What to say and not say to an overweight loved one.
Does Your Eating Style Matter? It Does for Weight Management
When I was growing up in the 50s, we sat down and ate three meals every day. My Mom always made breakfast for the family. It would vary from hot porridge to dropped egg on toast to cereal and banana.
I didn’t realize at the time what a gift that was, along with the predictable lunch at mid-day and dinner around 6 pm. That schedule flipped a bit on the weekends, when we had our Sunday dinner in the middle of the day. But what was always a given was that we had three meals every day.
What's Your Eating Style Today? Is It Grab & Go?
Fast forward to today. What is your eating lifestyle like? Unless you’ve stayed attentive to the routines of your youth, your eating habits may be quite different. If they are, and you have gained unwanted pounds, the key to reversing weight gain may require you to return to your body’s early metabolic memory. If your metabolic memory is like mine, it will do best with a return to eating meals and not snacking.
Here’s how letting go of the grab and go can help with losing weight after 50.
How the Grab & Go Culture Impacts Weight
Our metabolic bodies evolve slowly. If your body first became accustomed to regular meals, and you try to change that to snacking, it may not feel quite right. Additionally, many snacks or lacking in nutrients so you may feel like you’re never quite satisfied. When that happens, it’s natural to seek out more of what feels missing and eventually overeat.
It’s hard to go anywhere today and not have access to food. The office and shopping malls have their vending machines, food courts and break rooms. Kitchen cabinets may have a ready supply of grab and go snacks. Waiting rooms and lobbies in hospitals, airports, subway stations and gas stations put food at your fingertips.
The problem with these food choices is that most of them offer only a few hundred calories and little or no nutrient value. When you get calories without nutrients your brain will go looking for more food. Your body’s natural intelligence knows you need nutrients to be well, and if the food you are eating lacks those nutrients, your brain will turn on hunger signals.
Before the day is over, you may well have consumed many more calories than you intended, but don’t feel that way because you haven’t had the experience of sitting down and eating a meal. So the grab and go habit can be a real factor in weight gain.
No Time for Meal Prep? It’s All About Strategy
You may be thinking you don’t have enough time to make three meals every day. Life is busy, you’re not home in the middle of the day, etc. But think for a moment about your priorities. Is one of them to shed some pounds?
If so, you might feel motivated to get back to eating meals by thinking about why you want to shed those pounds. To look better? To have more energy? To lessen pressure on your joints? To lower your risk for illness? Having a reason or a benefit of weight loss always helps.
Think about how you can get into the habit of eating nutrient rich meals instead of snacking or grazing through the day. Breakfast should be easy. If you get stuck on this meal, check out 12 breakfast samples on my blog, some of which are portable.
Lunch can be easily managed by using leftovers from your previous night’s dinner. And don’t forget to hydrate. Water, herbal teas and sparkling water with a splash of citrus or berries in between meals can be quite refreshing.
You may be someone who wants to eat meals just twice each day. If so, make sure you eat a nutrient rich breakfast and aim to eat your combined lunch/dinner in late afternoon. It’s best not to wait too long because you may get so hungry you overeat at the end of the day.
More Benefits of Eating Meals Instead of Snacking
In addition to better weight management, here are just a few of the other benefits of eating meals instead of grazing:
- better blood sugar regulation
- higher nutrient value
- more opportunity for social connection around eating when you sit down for a meal
- a period of rest at predictable times each day
- more focus on your day’s activities instead of being distracted by food/hunger
- a sense that you have actually eaten that can be missing when unconsciously ‘grazing.’
What is your eating style? Do you think eliminating snacking might be a good solution for weight loss? What do you think are the keys to losing weight after 50? Please share your experiences and join the conversation.
Roasted Butternut Squash with Turmeric and Curry
HERBED BUTTERNUT SQUASH-APPLE SOUP
Squash and Apples - Two Sweet Delights
Here's a soup for those of you looking for a little sweet in autumn.
