that candy bar).

That’s why a food journal can help with weight management.  By writing down everything that you eat – not at the end of the day but when you eat it  – you’re forced to acknowledge all of the random food that you either mindfully or mindlessly pop into your mouth.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest uses frozen yogurt to illustrate how mindlessly adding toppings adds a whopping amount of calories to what might be thought of as a healthy food.

“Let’s say you start with just 200 to 300 calories’ worth of frozen yogurt. (That’s a medium or regular at places like Red Mango, Pinkberry, or TCBY.)

But then the toppings call out. Forget the chocolate chips (80 calories per scoop), the gummy bears (80), and the Oreo pieces (60). Even the ‘healthy’ toppings like granola (60 calories), nuts (100), and ‘yogurt’ chips (100) pile on the calories.”

Think about it:  when don’t your calories count?

Other People May Make You Eat More

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Reservations for eight? You might eat 96% more! No kidding.  We tend to continue eating for a longer period of time when we’re with people compared to when we eat alone.  Maybe it’s because we mindlessly nibble while someone else talks, or the good manners we learned in fifth grade, or because we’re just having fun and enjoying great food. We do tend to stay at the table longer when we’re with others and the longer you stay at the table, the more you eat.

Losing Track

Friends and family also influence how much you eat. Sometimes you can get so involved in conversation that all the monitoring of what pops 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.

Who Sets the Pace?

You tend to mimic your table companions. They eat fast, you eat fast.  They eat a lot, you eat a lot.  Ever wonder why you look at some families or couples and they’re both either heavy or slender?  As Brian Wansink, PhD says in his book, Mindless Eating, “birds of a feather eat together.”

How Much More?

Wansink 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

Why?

The pattern of eating more when we’re in larger groups than when we’re eating alone is common in adults. One reason is a phenomenon called “social facilitation,” or the actions that stem from the stimuli coming from the sight and sound of other people doing the same that that you’re doing. When you’re eating in groups, social facilitation can help override the brain’s normal signals of satiety.

Some Helpful Tips:

  • Think about who you are 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.
  • 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.

A Holiday Eating Tip: Pick One Fantastic Treat

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Chocolate bark at the receptionist’s desk.  Candy canes at the dry cleaners.  A rotating selection of Christmas cookies on just about everyone’s desk.  Happy holiday food gifts from grateful clients.  And that doesn’t include the fantastic spreads at holiday parties and family events!
[Read more…] about A Holiday Eating Tip: Pick One Fantastic Treat

Free Food Is Everywhere

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You arrive for an early morning meeting.  Front and center is a platter loaded with bagels, danish, and doughnuts just waiting to be eaten –and to be washed down by copious amounts of coffee.  For so many this is the early morning pick-me up – and the beginning of a blood sugar roller coaster ride.

If you didn’t have time to grab some, have no fear – if all the platters aren’t picked clean the remnants will surely end up in the snack room next to the birthday cake (it’s always somebody’s birthday) or the leftover cookies from someone’s party the night before.

Perhaps you shop at Costco on the weekend.  At least three tables will be manned by someone offering you samples of hot pizza, luscious cheesecake, or tooth-picked pigs ‘n blankets just waiting to be quickly and neatly popped into your mouth.

Maybe you then make a stop at the cleaners, the tailors, the veterinarians, or the hair salon.  There it is – the giant bowl piled high with freebie candy.  You can dig deep for the kind you like – Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, mini Snickers, or Tootsie Roll pops.  You name it — it’s usually there for the taking.

Going to a wedding that night?  How do you escape the platters of salami, cheese, mini quiches, and then the desserts covered with icing, whipped cream, and powdered sugar?

What’s The Problem With Free Food?

Nothing if you don’t care about calories, how nutritious your food is, and how you are going to feel after indulging on an overload of sugar, fat, and salt.  I do know many  “starving” students who have fed themselves on free food.  The question is:  did they ultimately benefit from the hit to their bellies with no impact on their wallets?

Occasional dips into free food are probably not going to really hurt anyone in reasonable health.  But, on a consistent basis there is certainly a downside to your health.  There could me a more immediate concern, too.  A whole bunch of non-nutritious (junk, processed, and high calorie) food eaten right before a time when intense concentration and focus is necessary (translation:  exams and presentations) could certainly have a negative impact.

Most of us find it pretty darn hard to ignore “free food,” the food that’s just there for the taking. It’s everywhere – and we have become accustomed to valuing cheap calories.  Think about it:  when was the last time that you resisted the peanuts, pretzels, or popcorn sitting on the bar counter?  What about the breadbasket – that’s usually free, too.

We don’t have to eat any of this stuff.  But we do.  Why?  Some of us have trouble passing up a giveaway – even if it might be cheap, processed food.  Some of us see it as a way to save money – even with possible negative health consequences.  And a lot of us use “free” as an excuse to eat or overeat junk food or the sweet, salty, fatty foods that some call addicting.

And what about those calories?  Just because it’s free doesn’t mean the calories are, too.  It’s all too easy to forget about those calories you popped in your mouth as you snagged a candy here and tasted a cookie there.  Yikes.  You could eat a day’s worth of calories cruising through a couple of markets and food stores.

Things To Think About Before The Freebies Land In Your Mouth

You might want to come up with your own mental checklist that, with practice, will help you evaluate whether or not it’s worth it to you to indulge.  If you decide to taste the salami and have a cookie and a piece of cake, at least you will have made a mindful decision with consideration of the consequences rather than mindlessly indulging.  Ask yourself:

  • Is it fresh, tasty, healthy food?  It might be if you’re at a wedding or an event, it’s probably not it it’s being handed out at the supermarket or sitting in a large bowl at the cleaners.
  • Is it clean?  Think about this – how many fingers have been in the bowl of peanuts or have grabbed pieces of cheese or bunches of cookies off of an open platter?
  • Do you really want it – or are you eating it just because it’s there?
  • Is it loaded with fat, sugar, and salt adding up to mega calories that significantly impact your daily caloric allowance?  Every calorie counts whether it’s popped in your mouth and gone in the blink of an eye or savored more slowly and eaten with utensils off of a plate.
  • If you fill up with the non-nutritious free food, are you skimping on the good nutritious stuff later on because you are simply too full to eat it?
  • If you eat some free food, does it open the flood gates so that you continue to indulge? Loading up on simple sugars – the kind found in candy, cookies, cake, and many processed foods – causes your blood sugar level to spike and then to drop – soon leaving you hungry once again, and pretty darn cranky, too.

You Do Have Choices

You don’t have to eat food because it’s free.  No one is forcing you to make some more room on the platter.  Beware of the cascading effect.  If you allow yourself to sample the candy, pizza, cheesecake, popcorn, or pieces of cookie, are you giving yourself permission (perhaps in disguise) to overindulge in food you might not ordinarily eat?  If cost is an issue, there are many ways to find and cook nutritious food at a lower cost.  If you plan to indulge make sure you do it mindfully, not mindlessly:  build it in.  Eat a lighter lunch and don’t go shopping or to an event when you’re starving.  That’s almost a certain ticket to chowing down on almost everything in sight.