overeating

Is Food The Main Focus Of Your Holiday?

November 19, 2012 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Is your holiday mindset: lots of food = good time; not so much food = bad time? Can you possibly revel in holiday spirit without accompanying gluttony? You bet you can – but often the celebrations themselves become intertwined with the need or obligation to cook and/or eat not just because we’re hungry, but because of other reasons that are important to you.

The point of the holidays – any holiday – is not exclusively food. Nonetheless, we wrap our holiday thoughts around food – after all, Thanksgiving originally was a harvest celebration and many cultures and religions have special foods to signify a special holiday.

Food Has Meaning

Food does have meaning–which may have different interpretations by people of varying religions, ethnicities, and cultures. Food acts like a cloak of comfort – something many of us look for and welcome around the holidays.

Nowhere is it written that food has to be eaten in tremendous quantity – or that a meal has to include stuffing, two types of potatoes, five desserts, or six types of candy. That idea is self-imposed.

So is the opposite self-imposed idea: trying to diet during the holidays. Restriction and overeating are both difficult – and often equally counterproductive. Winter holiday eating comes during the cold and dark seasons in many parts of the world. Warm comfort food just seems all the more appealing — whether you’re dieting or not — when it’s somewhat inhospitable outside.

Is Overeating Part Of Your Holiday Meal Plan?

Unconsciously, or perhaps habitually, a lot of us actually plan to overeat during the holidays. Be honest: do you know that you’re going to overeat? Do you think it wouldn’t be normal or non-celebratory to overindulge and eat three desserts at Christmas or raid your kid’s Trick or Treat bag?

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?

Eating And Tradition

Are you eating because of tradition – because you’ve been eating the same food at Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa since you were a kid? Maybe you don’t even like the food anymore. Maybe it disagrees with you or gives you acid reflux. 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? Get over it. Do you really think you’re Scrooge?

You can still love the holidays and you can still love the food. No problem. 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, is.

Do You Really Want To Overeat?

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 control the purse strings – and the decisions about what goes into your mouth. Make thoughtful choices, the best choices for you, and enjoy them along with everything else the holiday represents.

A Dozen Reasons We Eat When We’re Not Hungry

July 7, 2011 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

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:

“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.
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.
Opening your cabinet or refrigerator door and having your favorite snacks staring you in the face.
Procrastinating or avoiding doing what you have to do by having a snack.
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.
Watching TV with a bag of chips or a bowl of candy on your lap.
Parties and events — especially when you drink — causing you to lose count and control of what you’re grabbing to eat.
Sitting near a vending machine or the snack room at work – and the candy bowls on a lot of desks.
Buffets – anywhere and everywhere . Oh, the heaps and piles of good looking food. Enough said.
Feeling tired, bored, angry, or “out-of-sorts” and looking for food as a “pick-me-up.”
Having a stressful – or boring –meeting especially when there’s a table full of food nearby.
Getting home, having no plan for dinner, and just picking and nibbling a ton of calories all evening.

What are your reasons?

Eater Alert: Beware End Of Summer Gluttony

August 31, 2010 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

It’s the week leading up to Labor Day weekend. Not technically the end of summer, but it sure feels that way.

I don’t know about you, but for me the thought process seems to be: “Oh heck, it’s the last week of summer, the holiday weekend is coming up, all of my family is going to be home, a lot of burgers, ice cream, picnic food – and then it’s nose to the grindstone” (even if it has been nose to the grindstone, as it has been for me, most of the summer).

Holidays And Vacations Often Mean Overeating

It’s the kind of holiday season mentality that starts around Thanksgiving and continues right through New Year’s Day when you swear you’ll never eat another carb again!

Or, it’s the “vacation” mentality, when all of your healthy eating promises become submerged in the deepest recesses of your brain.

Or, it’s the mentality that adds the “freshman 15 . . . or 5 . . . or 10,” the freedom at last, away from home mentality where no food is off limits.

Four Weeks Of Overeating: Changes That Last For Years

Some new research may make you think twice. Amazingly, overeating for just four weeks can cause changes in body fat and weight that last for years. For four weeks people in a study limited their activity to 5,000 steps a day or less (considered a sedentary lifestyle) and increased their caloric intake by 70% (5000+ calories a day). For two years researchers periodically monitored body weight and composition in this group and compared it to another group that did not change its diet or physical activity.

How Much Weight Gain?

The overeater/under-exerciser group gained, on average, 14 pounds. Six months after they were allowed to go back to eating and exercising normally they lost, on average, 71 percent of the gained weight but only one-third of the group members had returned to within one pound of their initial weight.

After one year the overeaters were, on average, 3.3 pounds heavier than before their four week food fest. The normal eaters had no change in body weight.

The overeaters had more body fat and higher LDL (lousy) cholesterol levels one year after their four week binge. After two and a half years, the overeaters averaged a gain of 6.8 pounds from when the study first started, but the normal eaters didn’t show any significant weight gain.

