Dieting: The Worst Way to Lose Weight

It’s a familiar scenario.  You wake up on a Monday morning after a weekend of overeating feeling sick, bloated and disgusted with yourself.  The first thought that crosses your mind is, “That’s it, I can’t do this anymore.  Time to change my ways!  Today I’m going on a diet, and I swear I’ll stick to it this time!”

With renewed hope and optimism, you start your day off with a tiny bowl of fruit and pack a lunch with some raw veggies and lean protein. But by 3 or 4 o’clock you’re famished, and the battle begins. “Should I or shouldn’t I?” The vending machine calls to you, and after struggling with the impulse to resist for what seems like an age, you make a mad dash for a bag of chips.  On your way home, you stop for a burger and fries - because who cares, you blew it anyway.

Before going to sleep, you tell yourself that tomorrow is another day, and you’ll start fresh again...

Let Go of the Struggle

If you’ve tried every diet out there, from faddish to more sensible, you know this routine all too well. And you know that it never lasts.  Sometimes you’re “good” for a week, sometimes you don’t make it past breakfast.  And if you actually manage to stick it out long enough to lose a decent amount of weight, somehow it eventually seems to creep back on.

And here’s the sad truth: 95-98% of all diets fail. If your doctor recommended a treatment with that kind of failure rate, would you eagerly rush in?  Somehow, I don’t think so.

It’s so easy to blame yourself for this neverending yo-yo cycle. After all, it’s YOU who didn’t stick to the plan, it’s YOU who gave in to your cravings, and it’s YOU who’s to blame.  But what if that wasn’t true?  What if you didn’t fail your diet, but your DIET failed you?

Diets Don’t Work

A novel idea, isn’t it?  But here are a few reasons why diets don’t work:

* The reason diets are so appealing is that they make you feel like you’re being proactive.  They give you a bunch of rules to follow with the promise that if you just stick to them, you’ll lose the weight.  But just like any other plan based on optimism and hope alone, the excitement eventually wears off, and so does your motivation.

* The diet mentality is a temporary state of mind, not a way of life.  When you say, “I’m going on a diet,” you’re not trying to make incremental changes.  You’re entering “diet mode,” which is not a sustainable way of living.

* Diets don’t address the causes of weight gain, just the symptoms (the weight itself, and the calories in/calories out balance).  But there are a lot of reasons people overeat that have nothing to do with eating a “sensible diet.” Emotional eating, stress eating, mindless grazing are just a few of the causes of excess weight.

Diets Can Be Harmful to Your Health

If the only problem with diets was that they didn’t work, it might not be so bad.  But research has consistently shown that diets can in fact be hazardous to your health, both physical and mental.

* They turn on “primal hunger.” Diets are essentially a set of rules about what you can and cannot eat, and whenever we feel restricted, our inner “deprivation meter” goes on high alert.  Whether the deprivation is real (in the form of too few calories to sustain you) or perceived (that feeling you get when you aren’t allowed something), it sets off that ravenous feeling of primal hunger that screams, “FEED ME!” This usually results in backlash eating, binging, or otherwise “cheating.” Over the long term, this creates a vicious cycle of guilt, self-loathing and obsessive thinking about food.

* Diets can actually cause you to GAIN weight. One study actually showed that 2/3 of all dieters eventually gained back more weight than they originally lost.  In the author’s words, “dieting is a significant predictor of weight gain.”

* They contribute to the development of eating disorders. Another study showed that preteens who had been on a diet were 12 times more likely than their non-dieting counterparts to develop binge eating problems by the time they were in their late teens.

If I Don’t Diet, How Will I Lose Weight?

With all this evidence against dieting, it would make sense to stop the insanity and find a better way.  And of course it’s important to eat sensibly and exercise.  But an excessive focus on counting calories and restricting yourself is not going to work. So what WILL work?

