Dear Friends,
What tactics have helped you to feel that your relationship with food is in good balance—you enjoy what you eat and feel that the way you eat is conducive to good health? We know that eating habits can be a fraught topic, and we hope you’ll help us to make the following conversation something positive. Below are the general principles that help us to feel that our food lives are full of pleasure and maintain good health at the same time. We are NOT dieticians. Please let us know in the comments what approaches have helped you.
· Fill up on fruits and vegetables.
· Eat meats, cheeses, fried foods and other heavy, calorically dense items slowly and in small quantities.
· Have consistent meal times every day that include a modest late-afternoon snack (we’ve learned we have to pay attention to portion size for this snack—and often decide on what and how much we’ll eat earlier in the day, before we feel hungry) . We know what and how much we are going to eat before going into the kitchen.
· Think about what we WANT to eat and then figure out how to eat it—shop for it or add it to the meal plan/grocery list for the week. The only things that are off limits are things we don’t want to eat. (This is the one Kate likes best.)
· Listen to our body, don’t eat from a sense of obligation (unless we need to eat a few bites as a polite dinner guest) and stop eating when we feel full.
· Always remember that the next chance to enjoy some food is only a few hours away, so there’s no urgency to eat a lot now.
Avoid most packaged food—we find industrialized food products aren’t as satisfying as whole foods. The research shows that industrialized food products tend to make people gain weight, because they’re designed to get people to eat more than they need, so the company can sell more products.
· If we’re feeling an emotional need to put a lot of food in our mouths, we try to notice what we’re feeling and think about how we’d like to respond. Do we want to eat a lot of something that won’t make us feel sick—such as carrots, unbuttered popcorn, or sparkling water? Or is there a pleasurable way we’d rather spend our time, reading something for fun, taking a walk, deadheading flowers in the garden, riding a bike, talking with a friend, writing a letter, drawing, or another of many happy options. For some of our loved ones, the drive to overeat can feel so powerful that they need to do something all-consuming to distract themselves, like an intense hike or bike ride. Others are able to distract themselves just by watching a good movie.
Do you have a rule of thumb that facilitates happy eating for you? If so, please share it in the comments. We love to hear from you.