SocialDieter Tip:

Boy oh boy, the effects of gluttony are really hard to get rid of – even when those overeating habits are ditched for a healthy lifestyle. Even short periods of overeating and under-exercising can have lasting effects and make it more difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Keep that in mind around holiday time, vacations, and “let-down-your-hair” times leading up to holidays and vacations. It’ll serve you well for years to come.

What Triggers Your Overeating?

July 20, 2010 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

“No, no, no, I’m not hungry,” you say to yourself – and, five minutes later you have a lap full of crumbs and a powdered sugar mustache.

Sound familiar? Why, oh why, does this happen? What’s with the loss of control over eating?

According to David Kessler, MD (The End of Overeating), 50% of obese people, 30% of overweight people, and 20% of healthy weight people say they have a loss of control over eating.

Eating Triggers: Starting a course of events

A trigger is something that sets a course of events in motion, like overeating.

Eating triggers generally fall into three separate categories: food, feelings, and the environment.

Trigger Food

a specific food that sets off a course of overeating where you lose control and eat an excessive amount
usually a combo of sugar and fat – like brownies or gooey cookies – or a combo of fat and salt – have you downed your popcorn in the movies, lately?
Don’t confuse your food triggers with your favorite foods (the ones that you really like), your comfort foods (ones that you link to home and happiness), or food cravings (when you want a food you haven’t had in a while)
a true food trigger is the actual food, not a feeling or place that triggers the out of control eating – think: an open bag of chips – bet you can’t eat just one regardless of where you are eating or how you are feeling

Trigger Feeling

an emotion, good or bad, that causes you to overeat
anxiety and sadness are common triggers
food triggers prompt overeating of a specific food; general out of control overeating — the kind where food is often shoved in the mouth as quickly as possible in large quantities – can be precipitated by an emotional trigger

Trigger Environment

a specific situation or place that starts a period of overeating
common examples might be walking into a movie theater (popcorn), going to a buffet restaurant (one or two helpings of everything), attending a sporting event (how many hot dogs?) or visiting a relative (cookies, pie, and cake?)

Eating Triggers Are All Around You

Bottom Line – eating triggers are commonplace. When you bump up against some of yours, recognize them for what they are and have a strategies to deal with them.

Often the triggers are linked – this happens often, sometimes by design. Think about the sugar/fat and salt/fat triggers and fast food restaurants, desserts in fancy restaurants, your local bakery, the gas station convenience store. What do they have in common? Lots of food with sugar/fat and salt/fat combinations. They stare you in the face wherever you turn and at whatever hour. Stir in some feelings and emotions, a not infrequent occurrence, and you have the perfect set-up for overeating.

Ways To Outsmart Food Triggers

Figure out which food makes you lose control. Is it potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, or mac and cheese? We all have our particular triggers.

What kinds of feelings make you run for the fridge? Is it when you are sad, anxious, really happy, or just procrastinating? Once you can identify the feeling, try to substitute a behavior other than eating – maybe a walk or a project. Make a deal with yourself: if I do X then I can eat Y. But you have to do X first!

Be savvy and know when you are in the emotional danger zone where you are on the brink of rapidly spiraling out of eating control.Educate yourself about which kinds of foods are hidden saboteurs – or maybe not so hidden. Beware the sugar/fat, salt/fat, or sugar/fat/salt combos.

Educate yourself about which kinds of foods are hidden saboteurs – or maybe not so hidden. Beware the sugar/fat, salt/fat, or sugar/fat/salt combos.

Know your environmental triggers. If the gas station convenience store screams candy bar then pump your gas at a gas station with no store. If you have a history of overeating at X restaurant then go to Y instead. If you know that you always overeat at Aunt Mary’s (could be all three triggers: food, feelings, and environment are operational at her house) then have a strategy or plan in place to handle the situation. Or maybe invite her to your house.

Keep the darn trigger foods out of your house. Or, if they have to be there for other family members, or maybe for a party, make them difficult to get to. Put them in the basement or the garage. Make them inconvenient or really difficult to get to. Not only is out of sight out of mind operational, we also tend to be lazy. The more effort you have to exert to get to the food, the less likely you are to eat it.

This is a tough one: sometimes you have to avoid thinking, talking and reading about food. Brain imaging research suggests that the addictive response of the brain to food could by calmed by not thinking about food. Obviously, you can’t be abstinent from food – you need to eat – but long conversations about it, might be more than your brain can bear before you succumb to the bakery or vending machine. Don’t linger in the grocery store and skip the gourmet shop that opened three blocks away.

And, the time tested – wait at least 15 minutes then allow yourself to have the food – often works. Better yet, wait 15 minutes, try to create a diversion to get out of your trigger feeling, and change your environment – get out of the kitchen or away from the bakery aisle.