Looking at the missing ingredient: your relationship with food. In order for your weight to change, so do your thoughts, feelings and actions around food.  And the best way to do that is to develop an intuitive, or mindful approch to eating.  Stay tuned for next month’s article to learn more about this approach and how it can help transform your eating for good.

15 Tips for Holiday Eating Without Weight Gain

by Michelle May, M.D.

Do you anticipate the holidays but dread the “inevitable” holiday weight gain? Do your holiday events revolve around eating more than the meaning, people, presents, decorations, or travel?

Avoiding holiday weight gain and eating healthy during the holidays can be a real challenge unless you have a great strategy.  These 15 holiday eating tips will help you avoid holiday weight gain and enjoy the season more while eating less.

1.  It is easier to get distracted from signals of physical hunger and satiety at social gatherings, especially if food is the main event. Make an effort to pay close attention to your body’s signals.

2.  Be a food snob. Skip the store-bought goodies, the dried-out fudge and the so-so stuffing. If the food you select doesn’t taste as good as you expected, stop eating it and choose something else. Think of how much less you’d eat if you only ate things that tasted fabulous!

3.  Think of your appetite as an expense account. How much do you want to spend on appetizers or the entree? Do you want to save some room for dessert? Go through this process mentally to avoid eating too much food and feeling uncomfortable for the rest of the evening.

4.  Pace your eating prior to the event so you’ll be hungry but not famished at mealtime. But please, ignore the old diet advice of “eat before you go to a party so you won’t be tempted.” That is absurd! You want to be hungry enough to enjoy your favorites.

5.  Socialize away from the sight of the food. People who tend to overeat are “food suggestible” so just hanging around food causes them to eat more than they need.

6.  Survey all of the food at a buffet before making your choices. Choose the foods that you really want most at that time and remind yourself that you can have the other foods at a later time.

7.  If the food is so special, give it your full attention rather than eating on autopilot. Eat mindfully by reducing distractions and sitting down to eat - even if it’s just a cookie. Appreciate the appearance and aroma of your food and savor one small bite at a time by putting your fork down. You’ll eat less food but enjoy it more.

8.  If the food doesn’t taste as good as you expected, stop eating it and choose something else.

9.  Since the duration of the meal tends to be extended at social events, you may need to have your plate taken away (or put your napkin on it) once you are satisfied to avoid nibbling unconsciously.

10. Be aware of the effects of alcohol on your food intake. And don’t forget that many beverages contain calories too.

11. Be cautious of “obligatory eating” - avoid eating just because it is on the table, on your plate, because you paid for it, it’s free, or because someone made it. Deal with Food Pushers with a polite but firm, “No thank you.” If you’re concerned about hurting their feelings, ask for the recipe or a small portion to take home with you for another meal.

12. It’s common to have candy and snacks lying all over the place this time of year. Avoid indulging in food just because it’s there. Grazing unconsciously leads to extra calories that you probably won’t even remember enjoying.

13. Before having a cookie, a piece of fudge or other holiday treat that was laid in the break room, check your hunger level. If you’re hungry and you choose a favorite food to satisfy you, remember to sit down and eat it mindfully - no guilt.

14. At restaurants, the portion sizes are usually huge - almost always “two for the price of one.” Request appetizer portions, co-order and co-eat with your dining partner, or have the server package up your meal to go as soon as you feel satisfied. Remember, “super-size” is no bargain if you didn’t need that much food in the first place!

15. Look for opportunities for physical activity - take a walk after dinner to enjoy the lights, take a few laps around the mall before it opens to do some window shopping or take guests to local attractions.

Most importantly, delight all of your senses.  Enjoy the company, the atmosphere, the entertainment, and the traditions as much, if not more, than the food.

How to Be a Food Snob

I’ll never forget the day I figured out I was a food snob. There I was, sitting in a graduate seminar chatting with a colleague, when she pulled out a granola bar that looked interesting.  I said, “Wow, I’ve never seen that kind before, but then again I never buy granola bars.” And when she replied, “Of course you don’t, you’re a total food snob!”, I was taken aback.  Was this an insult? After a few seconds, I thought, “Yes, yes I am a food snob!” and thanked her for her compliment.

