How can knowing this help you eat more sanely?  Or lose weight?  Several recent books and movies have drawn our attention to alarming food company practices (see below).  These practices keep us eating foods that are fattening, possibly harmful to health, and definitely appetite-stimulating.  That means they’re hard to not overeat.  Once aware of this, we hope to start making better choices.  We may consider how to minimize or avoid processed, sugar-added foods.   By definition, though, this is easier said than done.  If a food is indeed engineered to make you want more, then you’re probably going to have to struggle to eat less of it.

 There’s another way that thinking about food manufacturing that can help you along the sane eating, weight-smart path, however.  For it’s hard not to get repulsed, and angry, when you learn about what these practices can do to our health, and to the health of our children, and to the environment.  Who wants to support that?   Knowing what I know, I don’t feel good buying products from certain manufacturers (you can check on many companies quickly and easily with the handy little Shopping for a Better World guidebook, for starters).  And I don’t feel good being part of a system that’s hurting things.

  I don’t think it’s possible for any of us to be perfect—for most of us there will always be the occasional fast food, the items you love too much to leave, the items that cost too much to substitute.  But doing better, even if only a little bit, or here and there, can make a real difference.    The more you cut out highly processed items, which usually contain added sugars and poor-quality fats, the less you’ll support the systems that push unhealthy food.  And the better you’ll be taking care of your own body and weight.  This is true every time you make a better choice, whether once a week or more.   Aim to eliminate one item from your weekly food budget to start if it all feels overwhelming. 

  For some, thinking about the food industry won’t shake up their eating habits, even if they wish it would.  It can be hard to resist treats or stick with new diet plans.   Some do find it easier, though, when they stop thinking in terms of willpower, deprivation, and warding off cravings.   They find they can do it to say “no” to industries that disregard our health.  To help make a cleaner planet and stop the sale of junk food to kids.   Those motivations gear us away from our personal shortcomings and give us something positive and constructive to do.

And if you end up losing weight in the process, that’s usually an excellent fringe benefit.

Here are some related titles:

Kessler, David, The End of Overeating, (Rodale Press; 2009)

Pollan, Michael, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, (Penguin, 2006) – young people’s edition also available

Pollan, Michael, In Defense of Food, (Penguin, 2008)

Pollan, Michael, Food Rules:  An Eater’s Manual (Penguin, 2009)

Wansink, Brian, Mindless Eating:  Why We Eat More Than We Think, (Bantam, 2006)

Weber, Karl, editor, Food Inc:  A Participant Guide:  How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer, and What You Can Do About It   (Participant Media, 2009) – DVD also available

People exercise much less often now than in earlier eras—in fact, many of us now lead lives in which it would be completely possible to not exercise at all.  Our bodies pay a steep price for not moving, though.   In terms of weight, exercise doesn’t necessarily prevent weight gain or cause automatic losses.  We have to eat right, too.  But exercise builds muscle and supports healthy metabolism in ways that scientists continue to analyze.
We hear and read about exercise in the news pretty regularly these days.  On June 4^th I wrote “Stand Up to Keep Weight Down”, in response to findings about sitting vs. standing.  For it turns out that even just standing beats staying seated on cardiac and other measures.   Dr. Amos Oz puts his own spin on these studies in his latest O, the Oprah Magazine column (August 2010).  And a recent Sunday New York Times Magazine item notes that even men who work out regularly show cardiac worsening if they sit a lot when during the rest of the week. 

 Further, the past month’s New York Times Health sections have summarized studies involving women and exercise.  One finds fewer problems with age-related cognitive and memory declines.   Another looks at weight losses for women who walk or bike.  That particular study illustrates how helpful bicycling seems to be for getting and keeping weight off.   Reading this reminded me, who regularly recommends walking to people for a whole host of reasons, that it’s important to hook into the exercise mode that you like.  If that’s walking, great.  If you prefer to bike, that’s at least as good.   The same goes for swimming, dance classes, Wii Fit, and so on.

Regularity is key.  Which exercise format will you stick with?   If you like something, you’re more likely to stick with it.  If it fits your lifestyle or your routine, you’re more likely to make it part of your life, day in and day out, week in and week out.  and if you’re one of those people who don’t like any type you can think of, then the question could be “Which exercise format can you picture possibly getting used to?”  Start there.  Start with just five minutes a day if that’s all you can manage.  Build from there over time.  Consult with a personal trainer once or twice (this can be surprisingly affordable) to get ideas.  Ask friends to join you if that would boost your motivation.

In the end, eating sanely involves working against the factors in our world that push us toward poor health—whether mental or physical.  The trend toward sedentary living is one of those factors.   Often we have to work hard to eat well—ignoring junk food, going out of our way to get what’s good for us.  Few people think that’s easy, though most will tell you it’s worth it.  Sometimes, too, we have to work hard to make a place for regular movement in our lives.  Our bodies and minds reap the benefits once we do, no matter where we start from.

 You can read more about how to stick with an exercise routine in the Eat Sanely workbook course, Module 14, “Move!”

