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5 Tips for Dining Out While On Your Weight Loss Journey

October 11, 2018 by Ajima Jackson Leave a Comment

Weight loss shouldn’t be a lonely journey, but it can feel that way at times. One of those times is when you are dining out but you the only one eating healthy. Questions about your eating habits, people trying to get you to jump off the clean eating wagon and watching your friends eat what they want can be a real drag. Eating out with your friends and loved ones is something you can’t avoid. Thank goodness that there are several ways you can still eat healthy and avoid loading up on empty calories. The following are 5 tips that will help you focus on your weight loss journey while dining out:

#1 Don’t Fall for the “Restaurant Food is Healthier than Fast Food” Myth

It’s common knowledge that fast food helps to make you overweight. However, is the opposite true? Is a meal at a dine-in restaurant healthier? Unfortunately, no. In fact, depending on the entrée being served, it is possible that a meal that appears to be reasonability healthy can give more you calories than the average fast-food meal, even when you don’t include desserts and appetizers. Do your research. Many restaurants provide nutrition information for their menus online.

#2 Don’t Starve Yourself Before a Big Dinner

People who are watching their weight have a tendency to skip lunch if they are eating out at night. However, as experience shows, this practice is actually counter-productive to your weight-loss efforts. You skip lunch, which makes you hungrier than usual at night, and for the most part, this results in going all out on the appetizers and salad bar before you even start the main course.

What you should do instead is eat a lighter lunch, along with some healthy snacks, to keep you going till dinner. Examples include:

Salad with chicken and veggies
Whole grain rolls
Low-fat yogurt
An ounce of almonds
Low-fat cheese (a cube or so)

#3 Focus on your Hunger, Not on the Aroma

For people who love to eat, just the smell or sight of restaurant food can trigger hunger. This of course, is psychological, and it can cause you to eat more than your body requires. Instead, you should concentrate on how hungry you really are. There are some tricks to help you keep your mouth under control when you are exposed to your favorite delicacy:

Take in the atmosphere. You are out with loved ones, so enjoy the moment and engage in conversation. That way, you will be content with smaller portion sizes
Eat slowly. Chew one bite liberally and take brief pauses before you go for the next one. This only becomes a habit with deliberate practice. When you do this, instead of gulping everything in, you know when you had enough of a meal

For optimum results, don’t eat more than three-quarters of whatever’s on your plate. Nutritionists suggest that this simple step can help you cut down as much as 300 calories off your meal when you are eating out. The best part is that eating ¾ of the meal makes you full, which makes it easy to let off the remaining bites. Portion control works.

#4 For a Few Dollars More

You may be tempted to go for the ‘upsize’ at your favorite takeout not only because you love to eat, but also because it is good value on money, right? Unfortunately, this is not a win-win situation, for even if you are paying just a dollar for a larger size, you may be taking in at least 70 extra calories. Along similar lines, you should also stay wary of meals promoted as ‘light’. While restaurants promote these meals as healthy, but there always a chink in the armor. For instance, a large steak with gorgonzola cheese and vegetables cooked in butter maybe low on carbs, but it is certainly brimming with saturated fat and calories.

#5 Order Wisely

When going for the salad, fill your plate with veggies, greens, chickpeas, and low-fat dressing instead of cheese, croutons, and mayo. Likewise, if you can’t resist the urge to have a steak, go for small servings of tenderloin, strip, or flank steak instead of a 10-ounce rib-eye!

With a few exceptions, all restaurants offer a variety from which you can pick healthy options. Also remember that since it is your weight loss fight that is at stake here, be bold about your selections and do not succumb to peer pressure.

How to Recognize and Address Emotional Eating

January 19, 2016 by Ajima Jackson Leave a Comment

There are two types of hunger: physiologic hunger and hedonic hunger.

Physiologic hunger occurs when we’ve not eaten for a period of time- our stomachs are empty, and our bodies respond accordingly, asking us for fuel with hunger cues- a sense of emptiness, a rumbling of the stomach. Physiologic hunger and physiologic hunger cues are regulated via hormones that tell us when we are hungry and when we are full.

