How to Mindlessly Eat Better



Arrange your home and work environments
 to help you to make healthy food choices 


The food industry knows what we like. Sugar, fat, and salt have incredible power over us, and for a very good reason—survival. I recently had an opportunity to interview and attend a lecture by Brian Wansink, PhD, behavioral psychologist and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think. We are programmed to love the taste of sugar, salt and fat according to Wansink. Our ancestors knew that sweet berries were safer to eat than bitter ones, and that they supplied us with much needed quick energy to help us build civilizations and flee danger. Fatty foods provided energy reserves to help us through periods of famine. Salt helped our active forbearers to retain water and prevent dehydration. Finding convenient food was also important for survival. The less time prehistoric humans spent in the pursuit of food, the less risk they had of encountering something that would pursue them as food. The concerns that our ancient ancestors had for survival are not as relevant to us today, but our preferences for sugar, fat, salt and convenience persist. Do not blame the food industry for the overabundance of convenient foods loaded with sugar, salt and fat. Dr. Wansink contends that the food industry’s only concern is to sell you the foods that you want. “They could care less if you eat it” he claims.

Our desire for sugar, salt, fat and convenience paired with a very marketing savvy food industry are a part of the reason we have become the fattest nation on earth. We make over 200 food decisions in a day, and many of those decisions are mindless. Dr. Wansink’s research shows that calorie consumption is greater when we are cued to eat mindlessly. He also discovered that no one is immune to it. Wansink studied graduate students who were trained to understand the concept of mindless eating, and found that they were just as likely to engage in eating mindlessly as anyone else. Education and intelligence do not prevent mindless eating.

It seems the answer to mindless eating would be to become more mindful of what we put into our mouths. However, Wansink believes that mindfulness requires too much energy to maintain. Instead he believes that we should adjust our environment to allow us to mindlessly eat better.

Eating Cues

There are many cues that promote mindless eating and they very often trump hunger. The cues around us suggest when it is time for us to eat; we may habitually eat at a certain time or take a specific amount of food because that is what we are used to doing. We develop unhealthy habits that we engage in frequently simply because they have become normal. Wansink has discovered that we can eat on average 20% more or less without being aware of it. He calls this the mindless eating margin. Big portion sizes and giant-sized packages have helped us to become accustomed to eating more. Making a few small changes can help us to eat less. The following is a list of cues that promote mindless eating with suggestions how we can re-engineer our environment to mindlessly eat better.

• Dish and Utensil Size: Larger plates, bowls and serving spoons can encourage us to eat about 25-30% more food.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Use smaller plates, bowls and spoons when serving and eating food.

• Glass Shape: We pour a greater volume of beverage in short wide glasses than in tall narrow ones. A study conducted on bartenders showed that they over poured beverages an average of 37% in short wide glasses.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Drink only from tall thin glasses.

• Food Package Size: The larger the food package, the more we tend to eat.
Mindlessly Eat Better: When buying larger packages for value repackage the food into smaller portions at home right away and hide the extras.

• Variety: When presented with a greater variety of food we will eat more total food than when we are given fewer food choices.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Provide a greater variety of healthy foods during meals such as offering two vegetables and/or a piece of fruit every time you eat.

• Visibility: If we see food we will most likely eat it. In one study, participants ate 71% more candy when the candy in the dish was visible.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Place healthier foods in visible locations and less healthy foods in less visible locations in your workplace and home.

• Family-Style Meals: We tend to take more food per serving and take additional servings of food when it is offered family-style.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Serve foods such as vegetables and fruits family style and serve entrées and bread, rice or pasta from the counter. Having to get up from the table to serve more food provides enough pause for us to determine if we are still hungry.

• Distractions: Eating while doing other activities such as reading, working on the computer, watching TV or eating with other people promotes mindless eating.
Mindlessly Eat Better: Eat only fruits and vegetables when doing other activities. When eating with other people, pace yourself to be the last one to start eating and the last one to finish eating to avoid taking extra food.

Wansink says that, “it is easier to change your environment than to change your mind.” He is currently involved in a program called The Smarter Lunchroom Initiative whose mission is “to design sustainable research-based lunchrooms that subtly guide smarter choices.” Most lunchroom changes cost less than $50. By making healthy foods more visible (serving fruit in a nice bowl in a well-lit area) and offering a greater variety of healthy choices (two vegetables instead of one) schools can significantly promote healthier eating among students.

These strategies can also be used in home and work environments. Anyone can make two easy changes to eat better. You will hardly notice that you are hungry with a daily decrease of about 100-200 calories, but you will be establishing new eating patterns that will lead to significant weight loss and improved health over time. Don’t let another day, month or year go by without making a consistent change. Think about it, in a year you could be ten pounds heavier if you do nothing or ten pounds lighter if you change your environment.

This article will be published in Rochester Healthy Living.

Facebook Moratorium

The social network connection

I often wonder why I spend so much time creating my online presence using social media tools such as Facebook. There are a few reasons that I use Facebook professionally. It is a great tool for staying connected with my colleagues and keeping on top of cutting edge news in my field. It also serves as a valuable resource for getting my message out to my clients, although I question if I'm really reaching my ideal client. It's difficult to tell the impact that I'm having without getting feedback in the form of comments. I carefully look for information to post to help others make positive diet and fitness changes and have only once been made aware of the value of this work to my audience. It is important to me to stay connected with my audience but difficult to to so when I wonder if I even have an audience.

Social media is a time sink. Facebook and Twitter eat up time that I should spend doing other things to grow my business. There already is enough to keep us tethered to our computers without the addition of Facebook and Twitter. In the back of my mind I think that I should spend more time in endeavors that will make money rather than posting free information for an invisible audience.