As promised in June 25’s blog, I continue here the discussion of how to stick to those small amounts. I started with a few ideas about buying less, switching to items containing less, and eliminating sugared beverages. Now we turn to the sweets we eat because we want to—whether that’s candy, cookies, pie, or cake. How do you start to say “No, thanks, I’ve had enough” after one piece?

It doesn’t make sense for anyone—skinny, fat, or in-between—to eat sugar in large quantities. So what’s reasonable for you? A small serving per day? Two per week? Three? This is what you can set as your “working to get to” goal. (What’s reasonable if you have a lot of weight to lose will be on the lower end–not only because of the calorie content, but also because of how the sweets may affect your metabolism.) Often people will target something like “one chocolate after dinner each night”, or “dessert on weekend nights”.

Aim for this goal amount. Know that as you begin, you’ll probably want more after you’ve had that amount. Think of how you’ll deal with the desire for more. I’ll describe a couple of possible strategies here. First, giving yourself a time limit before you head back to the cookie plate sometimes works. This kind of scenario might evolve like this:
 
You’ve decided that what’s reasonable for you is to allow for dessert on weekends, but not on week nights. You don’t buy packaged cookies or ice cream to keep in the house. You go ahead and bake brownies on Friday afternoon to have on hand. After dinner, you get out the plates and whipped cream. You put a decent-sized brownie on the plate (not tiny, not gigantic). You sit down to eat it with a fork. You try not to gobble and rush. You savor it. (Note that here you’re employing some strategies to help reduce the tendency to overeat: setting a plate, eating more slowly.) When you’ve finished, you definitely would like to keep going. However, knowing that you’re trying to learn moderation, you’ve helped yourself out in advance by not keeping the serving platter in view. In fact, the brownie container is already closed and put away. You tell yourself, I’m not going to have another for at least 20 minutes. Then you make some coffee or tea. In 20 minutes you rate your desire for the second brownie. It’s definitely reduced. You decide to wait another 20 minutes. By then, you’re busy doing something else and stopping for a brownie seems irrelevant.

As successful episodes like this accumulate, your ability to stop after one serving will increase. If an episode is not successful, analyze what went wrong. Ask yourself what might have helped. Then try again another time.

A second strategy calls for substituting lower-sugar items and giving yourself some time to get used to those. Here is an example.  Peggy learned that her daily blended coffee drink contained 49 grams of sugar. A friend pointed out that this was equivalent to more than three bowls of Froot Loops. Appalled, she nevertheless grew anxious considering a change in the years-old routine that she liked very much.

Peggy began by telling herself that every other day she’d order something else. She thought it would help her to be able to look forward to her favored drink at least every other day. Because it seemed similar, she began to order iced coffee with milk and Splenda. She found that she actually liked this more than she thought she would, though she missed the thicker, more frappe-like consistency of the other. She experimented—iced latte, iced decaf, one Splenda, two Splenda, milk, cream. She returned to the original iced coffee, though, because she liked it well enough. She especially liked that she saved 150 calories and 49 grams of sugar each time. That really made her feel good. In less than a month, her blended drink had become a once-a-week treat. She’d found herself opting more and more often for her new drink, even on the “off” days. It had become her new habit.

The ease of this change surprised Peggy. And while not all transitions will go this smoothly, experimenting, starting again and again where necessary, will usually lead to a new routine. This is all part of finding a place for sugar in your overall diet and life. It’s hard to eliminate it completely, and many don’t even want to. But minimizing sugar’s unhealthy presence, feeling more comfortable with much less, is a goal worth working toward.

To read more about the effects of sugar, go to www.cspinet.org/new/sugar.

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?

We are biologically wired to love sugar.  Genetic research suggests that some of us are wired to love it even more than others.  Sugar was not as easily available decades ago as it is now.  It was a treat.  It’s become a mainstay, and that’s where problems worsen.
Food marketers know we crave sugar, and so sugar hides in ketchup, spaghetti sauce, bread, soup, and hundreds of other items that don’t seem sweet.  Sweet things sell in quantity because we eat more of them than we need—it’s hard to stop.

If your ultimate goal is to eat sanely for life, or even if you just want to get a grip on your weight for now, deciding how to deal with sugar is essential.  Otherwise, it can trip you up.  How many diets are foiled by that candy in the cupboard, those brownies by the coffee machine, the cookies calling from the bakery case?

Some decide they need to quit sugar for good.  Indeed, I have worked with clients over the years who have made complete “abstinence” their goal.  It’s definitely a worthy and healthy goal, but not often a realistic one.  Few can maintain total abstinence in our culture without a lot of support—such as through Overeaters Anonymous or another group of abstinence-minded people.  This decision often follows years of struggle—and possibly the conclusion, “I’m addicted to sugar; once I start, I can’t stop.”

Far more often, people want to keep sweets in their life to some degree—they just want to be able to live with less.  And while difficult, especially at first, learning to eat sweets in small amounts does offer advantages.  The habits and skills acquired in the effort can benefit health and peace of mind in many ways, well beyond weight control.  I call particular attention to the “difficult, especially at first,” part, though.  Because you’re more likely to succeed once you acknowledge and respect that this isn’t a simple or straightforward task.