Hedonic hunger occurs in response to an external food cue- when we see or smell something that we consider to be highly desirable: smelling french fries when passing by a fast food restaurant, and instantly desiring french fries, even in the absence of physiological hunger/a need for food and calories.

Hedonic hunger encourages us to eat out of desire or emotion unrelated to true caloric need. Physiological hunger encourages us to eat because of a caloric/nutritional need and a hormonal response that tells us it’s time to eat: our blood sugar is declining, our bodies have digested the last bit of our last meal.

Hedonic Hunger Leads to Emotional Eating

Basically, one is mental and about desire and the other is about a true physical need. Many people attribute their weight gain to Hedonic hunger which leads to Emotional eating.

Emotional eating typically occurs in response to stress or boredom. We eat hedonically, out of desire for stimuli to take the feelings away. In high-stress scenarios, cortisol, the stress hormone, urges us to eat hedrnically. This is a leftover evolutionary response from our time as scavengers on the savannah, when a high-stress situation typically implied starvation.

In our modern world, ripe with readily accessible, high-Calorie foods, that leftover evolutionary response is one that is frustrating, and ultimately disadvantageous to our success on the scale. Bottomline, our bodies are built for survival and our lifestyles are triggering a response that is meant to keep us from dying of a lack of nutrients and food.

Given our multi-layered relationships with food, identifying and addressing emotional eating can be difficult. Food is connected to our personal relationships, celebrations and it’s used as a drug to self medicate the pain away.

Often, we fail to recognize that we aren’t truly hungry when we’re eating or drinking; rather, we sip a latte out of habit, or snack in front of the TV. It’s very easy for our eating habits to become patterns and override our sense of physiological hunger, which, over a period of time, leads to an increase in our beltlines.

Addressing Emotional Eating

In order to successfully address and then counteract our drive to eat in the absence of hunger, we must first consider why the negative food behaviors are happening in the first place: are we eating oreos because we’re bored, and the oreos just taste good? Or are we eating the oreos because they make us feel good and imbue a sense of comfort after a stressful day, week, or month?

Although eating out of boredom, eating for pleasure and stress eating have overlapping behavioral tendencies, the cause/source of these behaviors are starkly different.

Addressing emotional eating is a more complex issue, one that may require the help of a dietitian, therapist or psychologist. For many patients, binge eating disorders underlie stress eating patterns, with patients eating with a sense of abandon, often in private or in late evening hours.

Addressing boredom-driven eating can be difficult, but can typically be done without the help of a secondary party. Simply removing tempting foods and beverages from your home or “trigger space” solves part of the issue, as does creating and sticking to a meal or snack schedule. If a food or beverage (other than water) is outside of that schedule, refrain from consuming it. If you are bored, you have to start reacting to that feeling with behaviors that don’t include food, like exercise, calling a friend, reading a book, saying a mantra, prayer, etc.

If you eat out of stress, you must address the underlying cause of that stress: typical triggers include personal relationships with family or friends, work duties, lack of time, a perceived lack of control, past trauma, depression, anxiety, or other emotive trauma or disturbance that you have yet to deal with.

In order to develop healthier coping mechanisms, you must address and heal from the trauma or more appropriately address the source of your underlying stress. For example, this may mean asking for help from family and friends who can help share scheduling burdens so that your “to-do” list doesn’t become a negative source of pressure, thus eroding your mental and physical health.

It’s vital that you developing healthy coping mechanisms to replace a cycle of stress or binge eating. Although it may sound cliche, exercise, meditation, journaling, prayer, watching a television show, reading, or quietly reflecting can all help reduce stress. Perhaps the most potent means of reducing stress is to talk through your fears, anxieties, and stressors with an unbiased third party, such as a psychologist, counselor, or friend unrelated to the source of your stress.

Recovering from a past of emotional eating and poor food habits can be difficult. Be patient with yourself, and be forgiving. Learning to treat yourself and your emotions with care and kindness is a process, one worthy of your first step.

Here are some books that can help you as you begin to create new strategies to deal with emotional eating.

*Amazon Affilate

Why Does Birth Control Medication Make Some People Gain Weight?