24 oz. of chicken or vegetable stock
1 lb. butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 med. apple, peeled, cored and cut into 2-inch pieces
1sm.. onion, finely chopped
1 med. shallot, finely chopped
1 tsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary or 1/2 tsp. dried
2 tsp. finely chopped fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried leaf
1/2 c coconut milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. finely ground pepper
Extra rosemary, parsley or thyme leaves
Heat stock in 6 quart enamel or stainless steel casserole until simmering.
Add squash, apple, onion, shallots, and herbs. Simmer covered for 30 minutes or until all vegetables are soft and tender.
Puree in food processor fitted with steel blade or in blender.
Return to pan and add coconut milk. Add salt and pepper and simmer for 6 minutes. Taste for seasoning.
Ladle into soup bowls and garnish with herbs
The Blue Zones - I Just Knew It!
Is Your Body Screaming at You? Here's Why You Must Be Pro-Active
Markers for Health
Consider your current lifestyle and rate each of the following aspects from a high of 10 to a low of The higher the rating, the higher the level of adherence.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Rest__________________________________________________________
Balanced diet_________________________________________________
Physical activity_______________________________________________
Mental stimulation_____________________________________________
Social interaction______________________________________________
Enrichment/fun________________________________________________
Loving relationships____________________________________________
Giving of self/volunteerism______________________________________
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Make a Plan
All of the above are markers for healthy living.
Scoring below 6 or 7 suggests there is work to be done. Set a goal for raising your rating by 1 or 2 points over the next 3 months.
Be specific about the steps you will take to accomplish your goal.
Kaizen = Continuous Improvement
Toasted Farro Salad
A Doctor's Recipe for a Healthy Breakfast
Dr. Monique Tello of Harvard School of Public Health is a working mom who takes the train to work. She needs something quick, easy and transportable as many of us do. She combines fruit/yogurt/grain/nut bowl for her breakfast, which happens to be my daughter's daily breakfast. I personally cannot eat the same thing for breakfast every day. If I have time to eat at home it's likely to be sautéed vegetables with a pasture raised egg. That is not transportable so it's only on eating in mornings I have that. In the office the fruit/yogurt.grains/nut bowl works perfectly.
Here's Dr. Tello's description of her breakfast ingredients:
- "Frozen fruit: berries, mixed fruit, fruit with kale bits, whatever. Fruit is frozen at the peak of freshness, so the quality and vitamin content can be better than what’s in the produce aisle. We buy large bags of frozen mixed berries at the wholesale club or discount grocery, as they are much more economical than fresh and don’t go bad.
- Nuts and/or seeds and/or grains of your preference: for example, unsalted nuts, toasted seeds or grains, or a combination such as a low-sugar granola.
- Your favorite yogurt, ideally plain or low-sugar.
Either the night before or the day of work, grab a plastic container that can hold at least a few cups, and fill with the frozen fruit, heaped up at the top (mine holds 3.5 cups). Defrost it in the microwave (mine takes about 3 minutes). Put a top on it. Throw that in your lunch box alongside a snack-sized baggie of nuts and/or seeds and/or grains (I like cashews), and the yogurt. Don’t forget your spoon.
Why is this a healthy breakfast?
The fruit is not a token sprinkle, nor a decorative touch. The fruit makes up the bulk of this meal. There’s fiber in the fruit, and plant sugars in their natural form, not to mention healthy fat in the nuts, and protein in the yogurt. A low-sugar yogurt will leave us feeling more satisfied, for longer. We won’t get the insulin spike that triggers hunger pangs (unlike when we eat processed carbs).
If you want to step it up a notch, ditch the dairy. We can get plenty of calcium and other vitamins from leafy greens and other veggies. Personally, I’m not there yet, as I love yogurt, and have weighed the added benefits of my beloved creamy protein and probiotics against the recognized risks of regular consumption of animal products. So, I limit my intake of animal products as much as I can, and enjoy my daily morning yogurt."
How would that work for you? Additional at work options might be whole oats that you reheat in the morning and add nuts, cinnamon and fruit.
Planning Is Key
We can have the best of intentions, but unless you have the ingredients you need at the ready, a healthy breakfast, lunch or dinner just won't happen.
If you're not sure of what a healthy shopping list looks like, contact me and I will send you one.