To make matters worse, I have been gaining weight lately despite exercising regularly. I can't help but think that all this sitting behind a computer is a bad thing for humans in general. My recent weight gain has spurred me into action. I have decided to impose a moratorium on Facebook and Twitter for the next week. Every time that I think about checking my social media accounts I will do ten jumping jacks and ten push-ups instead. One of the purposes of my social media existence is to inspire others to improve their lifestyle. I can think of no better place to start doing this than with myself. The calories we burn when we exercise are a small fraction of what we burn in a whole day. Our goal should be to pursue activity all day long. So whenever I have the urge to post an article, picture of food, recipe or any other tidbit that I find interesting, I will be active instead. I wonder how many jumping jacks and push-ups I will complete in a week. I'm sure that I will be doing quite a few of them. Social media has become a big part of my professional life in the past couple of years.

I will return to sharing information on Facebook and Twitter after a week, but I will incorporate my new habit of activity before every interaction. I encourage everyone else to attach some form of physical activity to your more sedentary pursuits.

To Health!

What are some of your impressions about social media?

My 500-Calorie Bowl of Cereal

I admit that I don't always eat breakfast immediately upon waking up in the morning and sometimes I wait until I've finished my early morning workout. I eat breakfast every day, but I'm often not hungry first thing in the morning. One or two hours after waking up, when hunger kicks in, I look forward to eating a healthy and satisfying breakfast.

With the release of the new Dietary Guidelines a week ago, I've been paying particular attention to the recommendation to make half of my plate fruits and vegetables. Dietitians have been recommending this for years. Half of all the foods that we eat in a day should be fruits and vegetables. Breakfast is a great place to eat a full serving (or two) of fruit. It's also a great place to eat whole grains and satisfy the Dietary Guideline to make half of our grains whole.

How do you pick a healthy breakfast cereal? I choose a whole grain cereal, either cooked or dry. The first ingredients listed on the package should say "whole" and the list should not be excessively long or contain unrecognizable ingredients. I also look at fiber and sugar. I don't always choose the highest fiber cereal because sometimes it comes with too much sugar. Currently, I'm eating Cascadian Farm Organic Multigrain Squares. Three-quarters of a cup has 2 grams of dietary fiber and 4 grams of sugar. I eat about one and a quarter cups which is 3 grams of fiber and 6 grams of sugar. The calories listed on a cereal box are the last thing that I look at. I find that many of the low calorie breakfast cereals are anemic; they don't provide much nutrition and can leave you hungry an hour later. I'd much rather eat a cereal with substance, and for a cereal to have substance, it must have some calories.

To my bowl of cereal, I add a hefty portion of fruit. I easily add more than a cup of fruit. I'm trying to fill half of the bowl with fruit. I add my own fruit rather than choose a cereal with fruit-like pieces that may or may not be real fruit. All this fruit provides me with a bounty of antioxidants, nutrients and fiber, and it fills me up. I top off my cereal with a scant quarter cup of nuts for added nutrients, fiber and protein and a full cup of milk (I prefer soy milk) for more protein.

My 500-calorie bowl of cereal sufficiently fuels my morning activities and meets my nutritional needs.  I'm not hungry again until lunch, at which time I'm ready for my 500-calorie leftovers!  

To Weigh or Not To Weigh

Should you weigh yourself every day? Good question! We used to teach restraint with the bathroom scale. We thought that it was better to weigh only once a week so that you could see your progress over time and not be fixated on the slight fluctuations that happen in normal weight management. Well, data from the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) show otherwise. People who are successful losing weight and maintaining weight loss, weigh themselves daily. The logic is that if (or when) you gain a couple of pounds, you will correct for that gain with more activity or decreased food intake. This is an important skill to master in weight loss and maintenance.

Energy balance is maintained when energy intake is equal to energy output. But this equation is not easy to achieve, in fact, it probably is never achieved on any one day. The best that research has been able to show is within 50 to 100 calories of input or output. So there is never a day when we burn 2000 calories and eat 2000 calories. Maybe we burn 2014 calories and we eat 2115 calories. And the next day we burn 2354 calories (we exercised that day) and we eat 2274 calories. And that's how it goes. We need a tool to be able to measure the effect that this has on our body. The scale is such a tool. Whether you hate it or not, it can keep you honest about what you are really doing.

My recommendation to my weight loss clients now is to start with weekly weights until about five pounds are lost. Then it's time to weight daily. I know how much work goes into losing weight and I want my clients to be successful and not regain lost weight. The key with monitoring weight is to weigh on the same scale at the same time of day, wearing the same clothing (it is best to wear no clothing or minimal clothing). Write it down in your journal (because writing everything down increases your chances of success) and move on. At the end of the week go back and look at your weights and write a summary of your progress. It may go something like this:

Started the week at 155.6 pounds. Weight went down to 154.3 by midweek. Ate Chinese food for dinner at the end of the week and noticed that weight went up to 155.1 pounds. Probably holding extra water from all the salt in the restaurant meal
the night before. Finished the week at 154.7. Lost almost one pound this week.

Now, weighing daily is not good for people who struggle with eating disorders. If you are aware of disordered eating patterns, you will require both diet and psychological/behavioral therapy and you will have recommendations made by eating disorder specialists. The rest of us need to stop hating the scale. When we hate the scale, we hate ourselves. It's just a number that helps us measure progress toward our goal. We expect to see drastic changes in a short amount of time, but research again shows us that those who are most successful with maintaining weight loss, lose weight very slowly, 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week. So when the scale tells you that you've lost 0.4 pounds in one week, feel confident that slow and steady wins the race!