Stress from being overscheduled Drop unnecessary activities from your schedule and bolster your support system so that your friends, spouse, or hired help can take on what you can’t handle. Meanwhile, start shifting over to nonfood ways of dealing with stress. The previous chapter offers a lot of recommendations on this topic.
Emotions Using food to cope with emotional pain or turmoil or to celebrate happy times is a particularly hard habit to break, especially if you’re the type of person who’s wiring makes food particularly rewarding. That wiring, as described earlier in this chapter, means that food gives you a bigger high and/or you have a blunted dopamine response, so you need more food to reach that high. Going through the nine steps in conjunction with the emotional eating exercises in the previous chapter will help you unlink emotions from eating.
Step 8: Eliminate (or Limit) Sugary Beverages
If the word eliminate only makes you want them more, then make a pact with yourself to systematically cut back until you have only the occasional soda or other sugary drink as part of a planned treat. If these drinks have become addictive, and even the occasional splurge triggers cravings for more, you may have to stay away from them altogether. Even if you don’t feel addicted to them, there’s still a very good reason to drastically limit sodas, sweetened iced tea, and other high-calorie beverages: They insidiously pack on pounds by loading you up with calories that don’t make you feel full. That 12-ounce soda washing down your pizza tacked on 140 calories to your meal—about the same amount as an extra slice of pizza, but the second slice would have filled you up in a way that a beverage just couldn’t. Liquid calories don’t register well with the body because they don’t have the same satiating effect as solid food. Cavemen didn’t go around sipping sweetened beverages, and our bodies still haven’t figured out how to deal with them. But these drinks do register with your fat cells; those excess calories get tucked away as body fat. As a rough guideline, an extra 140 calories above and beyond your daily needs can add fifteen pounds of body fat in a year’s time.
And on average we’re consuming way more than a single 140-calorie sweetened beverage per day. In fact, sweetened beverages make up about 21 percent of our daily calories—that’s double the percentage in 1965. If you’re taking in 1,800 calories, that’s 378 calories daily from sugary beverages. The average American drinks 222 more beverage calories a day now than in the 1960s, nearly all coming from sugary drinks. We’re sipping our way to obesity and other chronic illnesses. In the long-running Nurses’ Health Study, which has surveyed hundreds of thousands of nurses about their health and habits since 1976, women who increased their intake of sugar-sweetened beverages over a four-year period gained about eighteen pounds compared to a six-pound gain for women who decreased consumption. It’s thought that the increased risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes from drinking sugary beverages is partly explained by the pounds these drinks put on, and also from their rapidly absorbed sugar, which spikes blood sugar and insulin levels. (Insulin is the hormone responsible for keeping blood sugar levels normal—people with type 1 diabetes stop producing insulin and those with type 2 diabetes either have too little insulin or their cells aren’t receptive to the hormone, or both. It’s theorized that by constantly stimulating insulin release with sugary and high-glycemic-index foods, the pancreas, which produces insulin, starts to wear out and type 2 diabetes ensues.) Soft drinks also crowd out milk consumption, thus lowering calcium intake.
If sodas weren’t bad enough, now you also have to deal with the temptation of Frappuccinos and other blended coffee drinks. When researchers surveyed people buying coffee at fifty-two Starbucks and seventy-three Dunkin’ Donuts stores in New York City, they discovered that two-thirds of the coffee cups coming out of Starbucks and one-third from Dunkin’ Donuts were blended coffee drinks, which contain an average of 239 calories each.
So, if all that doesn’t prompt you to start thinking about cutting back on high-calorie beverages, here’s a way to make it more real. Go into your kitchen, get out the measuring spoons, and pour out 12 teaspoons (4 tablespoons) of sugar into a small glass. That’s the amount in 12 to 14 ounces of most soft drinks, sweetened iced tea, punches, and juice drinks. Now add 4 more teaspoons—that’s the amount in a Dunkin’ Donuts large Mocha Spice Latte. That’s a lot of sugar!
Next, turn to your Lifestyle Log and circle all the sweetened drinks in one color pen, then all the diet drinks in another color. (You can skip 1 percent or fat-free milk, or soy milk that contains about 100 calories per cup, such as Silk plain or Silk vanilla soy milk. And it’s okay to have 4 to 6 ounces of juice daily. Those are part of your basic healthy diet.) How many sweetened beverages or diet drinks are you averaging per day? Are there days that you drink a lot more than usual? Decide how much you can cut back without feeling anxious and deprived. Perhaps you can try starting with 50 percent.
