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reward food

Is Your Workplace A Food Landmine?

October 11, 2011 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Your workplace can be a major food landmine when you’re trying to eat well.

We spend a lot of hours at work — whether that means time at the office, at home, in the car, on an airplane, in a hotel, in a retail store, or anywhere else you conduct your business.  The challenges are enormous — especially in the face of ever-present food – a good deal of which is carb and fat loaded – and an environment which can range from fast paced, stressful, and overwhelming to boring or downright exhausting.

Using Food To Cope, Manage, And Procrastinate

All of this can push you into using food as a means of coping, procrastinating, or looking for energy to ward off fatigue.

  • Try to identify what you usually do when you’re stressed, tired, or angry.  If your usual action is to grab a cookie or candy bar try to manage your stress without the reward foods. Instead of turning to a high-calorie, high-fat trigger foods to calm your nerves or as a reward, try some healthy, stress-relieving practices like deep breathing and meditation — and make them your default.
  • Make a deal with yourself to work some activity into your workday.  Instead of using eating as an excuse to take a break, make taking a short walk – even if it’s around your office or to another floor — an essential part of your day. The quick walk will get you out of the immediate environment, let you blow off some steam, and burn an extra calorie or two. If you travel, walk in the airport rather than plopping yourself down in the food court or bar.
  • If you eat out or order take out for any of your meals, scout out the restaurants, delis, salad bars – or even your own workplace lunchroom.  Identify the meal choices that are the best for you and make them your “go-tos” so you’re not caught in the trap of being starving or too busy to care when you order.   Have you ever been so hungry that you throw your best laid plans out the window and end up eating a whole pizza followed by a piece of chocolate cake?
  • If you plan your route to work to intentionally pass your favorite coffee shop with the absolute best blueberry muffins — or find yourself using the rest room on the next floor because you have to walk by the vending machine with peanut M&Ms — think about changing your route.   Don’t taunt yourself with temptation. Do some thinking and planning.  If you’re going to have a snack, plan for it –  know what you’re going to eat and stick to your choice.  Contemplating your choices while standing in front of a bakery display or vending machine filled with candy or salty treats is a sure fire recipe for caving in.  Don’t deny yourself food – just make it good food.
  • It’s always someone’s birthday — or it’s a holiday — or someone has brought in leftovers from their kid’s party  or a recipe that you just have to taste.  By the way, the reason they probably brought in the leftovers is because they don’t want them hanging around their house tempting them.  Have a strategy for the inevitable food fest of leftover cake, pizza, and bagels. Perhaps allow yourself a once or twice a week treat.  Just don’t make the snack room a routine place to visit to scrounge for the leftover cake.
  • Install your own personal policy for bowl dipping —  you know – the dipping into the candy bowl at the receptionist’s desk, the jelly beans on your partner’s desk, the chocolates on the counter. Use whatever reason you have to – maybe think about all of the other hands – and where those hands have been – that are also dipping into the same bowl.
  • If your desk drawer filled with reward food that stares at you every time you open the drawer, aren’t you tempting fate?  See it — eat it.   Need I say more?

 

Filed Under: Calorie Tips, Healthy Eating, Food Facts, Eating on the Job, Eating with Family and Friends, Manage Your Weight, Snacking, Noshing, Tasting, Takeout, Prepared Food, Junk Food Tagged With: activity, calories, comfort food, eating on the job, multi-tasking, reward food, stress, takeout food, vending machine, weight management strategies, workplace eating

What’s In Your Cupboards — And Why Is It There?

January 14, 2011 By Penny Klatell, PhD, RN Leave a Comment

Take a look in your fridge and in your cupboards.  What’s in there?  Why did you buy it and when? Sometimes figuring out what to buy and eat is really tough.  Here are a baker’s dozen categories.  Which do you fall into most frequently?

1.     Are you a bargain shopper looking to get the largest amount of food for your money —  so you buy a dozen of what’s on sale or two of the gigantic size at Costco?  Check your cupboard or the back of your fridge there still might be some “bargains” left over from two years ago.

2.     Do you look for the most calories for your money (supersize me) — the biggest bang for your buck?  This often goes hand in hand with #1 above.

3.     Do you want the best nutrition for your money so you shop in CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) or go on the hunt for country farm stands? Do you then end up with so much produce that some of it rots and you have to toss it –- or, you’re so overloaded with kale or spinach that you never want to look at it again?

4.     Do you buy only what you want to eat – with no regard to cost, calories, or meal planning of any kind? My guess is that most people in this group are younger than 35.

5.     Do you buy food that you think, in the interest of your health or your family’s, that you and/or they should eat?  The problem is that a lot of these foods may not be what you want to prepare and what no one wants to eat.  The food you and your family like probably disappears quickly and the stuff that no one really likes ends up feeding the garbage pail.

6.     Do you buy special or celebratory food because it’s someone’s birthday, or Thanksgiving, or Easter, or Halloween?  Do you really buy it because of holiday traditions or because the holiday has given you an excuse to buy – and indulge – in what you ordinarily wouldn’t?

7.     How about the food you’ve always wanted to try and you bought on the spur of the moment because you happened to see it in the store. Then you got the food home and realized that you didn’t know how to prepare it or found out that the preparation is way too complicated – or that your spouse or partner really hates it.

8.     What about the product of the moment – which might fall into any number of categories.  It could be trendy, the latest low-fat wonder, or the cake mix your neighbor said was so good.  Maybe it’s good, maybe not.

9.     Then there’s the diet foods:  the  low or no fat, low or no sugar, fiber rich, reduced calorie food you bought in an endless quest for the miracle food that won’t pack on the pounds.

10.  What about “nutrition” foods – the ones with claims plastered all over the label that they can prevent or cure just about anything?

11.  Or, the convenience foods – the stuff, probably already prepared and/or processed, frozen, or take-out  — that you grab when you are totally exhausted or exasperated and you want to get the food on the table and not have anyone complain about it.

12.  Let’s not forget the craving foods – the sugar, fat, and salt foods that keep you coming back for more.

13.  And, last but not least, the reward foods — the “I’ve had such a tough day” or “I’ve been so good all day” food that almost always packs a whopper of a sugar, fat, and caloric punch.

Sometimes there is a time and place for food from any of these categories.  But, if you are a mindful, not mindless, eater you might want to think about the category you land in most frequently.

Did I miss any categories?  Please let me know what you think.

Filed Under: Calorie Tips, Healthy Eating, Food Facts, Manage Your Weight, Shopping, Cooking, Baking Tagged With: food shopping, kitchen, mindful choices, packaged food, reward food, supermarket, weight management strategies

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