July 6, 2015 by Ajima Jackson Leave a Comment

One of the biggest controversies in women’s health is whether birth control causes weight gain or not.Many women complain that they’ve gained 5, 10 and even 20 pounds after getting on birth control medication. However, some studies seem to note that the pill and other types don’t cause weight gain. So, what’s going on here?

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Weight Gain and Contraceptives

In an extensive study review by the Cochrane Database there were no trials that showed any significant weight gain from birth control alone. Further studies can be found that support this theory. Yet many women still claim that getting onto the pill is what caused them to gain weight.

First off, it is very important to note that when it comes to side effects of any type of medication there are averages. These average reactions apply to majority of the population but there will always be outliers. In the case of birth control medication, these outliers could very well be women who have gained weight from a pill or shot. Also, I think that women know their bodies very well and that the limited time frame used in studies may not bear out all of the information.

With that out of the way, when it comes to weight gain the average woman isn’t gaining weight from just the birth control per say, but rather as a reaction to other side effects. There are 3 main side effects that could cause weight gain:

Appetite Increase

There are certain hormones that affect how hungry you feel. You might call them “hunger hormones”. These include estrogen and progestogen. Both of these, when balanced correctly, will cause you to feel satiated once you’ve eaten enough. Unfortunately, when they are imbalanced you will feel cravings. This especially in women right before they begin their menstrual cycle. Birth control can cause a similar imbalance in these two hormones. If this happens you may eat more without realizing- thereby causing weight gain.

“The oral contraceptives that were developed in the past affected insulin resistance, and to some extent even the newer pills are able to elevate insulin levels. When these levels rise, the energy obtained from the ingested carbohydrates is distributed mainly to fat cells. As a consequence, weight loss is prevented, even when a diet is followed.

However, not all women who take birth control pills are predisposed to weight gain. This side effect of oral contraceptives is most frequently observed in women with an abnormal glucose metabolism. Insulin resistance should be analyzed if there are no other explanations for weight gain when taking birth control pills.” – Fitday.com

Depression

While birth control isn’t going to outright cause depression, it can cause mood swings which can exacerbate already present feelings of depression, sadness, etc. A very normal reaction of those who are feeling a bit down or depressed is often to eat calorie rich foods (emotional eating). Eating junk foods, especially sugary foods, can release dopamine in the brain which lessens the sad feelings for a very short time. It’s easy to continue eating this junk food to try and feel better. Obviously, this is going to cause weight gain.

A secondary cause of weight gain relating to depression is just lack of energy or motivation. Even though getting off the couch and exercising is the last thing you feel like doing, it’s important to try and do it anyways. Living a more sedentary lifestyle will cause weight gain and other health problems.

3. Estrogen affects water retention and weight overall

Depending on how much estrogen is in the medication, you may experience water weight gain.

“Estrogen balance is essential for achieving and maintaining fat loss. In men and premenopausal women, too much estrogen — a condition called estrogen dominance — causes toxic fat gain, water retention, bloating, and a host of other health and wellness issues.” – Chatelaine.com

All in all, a birth control pill isn’t going to cause you to suddenly gain weight unless you are in that group of people who has an adverse reaction to the drug or it causes a serious hormone imbalance. If you do find you have gained weight and it correlates to the date you began taking a contraceptive, it may be that you are experiencing one of the 3 side effects above. If so, change your lifestyle and contact your doctor, especially if you feel like you are experiencing depression. There are lots of options for birth control out there and another brand or form of contraception my work better for you.

How to Prevent Weight Gain Associated with Contraceptives

There are a few things to keep in mind if you are concerned about gaining weight after getting onto a birth control medication.

Track Your Calories

Since synthetic hormones in birth control can cause you to feel hungry it is especially important to track how much you eat. You may be surprised to find that you are eating more than usual despite not realizing it. Write down what you eat in a journal or use a calorie tracking app like MyFitnessPal.

Limit Simple Carbohydrates and Highly Processed Foods

Highly processed foods, primarily simple carbs with few nutrients, are unhealthy and will only lead to weight gain. You may find that while on birth control you crave sweet or salty foods and fast food more often. Since depression, anxiety and other mental health-related side effects are associated with contraceptives you could very well be tempted to indulge in sugar in an effort to feel better. Make a strong effort to change your diet to healthy, whole foods.

