Archive for June, 2010

SUGAR: Eating Sanely with a Sweet Tooth (Part 1)

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Sugar can doom our weight loss or sane eating plans.  Even as diet trends rapidly zig-zag and change, “avoid sugar” remains a constant.  Our craving for sugar remains constant, too.  And it continues to flavor more and more of our nation’s foods.

Why avoid sugar?  Well, its “empty”, non-nutritious, calories leave us hungry and easily fatten us.  It decays our teeth.  It can interfere with mood and energy.  Now, more and more evidence links sugar with inflammation, and inflammation with nearly any and every health problem.  Yet who can stop eating it? (more…)

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FOR BETTER OR WORSE: Marriage, Weight, and Sane Eating

Friday, June 18th, 2010

People in relationships, and married people especially, gain much more weight over time than singles.  The reasons for this are many and complicated.  I’ve written about some of these issues during the past two weeks at my Psychology Today blog, “Thin From Within” (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thin-within).   The other side of this phenomenon, though, paints a more positive picture for those with mates.  And that is that people do tend to reach their goals more effectively with the support of others.

 You can find more specifics about the benefits of having a helper on the Eat Sanely site (click on “Coaching”, above, and then on “Research Confirms Coaching Works”).   In sum:  the right kind of help and support can mean the difference between continued frustration in your diet efforts and success in changing habits for good.

How can a mate be an effective supporter?  The answer to this question will vary from person to person.   Discussing what would help you with (more…)

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THIN FROM WITHIN

Friday, June 11th, 2010

 This week I’m happy to introduce you to a new blog I’ve launched at Psychology Today.  Called “Thin From Within”, it’s subtitled “how inner conflict keeps people stuck”:  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/thin-within
The Eat Sanely blog will continue to comment on relevant news, offer practical advice and strategies, and from time to time explore the emotional elements of eating.  The new blog, on the other hand, will focus mainly on the inner emotional aspects of how we eat.   This includes, too, how we manage to change or improve how we eat.

Most of us know how difficult it is to lose weight, to maintain a healthy weight and a healthy relationship with food.  Regular readers know that I don’t automatically and always suspect emotional underpinnings to weight struggles.  The foods overwhelming our senses today, loaded with sugar and salt and fat, help create these problems.  So does the more sedentary lifestyle typical of our time, and the high stress levels many of us experience.   However:  it happens that even after we’ve learned what works, and even after we’ve acquired the right tools, we can find ourselves unable to follow through. 

 When that’s the case, it makes sense to check within.  What I call “inner obstacles” in the Eat Sanely course can keep us from caring for ourselves as we wish.    We know that stress and anxiety can make it difficult to eat well.  Emotions that operate outside of our awareness—guilt is often such a culprit—can sabotage our efforts as well.   And likewise, becoming conscious of, and dealing directly with, our emotions can free us.

So, I hope that “Thin From Within” will spark awareness, enable reflection, and support that freedom.   I invite you to visit the site and comment where you wish!


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STAND UP TO KEEP WEIGHT DOWN

Friday, June 4th, 2010

“Sitting = Death”. This headline delivers a bit of a jolt. The story that it introduced, though, simply reported another study of what I called “incidental exercise” in the EatSanely workbook course. Others have used the term “non-exercise activity”. What these studies show is that heavy-duty exercise is not the only factor in the exercise-weight equation. The relationship between exercise and weight, in fact, proves much more complicated than previously thought. How much you move, day in and day out, even without planned “exercise”, affects your weight in significant ways.

One of first reports on non-exercise activity came from the Mayo Clinic in 2005, where studies found differences in how much individuals are inclined to move around. Not surprisingly, those who move around more tend to struggle less with weight. And it wasn’t just that heavy people found it harder to move because of their weight—it seemed more of built-in preference. People who don’t naturally feel as compelled to move, though, could learn to incorporate more of this “every day” kind of movement into their lives. Those who did reaped benefits. (more…)

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