Eat Out and Eat Less: Study Shows Mindfulness Cuts Calories

Taking care of your diet wellness is not without its challenges when you just stick to the confines of your own house, but you might as well say goodbye to your wellbeing once you start eating out. Between the supersizes and the high-calorie dishes, restaurants are often a factor involved in weight gain, even if you just eat out once or twice a week. According to Gayle Timmerman, PhD, a nursing professor at The University of Texas at Austin who studies eating patterns, ‘The restaurant is a high-risk food environment; there’s a pretty good chance if you eat out frequently you’re likely to gain weight over time.’ Luckily, Timmerman’s new study looks at how mindful eating can help you eat out, guilt-free.

The study, published in the Journal of Nutrition and Education Behaviour, included 35 middle-aged women who ate out at least three times per week and ranged in body size from slim to morbidly obese. These women were divvied up into a control group, and another group that followed a mindful eating programme. This involved a series of dining techniques that focused on close attention to the enjoyment of eating and feelings of hunger and fullness. Even though the women in the mindfulness group didn’t change their eating out or ordering in habits – and were doing so nearly six times a week, on average – they’d lost an average of 3.75 pounds and were eating about 300 fewer calories per day.

However, the mindful eating benefits didn’t just apply to dinners out or takeaways; these habits also translated into healthier home behaviours. ‘Once you’ve learned mindful eating skills, you tend to use them whether you are eating at your own kitchen table or at a five-star restaurant,’ comments Susan Albers, Psy.D., a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of Eating Mindfully. ‘In general, we’ve lost the art of savouring food. We can eat an entire plate of food and not taste one bite. Mindful eating skills teach you how to eat less but enjoy it more.’ She adds that mindful eating involves ‘breaking those autopilot habits that we have around eating.’ So, how do you do it?

1. Think again before you order: When you go to the same restaurants all the time, you can end up falling into a rut of ordering the same dishes. You can also say yes without thinking when a waiter suggests an appetiser, so try to approach each dinner out with new eyes and ears.

2. Make each calorie count: What do you really love to eat? Wouldn’t you rather save your calorie budget and spend it on an eating experience that’s worth it? Timmerman asks, ‘Does that cheese on the burger really make it for you? If not, that’s about a hundred calories.’

3. Get saucy on the side: Whatever you can say “on the side” to – gravy, salad dressing, butter — do it. ‘Then you have control of how much…you really need or want on there,’ notes Timmerman.

4. Think about a doggy bag before you eat: When the plate appears in front of you, don’t tuck in straightaway without thinking. Take a moment and ask yourself how hungry you are on a scale of one to 10, and how that number relates to the food on your plate. If you’re only a “six” on the scale of one to ravenous, work out how much of your dinner will fill that gap, and plan to take the rest home in a doggy bag.

5. Really pay attention: Timmerman urges, ‘When you’re eating, really be aware of…the sight and the texture and the taste of food. We go out to eat because it’s enjoyable, it’s pleasurable, it tastes good—all of that. If you’re really paying attention, maybe you don’t have to eat the whole basket of fries; you can eat just a handful.’

Categories: doggy bag, eating, eating skills, Food, Habits, mindful, Mindful Eating, Research, timmerman, Tips

Four Things You NEED to Do if You Want to Lose Weight

In order to diet effectively, you need to understand the importance of eating smaller portions. Often, we can gorge ourselves on more food than we actually need, which has a negative impact on our overall health and wellness. However, it’s not just eating smaller portions that’s vital to weight loss, but to actually enjoy eating smaller portions as you would enjoy a buffet of your favourite foods. If you are satisfied with what you ate during this meal, you’ll be better able to control your cravings for the next one, and mindful eating can help you achieve this. So, how can you get your diet wellness in shape and adopt a mindful eating strategy?

 

1. Recognise signs of hunger: Eating for reasons other that hunger – such as stress or boredom – means you’ll never learn to be satisfied. So, if you aren’t truly hungry try and divert your attention by talking on the phone or going for a walk. You should plan on what to eat as soon as you start to feel hungry, as leaving it until you’re famished means you’ll automatically crave for foods that are readily available, such as junk foods and packaged foods.

 

 2. Eat without any guilt: You need to understand the difference between hunger and cravings: hunger is your stomach’s way of telling you it needs fuel; cravings come from your brain wanting to indulge in something. The two are very different. However, depriving your body of your favourite foods can lead to more cravings, so eating everything is not a bad idea as long as you practise portion control. Mindful eating is all about eating foods you like – after all, you’re not going to want to pay attention to what you’re eating if you think it’s disgusting! Enjoy your food without guilt, but plan it carefully.

 

3. Feed all your senses: Savouring food means making sure all your senses are satisfied, as this will enable you to feel fuller. Create a good ambiance by setting the table in a pleasant way, and remove all distractions like TV and your phone. Make sure the meal has your complete attention, and that you enjoy it with someone you like. Sitting in front of the TV on your bed while eating out of a Tupperware box will only make you eat more and enjoy the food less. When it comes to the food, everything should be visually appetising. You should notice the texture of your food when you eat, as well as the smells and flavours coming from various spices. Making the effort to heat up your food – instead of eating cold, pre cooked food stashed away in the fridge – can enhance taste and aroma.

 

4. Don’t save the best for last: When you’re eating an elaborate meal made up of many dishes, saving the best for last means you will end up finishing up the whole dish even if you are full. The best thing to do is to start with your favourite part of the meal, so that you’re not tempted to overeat when you’re left with the mediocre dishes at the end. After helping number one, put down your spoon and don’t pick it up again for a full two minutes. This will give you the time and space you need to decide whether that seconding helping is really necessary. Because you programme your brain to expect a certain size of rice or number of bread slices, you eat this amount even if you’re not really that hungry. But hunger is a variable….so why should portions be fixed? Don’t go for seconds until you have established that you want to eat more.