Learning how to eat sweets in limited amounts can be a complicated process.  I offer guidance and skills training for this in the EatSanely Workbook Course.   I’ll offer a  condensed version here in my next blogpost.  For now, I share a few thoughts to help start the process.    Let “Practice, not perfect,” guide you, and try to treat the “imperfect” gently—beating yourself up for the imperfections will not likely help.  If you start now, you’ll get to a better place in time.

1.)    check labels on any foods you eat regularly that come in cans, jars, or boxes.  If any contain unexpected sugar, look for a similar type or another brand that doesn’t.  Or, eliminate the food if practical.

2.)    check labels on store-bought or take-out sweets (for example, cereals, doughnuts).  See if you can find other items that you like that contain fewer grams per serving.

 3.)  think about all the times you eat sweets during the week.  Try eliminating one.

 4.)  again think of your weekly sweets intake.  Are there any that aren’t particularly special to you?  Could you let those go?

 5.)  if you drink soda or other sweetened beverages, experiment with replacements.  Diet drinks aren’t necessarily ideal, but they do cut sugar intake.  If you don’t like those sweetened with Aspartame, try one sweetened with Spenda.    Beyond diet sodas, lemonades, and iced teas, think of water, seltzer, vitamin water, herb tea, seltzer with a splash of juice.

 6.)  if sweets in the house lead to grazing or binging, try buying fewer.  It may be helpful to make a family decision to do this.  You don’t really need multiple packages of cookies, candy, and ice cream.

  7.)  keeps lots of good fruits and berries on hand.  Use these for snacks and desserts more often.   You’re likely to develop more desire for them as you enjoy them more.

To read more about sugar and related nutritional and obesity issue, visit the Center for Science in the Public Interest website at www.cspinet.org, particularly its Nutrition Action newsletter article at www.cspinet.org/new/sugar.  In the most recent Whole Living magazine (July/August 2010), you’ll find an article on the sugar-inflammation link along with a few more cutting-down ideas (www.wholeliving.com). 

 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 your partner will start the process.  How does your mate feel about your introducing a different type of cooking into your lives?  About taking walks together?  About eating out less often?  These types of questions can help.

Asking your partner honestly how he or she feels about your changing your habits and your body shape should also enter the discussion.  These issues trigger more feelings than you may realize.  They may need attention, in fact, before you can succeed with long-term change efforts.

 Often it makes sense for partners to work together to stay healthy or to try to eat more sanely.  While this can potentially make the whole process easier, it gets complicated if one person’s motivation flags and the other’s stays strong.  Or if one person simply has a much easier time than the other.   Thinking of your goals as long-term and worthy, know ahead of time that discussion and problem-solving must happen all along the way.

Whether your mate supports your efforts or actually joins you in making important changes, a lifetime commitment to keeping healthy matters most of all.  The “upward weight creep” that happens in many marriages runs counter to this.   Ask your mate whether the two of you need to focus on caring for yourselves more effectively when it comes to food and weight.

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!

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.

 Since then, other studies have reached similar conclusions. One, for example, found that people in a test group who spent several hours per day in a wheelchair gained more weight than those who didn’t, even with other factors held constant. Any movement beats sitting, the researchers concluded. The “sitting = death” headline emerged from a similar recent finding.

To me, this all points to a simple way to introduce change for the better into one’s life. If you think about the “one small change” ideas (see the 1/4/10 and 3/5/10 blogs, as well as others), then something as small as “not sitting” could become a doorway to other changes, both small and large, that can keep weight in a healthier place in the long run.

“Not sitting” heads the list of incidental, or non-exercise, activity. You can also start to think, as often as you possibly can, of using your body to do things instead of a machine. Use stairs, not elevators or escalators. Pull into a lot, park in the first space you see, and walk the rest of the way. Don’t use drive-throughs. For errands scattered in several spots, park in a central location and walk to each. Return to your car to set down bags as needed. Even better, ride your bike if you won’t have many bags. (These days, a lot of what you’d call incidental exercise also turns out to help the environment and to save money at the same time.)

You can get up and do things rather than waiting. For example, instead of waiting for someone else to come home and bring in the mail, go get it now. If you’ve got copying to do at work, go do it, rather than wait until later. Walk downstairs to check your laundry now. Don’t wait for your teenager to come home to finish it. Finally, think about movement you can add into your “usually sitting” activities. Stand up during some of your work phone calls. Do leg lifts under your desk when you think of it. Get up, stretch, and circle your arms every half-hour. For a small meeting, arrange to walk and talk rather than meet in an office. Some of this may sound odd, but think of one of those Mayo Clinic researchers: he was so impressed with the study results, he installed a treadmill in his office. He keeps it at a low pace and walks it for much of his day, whether he’s on the phone or interviewing patients.

So, if you’re not already….why not stand up right now?