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overeating triggers

3 Easy Barbecue and Picnic Tips To Avoid Overeating

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picnic-table-overeating-graphic1.  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.

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.

What Are Your Eating Triggers?

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Is it almost a foregone conclusion that you’ll stuff yourself to the gills when you go home to your parents’ house for holidays or other events?  Is it almost impossible for you to navigate your office without stopping at the snack room and the receptionist’s desk to sample the never-ending array of holiday specialties or someone’s birthday cake?  What about the routine lunch for a not-so-good friend that makes you go home and eat a pint of ice cream?

Know Your Triggers

Most of us can name situations that make us want to eat.  Sometimes it takes  dedicated thought to precisely identify what it is that starts the cascade of events that leads to not just wanting to eat, but the feeling that you absolutely must have a particular food — sometimes in large quantities.  Keeping a food journal where you record not only what you ate but the environment and what was going on while you were eating can help you identify the causative factors.

Sometimes those triggers are big red flags – for instance you know that having a piece of pecan pie — or any other sweet food for dessert at lunch will trigger nibbling on candy at the office the rest of the afternoon. But do you eat it anyway?

Or, do you intentionally go to store A instead of store B for a cup of coffee because you know store A always has lots of free samples of freshly baked cake and cookies?  Do you know that if cookies are in the cupboard and ice cream is in the freezer that you will sooner, rather than later, eat it?

Which Foods And Environments Are Your Red Flags?

Be honest 
with yourself and admit that certain foods and environments are red flags for you.   I know that I can’t have cookies in my house and I also know that I tend to overeat at family events.

There’s no reason to psychoanalyze why certain foods or situations act as your triggers.  Just know which particular things serve as your red flags — your triggers — and have strategies in place to deal with them.