Ensure That You Eat Enough Fiber

The average woman needs roughly 25 grams of fiber per day but only eats about 15 grams, according to medical sources. Dietary fiber is important for your digestive tract as well as your overall health and helps with weight loss/weight gain prevention. Along with eating whole foods, make sure you keep an eye on how much fiber you are getting.

Exercise Regularly

Getting plenty of exercise, particularly cardio, will help you stay healthy and strong while on birth control. The American Heart Association recommends women get a total of 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. You can break this down into five 30 minutes sessions. Alternatively you can do 75 combined minutes of vigorous exercise per week. Many good hormones you need are released after exercising, like serotonin and dopamine (more info).

Consult Your Doctor with Concerns

Every woman is an individual and can have different side effects from contraceptives. Some women have zero issues even after taking a pill for years. Others may experience significant mood swings, depression and anxiety after just a few months. It cannot be stressed enough that if you feel unusual you should speak with your doctor. Often times it’s as easy as switching to a different type of birth control for your issues to be resolved.

Birth control, whether it’s an oral contraceptive or a shot, can really benefit women by giving them peace of mind when it comes to a having a healthy sex life. If you feel like you need to be on birth control, make an appointment with your physician to discuss your options.

Are Sad Movies Are Making You Gain Weight?

June 9, 2015 by Ajima Jackson Leave a Comment

sad movies making you fat Everyone has their favorite sad movies that may be tearjerkers but ultimately have a happy ending or perhaps films that just leave them with some type of strong emotion (sadness, stress, etc). Did you know that indulging in these movies could actually be harming your weight loss goals? Before you stop watching Lifetime movies, check out this info…

It may seem far-fetched but watching sad movies may actually cause some people to eat more. One study done by in a lab at Cornell University Food and Brand lab showed that people watching sad movies ate roughly 28% more popcorn than those that watched a comedy. A complimenting study done by Cornell featured on JAMA Internal Medicine has similar findings- around 55% more popcorn was eaten by those who watched a drama vs a romantic comedy.

The reason behind this isn’t coincidence but actually a health-harming behavior called emotional eating. Yes…another source of emotional eating.

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional eating is a type of coping behavior that most women experience when they go through a period of stress. This stress is linked to emotion and could be sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety, feeling pressured or even boredom. Though emotional eating is primarily caused by negative emotions, some women will also go to food as a reward for an accomplishment but end up overeating. Similarly, some women may actually lose their appetite when stressed but subsequently emotionally eat when they feel happy, excited or relieved about something. Each person’s stress response is different.

Though emotional eating is very common and not something to be embarrassed about, you should be aware of it as it typically leads to weight gain. This is largely due to comfort foods and calorie rich foods being the go to foods for emotional eaters. That means you may have to avoid certain situations that cause stress or take precautions when you go to the movie theater or settle in on the couch to stop yourself from pigging out on popcorn without realizing it.

The Connection

The triggers of emotional eating are obvious but what exactly causes women to go towards food when upset, fearful or sad? There are a couple different reasons but the primary one has to do with the brain.

Eating food can be pleasurable. It might seem odd to describe food that way but the brain reacts to chowing down on a tub of popcorn at the movies very much the same way it would with a romantic encounter. Watching a sad movie can be distressing, particularly if the movie causes you to become attached to the characters. As unfortunate things happen in the movie you unconsciously begin to eat more.

As you eat opioids are released. Opioids are the same active ingredients in drugs like heroin but are also produced naturally in the human body, as this extensive study shows. When these are released it gives a feeling of relief in response to emotional pain. So in essence, as you feel sad while watching a movie and you are simultaneously eating, you physically feel a sense of relief. This continues through a cycle of sadness > eating > relief and either ends after the movie is over or even continues throughout the rest of your day. Oh, we all have watched a movie that left us in “a mood” and impacted our whole day.

How Can I Prevent Emotional Eating?