What is a Food Snob?

What the heck is a food snob, you might ask, and why should you be proud to be one? Good question!  A food snob is someone who has an epicurean zeal for high quality, fresh and fancy food.

Here are some of the traits and behaviour patterns of a food snob:

* They prefer to buy their food from specialty shops; bread from bakeries, meat from butcher shops, and nuts and grains from bulk food stores.

* When in a suburban-style mega-grocery store, they mostly avoid the centre aisles, opting instead for fresh produce and dairy.

* They don’t buy things that come in crinkly bags or brightly coloured boxes with cartoon characters on them.

* Whatever they do buy from centre aisles has to be imported from some foreign country and in a glass bottle with a fancy label, thank you very much.

* They love to visit farmer’s markets, and pick out local produce with the eye of a jeweller choosing the finest gems.

* They also love to try new things; the more exotic and unpronounceable, the better.

* When eating out, they get excited by hole-in-the-wall restaurants that serve delicious, unusual, flavourful meals made with high-quality ingredients. What they avoid are fast food and chain restaurants.  There’s something a little bit wrong about being able to get the same meal with the same taste at opposite ends of the continent.

* They take pleasure in going food shopping, taking their time to examine each fruit carefully, ponder the various merits of different kinds of cheese, and fantasize about the meals that will result from this particular trip.

* Cooking is taken to the extremes of an Olympic sport.  Hours are regularly set aside to carefully execute new recipes that result in multi-course meals.  These are most often paired with good friends and good wine.

* They opt for cooking shows over reality TV.

* New recipes passed on by family and friends can often generate a squeal of excitement.

Benefits of Being a Food Snob

There are LOTS of benefits to being a food snob. Here are a few:

* You feel fancy. Feel free to don designer sunglasses and a silk scarf to go shopping with your straw bag (I exaggerate).

* When you buy high quality ingredients, you spend more, but you also eat less and don’t let things go to waste.  Wouldn’t you rather eat a single, hand-made decadent chocolate truffle from a specialty shop than an entire candy bar from a gas station?

* You learn to enjoy grocery shopping rather than see it as weekly (or worse, bi-monthly) excursion to a drab, concrete block of a store that also happens to sell clothing and consumer electronics.

* You support the local economy and local farmers.

* You reduce your environmental impact by trying not to buy things that are excessively packaged.

* You can feel proud to say that you don’t succumb to the advertising industry‘s dictates of what you should eat.

* You never get bored of the same old thing.

* Cooking becomes a fun, creative expression of who you are instead of a grim task to be endured.

* Fewer processed foods means a healthier, slimmer body.

* You might actually get famous if you pull a Julie & Julia.

* Most importantly, REAL pleasure is taken from food, the kind where everything is slowly savoured, fully appreciated and shared with loved ones.

Not everyone can incorporate all of these suggestions at once.  But take a good, long look at how you see food: shopping for it, cooking it and eating it.  See if you can start with a few small changes, like visiting a farmer’s market on your way home once in a while to savour seasonal goodies.  I promise, being a food snob will change your life!

Great article on intuitive eating

Check out this great article on intuitive eating I found.  The reporter describes a woman in California who is about to conduct a clinical study to evaluate how effective it is.  I think this is GREAT news, because very little attention is usually paid to overeating in the research world.  Most studies on eating disorders focus on bulimia and anorexia nervosa, but rarely (or never) on the overeating without purging.  Looking forward to seeing the results!

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/379250.html

Back from Florida: Some observations on eating

Last week my husband and I returned from a two-week trip to Fort Lauderdale. I promised my newsletter readers I’d comment on some of my observations I made while down there, and here they are.  There are really two things I want to discuss - how I managed to keep up my own healthy eating habits and some of the ways American eating habits differ from our own (in Canada).

