overeating

Three Tips To Avoid Overeating At A Barbecue

May 22, 2014 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

It’s the start of the summer barbecue season and the accompanying temptation of a table loaded with delicious food.

Here’s three easy tips to help avoid overeating:

1. If you’re full, stop eating and clear your plate right away. If a plate with food on it sticks around in front of you, you’ll keep picking at what’s on it until there’s nothing left. An exception – a study has found that looking at the “carnage” – the leftover bones from barbecued ribs or even the number of empty beer bottles – can serve as an “environmental cue” to stop eating.

2. Do you 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. Don’t sit or stand where you can see the food that’s calling your name. Keep your back to it if you can’t keep distant. There’s just so much control you can exercise before “see it = eat it.” If staying near 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 in your mouth when you’re busy talking.

3. Before you grab some tasty ribs, dogs, burgers or pie — ask yourself if you really want it. Are you hungry? Is it worth the calories? Odds are, the tempting display of food in front of you is visually seductive – and may smell great, too — but you’re reaching out to eat what’s in front of you for reasons not dictated by your stomach but by your eyes. Have you decided that you want to splurge on something specific? Try picking it ahead of time and commit to your choice so you don’t find yourself wavering in the face of temptation.

Do Holidays And Overeating Go Hand In Hand?

November 21, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

What’s your favorite holiday food? How much of it do you eat?

A lot of us actually plan to overeat during the holidays – although we may not admit it: think about it — do you know that you’re going to overeat? Do you think it wouldn’t be normal or celebratory if you didn’t overindulge and eat three desserts at Christmas or double helpings of stuffing and sweet potato casserole on Thanksgiving?

It’s all too easy to do that. Food is absolutely everywhere. It’s there for the taking — and most of the time, holiday food is free (and in your face) at parties, on receptionist’s desks, as sample tastes while you shop. How can you pass it up?

On top of it all, it’s sugary, fatty, and pretty. How can you not try it? Of course, sugary and fatty (salty, too) means you just crave more and more. Do you really need it? Do you even really want it? If you eat it, will you feel awful later on?

Are you eating because of tradition – because you’ve been eating the same food during the holiday season since you were a kid? Maybe you don’t even like the food anymore or it disagrees with you. So why are you eating it? Who’s forcing you to?

Do you think you won’t have a good time or you’ll be labeled Scrooge, Grinch, a party pooper, or offend your mother-in-law if you don’t eat everything in sight? Really?

You can still love the holidays and you can still love the food. In the grand scheme of things overeating on one day isn’t such a big deal. Overeating for multiple days that turn into weeks and then months can be become a bit and weighty deal.

The question is: do you really want to overeat? If you do, fine. Enjoy every morsel and then take a nap. Tomorrow is another day. Just know that you don’t have to. You make the decisions about what goes into your mouth. Make thoughtful choices and enjoy them along with everything else the holiday represents.

What To Do

Have a plan. Think about how you want to handle yourself in the face of food, family, eggnog, and pecan pie. Nothing is engraved in stone but if you have an idea about what you want to do and how to do it you’ll be far less likely to nibble and nosh all day and night. You’re the one in charge of what goes into your mouth.

Visualize the situation that you might find yourself in. What do you want the outcome to be? Rehearse, in your mind, how you’ll respond or behave to successfully navigate the eating challenges. Sports coaches use this technique to prepare their athletes to anticipate what might happen and to practice how to respond. Sports performance improves with visualization exercises—so can eating behavior.

Make sure your plan is workable and realistic for what you’re aiming to achieve over the season. The plan doesn’t have to be complex – just decide what you want to do and what steps you need to get there.

Write it down –even if it’s on a napkin. It will both reinforce your intentions and act as a measure of accountability.

Consider what your surroundings will be. Will your plan work for you – it may sound great, but is it doable for the situations you might find yourself in? Will your host insist you try her special dessert and refuse to take no for an answer? Will you be eating in a restaurant known for its homemade breads or phenomenal wine list? Are your dining companions picky eaters, foodies, or fast food junkies? What will you do in these situations?

Armed with your rehearsed plan, go out, use it, and stick to it as best you can. You assume control, not the circumstances and not the food. You are in charge of what food and how much of it will go into your mouth.

Do you have an ipad or an iphone? Maybe both? Check out Eat Out Eat Well Magazine coming soon to the Apple Newsstand.

3 Easy Barbecue and Picnic Tips To Avoid Overeating

August 30, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

1. If you’re full, stop eating and clear your plate right away. If it hangs around in front of you, you’ll keep picking at it until there’s nothing left. An exception – a study has found that looking at the “carnage” – the leftover bones from barbecued ribs or even the number of empty beer bottles – can serve as an “environmental cue” to stop eating.

It’s Summertime: Are You Raiding The Cabinets And Fridge More Than Usual?

June 20, 2013 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

It’s summertime. School’s out. You’re on vacation. Maybe you have a beach or lake house or maybe you’re just home – but so are the kids – all day long. Vacation and kids: most likely you’ve let down your eating guard.

There’s food in the house that might not usually be there. It’s singing a siren song. It’s almost preordained that you’ll find yourself in your kitchen opening and closing cabinet doors or with cold air from the open fridge door in your face as you shove around containers full of ice cream, sugared cereal, chips, yesterday’s cake, and slices of cold pizza.

Once you’ve opened the first door – whether it’s the fridge or a cabinet, chances are you’re a goner unless someone interrupts you midstream (even that might not stop the rolling freight train). The notion of (sweet/salty/fatty/caloric food has embedded itself in your brain and has firmly taken root.

Calorie Savers:

The easiest thing to do is to not bring the food into the house. Most of us follow, whether we like it or not, a See It = Eat It pattern. If the food is right in front of your nose whether it’s on the counter or on the shelf in the fridge or in a cabinet, you will eat the food. If it’s sugary, salty, fatty food you will want more.

If you’re going to eat, use a plate and utensils. Always put your food on a plate or in a bowl — the smaller the better. The size of the plate – or bowl – or container can often determine how much you ultimately eat. Make it a smaller dessert bowl or plate, not a monster size cereal bowl or dinner plate. If you stand there with fork or spoon in hand and just attack the container, in the blink of an eye it’s possible to polish off an entire pint of ice cream, a double piece of cake or half (or maybe a whole) bag of cookies.

Eat with a teaspoon or small fork not with a tablespoon or a large fork or with your fingers. Large amounts of food disappear much more quickly with fingers or large utensils as shovels. The food disappears down the hatch so quickly that your brain doesn’t have time to register that you’ve eaten something – until you’ve probably overeaten way too much food and way too many calories.

Don’t bring home leftovers. Don’t let them invade your space. Don’t bring back the leftover pizza or the leftover cake from the picnic.

If you just can’t bring yourself to leave your leftovers in the hands of the restaurant: hide the stuff that tempts you. Out of sight, out of mind is really true. We all tend to eat more when it’s right in front of us. Food we like – especially higher calorie sugary, fatty, and salty foods — trigger cravings and eating.

Want To Avoid Seconds? Keep The Serving Dishes Off Of The Table

May 25, 2013 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.