Preventing emotional eating is actually very difficult at first because it often happens without the person realizing it. If you are unsure if you are an emotional eater when it comes to watching movies, at home or at the theater, take a moment to consider whether you:

Typically medicate your emotions with food – use food to feel better
Always finish your popcorn (even though it was far more than serving)
Find yourself stocking up on junk in preparation for an at-home movie night
Often find yourself feeling hungry during a movie
Come out of the theater full but still wanting to eat more

The best way of preventing emotional eating at a theater is to limit what you could eat. This means buying yourself your own small tub of popcorn, even if you normally share a big tub with friends or family. Skip the candy or bring a very small serving in your purse. Get a small drink or, better yet, a bottle of water. Try to eat a healthy meal before you go to the theater. If you go to the movies on a full stomach but you feel hungry during the movie you can bet that it is emotional hunger, not actual hunger pangs.

Stopping overeating while watching movies at home is a little trickier since you can get up whenever you want. Just like going to a theater, have a meal before you start the movie. Eat in your dining room or kitchen, not in front of the television. Make yourself a single serving of popcorn or whatever other treat you prefer. If you are having ice cream, spoon a serving into a bowl rather than thinking you’ll just eat a serving from the carton. Don’t make the mistake of sitting in front of a whole table of food as you’ll be more likely to keep eating. You know your limits! Put that willpower to work.

Emotional eating is a tough habit to break but it all begins by limiting what food you have in arm’s reach while you are watching a movie. You can also use the habit of overeating in your favor. For example, if you find a hard time eating a healthy meal or certain vegetables, purposely watch a movie while eating these foods and you will most likely finish the food without realizing it.

What Happens to Your Body When You Skip Meals?

December 5, 2014 by Ajima Jackson Leave a Comment

what happens when your skip meals It’s safe to say that nearly everyone, any adult at least, has skipped a meal or even consecutive meals for whatever reason. Perhaps from being too busy, too sick or even trying to lose weight by not eating. There is also the issue of thousands of Americans going hungry…but that is another subject (tragic). Whatever the reason, skipping a meal here or there might be harmless but skipping multiple meals for consecutive days can have detrimental effects to your long-term health. If you are blessed to have healthy food, consider it a privilege and treat your body right.

How Your Body Responds to Skipping Meals or Unintentional Fasting

When you skip meals or just stop eating regular meals your body ultimately realizes that it doesn’t have enough fuel to function at its peak. That’s when certain things begin to happen. First off, your body will realize there is not enough food coming in and will go into what is a called a “fasting mode”.

This fasting mode isn’t necessarily dangerous. In fact, studies are showing that intermittent fasting can be beneficial but more on that later. Remaining in a prolonged fasting mode (skipping multiple meals over the course of weeks and months) causes your body to begin using 3 main sources for energy: fat, carbs and protein. Now, burning fat sounds good. If you are looking to lose weight then this isn’t a downside. Burning carbs can also be beneficial depending on your lifestyle. Burning protein is a problem since this is muscle.

Once your body is sustained in a fasting mode 3 main things will then happen:

Blood glucose levels drop
Glycogen storage is used up
Body begins metabolizing fat

This fasting mode can also be known as ketosis. Eventually the fasting mode will go into starvation mode. Starvation mode is absolutely dangerous. Not only is your body malnourished from nutrients but if you don’t eat for long periods of time starvation mode could cause organs and parts of your body to shut down in an effort to survive. Dropping blood sugar also affects insulin levels in ways that can also be bad for your health.

Side Effects of Meal Skipping

Some side-effects of skipping meals include:

Dizziness and lock of balance
Fatigue and lethargy
Feeling nauseous
Stomach cramps and digestive issues
Weight gain
Weakness in body
Interruption of a healthy menstrual cycle in women
Mood swings and general irritability
Lack of body temperature control
Insomnia and restlessness
Anxiety or depression
Dehydration and water retention
Increased clumsiness correlating to increase in injury
Slowed reaction time

Potential Health Problems Associated with Meal Skipping

Prolonged health problems associated with meal skipping include:

Lowered blood pressure causes dizziness, fainting, difficulty breathing and inability to concentrate
Habitually binging that lead to permanent damage, excessive weight loss or even dangerous spikes in high blood sugar
Increased chance of diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and more
Lowered immune system increases your chances of getting illnesses you come into contact with
Hypothyroidism is low thyroid which causes weight gain, depression, constipation and hair loss
Anemia is a lack of iron which causes lethargy, chest pain, general weakness and rapid heartbeat
Skeletal weakening makes it easier for bones to fracture and causes joint damage
Dental problems are due to lack of calcium and nutrition, and can cause serious illness since mouth health is directly related to total body health

When Skipping Meals Can Be Beneficial

There are a few times when skipping meals for long periods of time isn’t dangerous for your body. First off, only very healthy individuals should practice intermittent fasting. There are books and research that reports that purposely and safely putting your body in fasting mode every now and then can help burn fat and keep your body working at its peak. This is a very in-depth and potentially controversial subject so it is recommended to research thoroughly before practicing fasting yourself. A good source to start would be this webpage and our article on the subject.

Skipping meals is so easy to do and the myth that not eating is effective for long term weight loss is misleading. It is certainly true that not eating food or starving yourself will cause you to lose weight but at what cost? Rather than permanently damaging your health and possibly shortening your life, forget meal skipping and instead focus on exercise and healthy eating as a foundation for weight release. Intermittent fasting can be beneficial but only if it is healthy for you. Fasting has been practiced for thousands of years as religious and spiritual practice, so it has many other benefits as well.

If you are a very busy person and often forget to eat, set alarms or reminders. Pack work or school lunches ahead of time so you have no excuse to not eat. If you do skip a meal or multiple meals, or perhaps have had a skipping habit already, ease back into proper nutrition as to avoid binge eating.

What is the difference between good carb and bad carbs?

May 22, 2013 by Ajima Jackson 2 Comments

It is not surprising to hear someone say that they are on carb-free or low carb diet. This is because carbs are thought to be a main contributor to weight gain, and some carbs are. There are good carbs and bad carbs, and both have different impacts on a person’s health and waistline. Telling the difference between the two can become quite complex, but it is important to tell the two apart. Carbs are a vital nutrient that provides energy for the body and the brain. There are simple and complex carbs, which both are converted to glucose during the body’s digestion process.

good carbs bad carbs Simple carbohydrates are exactly that, simple. They are all single and double-chained sugars known as monosaccharide and disaccharides. They do not contain many nutrients or vitamins, and the body needs little energy to convert them into glucose. The glucose will reach the bloodstream quickly, causing a rapid spike in sugar. A person will have a sudden burst of energy, but then just as quickly feet fatigue and sluggish, once the sugar drops. These bad carbs pack an abundance of sugar and calories into the diet, without any real nutritional value. After consuming simple carbohydrates, an individual will feel hungry again soon after eating them. These simple carbs are causing an concerning increase of sugar into an individual’s diet, which can contribute to health issues and put them at risk for diabetes.

These simple carbs are found in white breads, starch vegetables and pasta, as well as baked goods. Another culprit for simple carbohydrates is soft drinks since they deliver a ton of calories and carbs without any nutrients. Added sugar is another simple carbohydrate that rushes to the bloodstream, causing an instant rush of energy. Individuals diets have a high increase of simple carbohydrates and not enough of the good carbohydrates known as complex carbs.

Complex carbs contain many chains of simple sugars; therefore it is not as simple for the body to break it down to glucose. When consuming complex carbs, a person does not get a sudden burst of energy as they do from simple carbs. Rather the complex carbs gradually break down into the bloodstream, providing them a steady supply of energy. Complex carbs also curb hunger, since they take the body a while to break down and provide higher fiber. For athletes that are fueling up on carbohydrates, complex carbs are the ones they want to be reaching for if they need to keep their energy up for an entire game or event.

Complex carbs provide the body with more fuel that will give it energy for a longer period of time. Some foods to get complex carbs into a person’s diet are nuts, legumes, whole grains and non-starchy vegetables. Though fruits are high in glucose, the ones with a low glycemic index are another great way to get complex carbs into an individual’s daily diet. Don’t be afraid of fruit. Fruit sugars are not seen by the body as the same as processed sugar like, white sugar and corn syrup.

By swapping out simple carbs with complex carbs, one can be on the way being healthier and weight loss.

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