First off, it was surprisingly easy to stick to my intuitive eating habits that I’ve been developing over the last little while. I was actually stressing out a little before I left because I thought I’d be tempted to eat everything in sight because I was on vacation.  I was also worried that even if I wanted to make healthy choices, I’d be stuck with eating crap food from American chains like Cracker Barrel, McDonald’s (the horror!), and T.G.I. Friday’s because of a lack of proper restaurants that were reasonably priced.  Boy, did I surprise myself!

I found it was actually easier to eat intuitively while on vacation. No schedules, no running around and no stress meant that I could lounge about in the sun all day and eat whenever I felt like it, which was usually at very odd times of the day.  My day ALWAYS starts off with a healthy breakfast, so I just kept up that habit.  Having a mini-fridge and microwave in our room meant that we could do groceries and prepare a few of our own meals rather than have to eat out three times a day.  It also meant eating only when and if we were hungry.  Much to my delight, it turned out that there was a Whole Foods Market not far from our hotel, so I relished being able to to pick out healthy and delicious meals to keep in our room.  (To my Canadian readers, Whole Foods is a grocery store that specializes in gourmet, healthy, and organic food.  The next time you’re in the States, I insist that you visit one: Loblaws will never look the same to you again.)

In terms of restaurant choices, we deliberately only went to places that served proper food, as close to home-cooked as possible. We only ate fast food once, and that was to satisfy my husband’s cravings, not mine, if you can believe it.  We got snack-sized sandwiches, and shared the fries.  We found a great Greek place not far from our hotel, that was like eating at home.  It was so good, we ate there three times!  I also tried to eat one salad a day, since I have a tendency to neglect my vegetables while on vacation, which tends to “back me up” (a common problem with vacationers).

One disturbing observation, however: the times we did choose to eat out, I noticed the meals tended to be very rushed. Not by us, but by the waitstaff.  About a minute after being seated, often even before having a chance to open the menu, the waiter would come by to take our order.  When we stammered that we weren’t ready yet, they’d keep coming back every minute or so until we choose our dinners.  Talk about being pressured!  And everyone knows that when you’re pressured, you tend to make impulse (read: unhealthy) decisions.  The food usually arrived fairly quickly, nothing unusually fast, and then we proceeded to eat like we normally would back home.  Usually, when I eat out, I take my time, savouring each bite, making conversation, etc.  However, I noticed that down there, most of the time the waiter would come back with our bill about five minutes after starting to eat.  I thought was not only very strange, but very rude!  It really makes you feel like you’d better hurry up and eat and get the heck out of there. 

All this to say that eating out wasn’t a relaxing, enjoyable experience, but rather a rushed and somewhat stressful one.  If that’s how all Americans treat their meals, like something to be done with ASAP, then it’s no wonder mindful eating is so rare and obesity so common.  If anyone else has had similar experiences, I’d love to hear them! Feel free to comment at the end of this post.

The real definition of conscious eating

There’s a lot of buzz these days about conscious (or mindful) eating. This usually refers to being fully present and conscious while you are eating, paying attention to the taste and texture, as well to your body’s fullness signals.  A very important part of having a healthy relationship with food.

But how conscious are we really of what we’re eating? My mom sent me an email today warning against buying chicken from China (http://www.snopes.com/photos/food/chinachicken.asp), and while the jury is still out on the validity of these claims, it does raise some interesting questions.

When picking out your produce or animal protein, do you ever ask yourself:
* What were the conditions in which the animal lived?
* How was the animal killed, and under what kind of conditions?
* What kinds of chemicals was the food exposed to (fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, toxins in the earth/ocean/food chain)?
* Where was this food grown?
* Were there enough nutrients in the soil in which the food was grown?
* How was the food harvested?
* Was it ripe when it was harvested?
* How far did the food have to travel before getting to your supermarket, and under what conditions?

Food for thought, indeed.