Categories: cravings, eating, eating smaller, favourite foods, Food, foods, hunger, Mindful Eating, portion control, Senses

How to Be Just Like Your “Naturally Skinny” Friends

You’ve got that one friend who can eat like a pig and still say slim – why are you friends with her again?! Sometimes, weight wellness can seem like one giant lottery, in which your friend was given the “skinny genes” while you got lumped with the dumpy DNA. Such thinking can put you off making any effort to diet or take care of your wellbeing at all; what’s the point? Still, is it all a case of luck-of-the-draw, or can you actually learn from your slim friend’s subconscious weight loss habits?

 

According to registered dietician Cynthia Sass, MPH, RD, author of the New York Times best seller is S.A.S.S! Yourself Slim: Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds and Lose Inches, ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned in 15+ years of private practice, it’s that weight management is about far more than calories in, calories out. In addition to genetics, there are dozens of patterns that day after day, week after week, influence our shapes and sizes. Many of the habits of seemingly “naturally slim” people aren’t deliberate, but you can consciously adopt them. Over time, they’ll soon become second nature, and work for you too.’

 

1. Fidgeting: People who are always tapping their toes, talking with their hands and shuffling in their chairs can burn as many as 350 extra calories a day, which is the equivalent of talking a daily 60-minute walk at four miles per hour. Sass advises, ‘Stand up while you talk on the phone or brainstorm, get up from your desk every hour on the hour to sip water, stretch, or just walk around the room…For one of my clients, this change not only resulted in weight loss, but also a surge in creativity, which makes sense, since movement enhances circulation.’

 

2. Eating without distractions: Sass notes, ‘The other day, I saw a woman strolling through Target, placing items into her card, while simultaneously eating and talking on the phone. While it may be efficient to do several things at once, people who eat mindfully and without distractions tend to eat less and feel more satisfied.’ You can naturally consume 300 fewer calories a day simply by taking a few deep breaths before you eat, and focusing on the aromas, flavours, and textures of your food.

 

3. Ordering what you want, even if it’s not on the menu: While asking for a customised meal in a restaurant seems like the most un-British thing to do ever, it’s a major habit of naturally slim people. Sass recommends her clients do the following activity: ‘recall a recent meal that left you feeling stuffed and sluggish, then write down how you would modify your order to result in what I call the “Goldilocks effect” – not too little, not too much, just right. One hundred percent of the time, the imagined do-over meals are more balanced, far lower in calories, and much more “sensible.” Apply that logic every time you dine out, and you’ll end restaurant eater’s remorse.’

 

4. Rethinking waste: Sass recalls, ‘Through keeping food journals, one of my clients recently discovered that she nearly always finished her kids’ leftovers. When we talked about why (e.g. what was she thinking and feeling while doing this?), she realised it was because she couldn’t let the food go to waste. This mindset also resulted in frequently eating until she was uncomfortably full.’ However, the client soon realised that stuffing leftovers was equally wasteful, as it wasn’t going to help anyone in need and she was just wasting calories. Instead of gorging on leftovers, save them for tomorrow’s lunch or make smaller portions in the first place.

Categories: calories, Fidgeting, Mindful Eating, Naturally Slim, nbsp, people, sass, Slim, slim people, Weight Loss

Emotional Eating: The Common Saboteur of Weight Management

We’ve all had that break-up that had to be soothed with a tub of ice-cream, or that stressful workday which would not go away until we had a giant bar of chocolate. However, emotional eating can be detrimental to your diet, and, most of the time, a sign that an underlying wellness problem needs to be resolved.

According to Louise Adams, a Sydney-based clinical psychologist who specialises in eating disorders and emotional eating, ‘With emotional eating, dieting is barking up the wrong tree. You need to get to the reason behind the eating.’ This can be happiness or boredom, but Adams rates stress and anxiety as two of the major drivers of emotional eating. She says that you turn to food for comfort for the same reason others turn to alcohol or other drugs – because you haven’t been taught skills to cope with bad feelings.

‘We need to recognise that it’s OK to have a strong feeling that makes you feel bad – yet we have this idea in our culture that a negative feeling must be banished straight away,’ Adams notes. ‘Look how often we distract children with something like a biscuit if they’re upset. We’re not taught to ride out the feeling. Instead we learn to numb it with alcohol, eating or drugs.’

She continues, ‘Yet if you learn to sit with the feeling, you realise that it’s like a wave – it builds in intensity and then it passes. It’s very empowering to realise you can handle it. I think that as parents we need to teach kids that negative emotions happen, that we’re not happy all the time. If my five-year-old says she’s annoyed because of something her sister did, I’ll say, “Being annoyed is normal.”’

Instead of dieting, Adams recommends mindful eating, and gets her clients to use a zero-to-seven hunger scale that rates ravenous as zero and stuffed as seven. ‘Do your best to stop eating when you’re satisfied, at four or five, before the stuffed stage and to eat at slightly hungry, two to three, before you reach the ravenous stage – that’s when it becomes too easy to overeat. I get people to think of ‘ravenous’ as a punch on the arm and moderate hunger as a tap on the shoulder that reminds you to eat,’ she says.

Adams adds, ‘It’s also about slowing down and engaging with the food rather than eating while you’re doing something else such as working or watching television. If you’re not engaged with the food, not only can you miss recognising the fullness signals but you also miss out on the experience of enjoying the food. Emotional eaters feel as if they’re not in control, but the wonderful thing about mindful eating is that when you’ve mastered it, you feel you are in control – and if you keep practising, you’ll be in control.’

Emotional Eating: The Common Saboteur of Weight Management

Categories: emotional eating, Mindful Eating, weight gain