Now come up with replacement beverages. While you might have thought that diet soda or other diet drinks would be a good alternative because they don’t contain calories, you may have already figured out (because I had you circle them in your log) that this isn’t the case. In fact, I’d recommend them only as a last resort. They may be calorie free, but they’re still very sweet, which undermines your efforts to train down your taste for sweets (step 9). Plus, diet drinks perpetuate your associations between sweet and beverage, making it difficult to drink healthful unsweetened beverages. But if the only way to break a regular soda habit is to drink diet soda, then lean on the diet drinks for a while and gradually wean yourself off them. Eventually nearly all diet drinks and sugary beverages should be replaced by the following options:
Water (your mainstay, comprising at least 80 percent of your beverage intake)
Sparkling water (plain, or if flavored, no sweeteners, including artificial sweeteners)
Water or sparkling water with a splash (no more than 2 tablespoons) of fruit juice
Unsweetened iced tea
Unsweetened iced tea with a splash (about 2 tablespoons) of fruit juice
Coffee with a splash of 1 percent or fat-free milk, or black
A note about water: If you’re used to flavored beverages, you may be out of the habit of drinking water or have decided that you don’t like it. As you move away from sugary beverages, your taste for water should return. In the meantime, try to be creative about ways to encourage yourself to drink more water. For instance, keep a beautiful cup that will inspire you to drink more water on your desk. And set goals for yourself throughout the day—try to hit a certain number of glasses by lunchtime or by mid-afternoon. You can even keep track of your intake online at www.thebestlife.com.
Or challenge yourself to drink more water on the Nestlé Pure Life website (www.nestle-purelife.us), which periodically runs contests, such as taking a pledge to substitute water for a sugared drink each day, with prizes and coupons offered to participants.
Step 9: Train Down Your Tastes for Fat, Salt, and Sugar
Addictive foods tend to have pumped-up flavors, tastes, and textures; think of all that’s going on in your mouth when you eat a pepperoni and sausage pizza, or a hot fudge sundae topped with nuts and whipped cream, or even an Oreo, which is not only sweet and chocolatey but also crispy and creamy. It’s hard for your average blueberry or orange—or even a really spectacular blueberry or orange—to compete. Their flavors, and those of other fruits, vegetables, and other unprocessed foods, are too subtle for a tongue used to extremes of salt, sugar, and spices. Ditto for fried foods. Even a nicely marinated, tender piece of grilled chicken will lose out to the fried version if fried is what you have a hankering for. “People like what they’re familiar with,” observes Marcia Pelchat, PhD, a food psychologist with Monell Chemical Senses Center, a scientific institute in Philadelphia dedicated to researching taste and smell. “If you eat cheeseburgers and fries, that’s what you’ll crave. But if you start eating salad and grilled fish, after a while you’ll want that type of food.”
And that
should come as a big relief; when you let go of your addictive foods, you won’t be left high and dry. You’ll actually prefer the healthier fare in time. But first you have to make that transition to healthier fare. Here’s how:
Scale back gradually. “You could go cold turkey—switch to low-sodium, low-sugar, or low-fat foods tomorrow—and in about a month you’ll actually prefer these foods. But I recommend doing it gradually,” advises Dr. Pelchat. “It’ll take a little longer, but you’ll enjoy your food more and be less likely to rebel or give up.” So don’t go from a tomato soup with 800 milligrams of sodium per cup to one with 60 milligrams; you’ll hate it. Instead start buying soup in the 500-milligram-per-cup range and see if you can work down from there. In recipes, cut sodium by about 25 percent, and when you get used to that, keep working your way down until your recipes have no more than 1⁄8 of a teaspoon of salt per serving. As the rest of your diet becomes lower in sodium, you shouldn’t miss the salt in that stew and in other dishes. And if you do, then a very small amount of salt added at the table will do the trick. (See “The Case for the Salt Shaker,” on page 125.)
This gradual approach works well for fatty foods, too. For milk, go from whole to 2 percent and stay there for a week or two. Then mix 2 percent with 1 percent for another week or two. Then take another week or two to get used to just 1 percent. You can stick with 1 percent or train down to fat-free (skim) by mixing the two for a week or two before adjusting to fat-free milk alone. Switching from fatty to lean meats is a little trickier because lean meat can be tough and dry if not cooked properly. If you’re a burger fan, I recommend not even trying to make an extralean burger—too dry. But extralean ground beef works well in chili, sloppy Joes (there’s a great sloppy Joe recipe in The Best Life Diet Cookbook), and other mixed dishes. And lean cuts such as tenderloin and flank steak can be delicious if marinated properly and cooked quickly.
TAMING A SWEET TOOTH
Jennifer Levanduski, a thirty-seven-year-old stay-at-home mom, struggled to keep the pounds at bay for most of her childhood and adult life. But during her second pregnancy in 2007, her weight climbed past a dangerous 265 pounds. “After my son was born, my weight came down into the 240s,” explains five-foot-nine Jennifer, “but my gelatinous body repelled me. I kept saying, ‘I have to go on a diet,’ but I didn’t really feel the motivation to make a change, and I wasn’t ready to give up my sweets.” She jumped from one fad diet to the next looking for a quick fix, but, not surprisingly, nothing worked.
Then, in October 2008, Jennifer got an email about a casting call for the Discovery Health Channel to be a part of a series that Bob Greene was hosting called What’s Making You Fat? A Best Life Special. She answered the email and got selected! “The casting call was an answer to a dream. It put me on a completely new track, which I continued with after the show by joining the online program (www.thebestlife.com). I now eat real meals, don’t let myself go hungry, and allow myself moderately portioned treats. This approach ended the diet-deprivation-binge-diet cycle I was on for so long,” she explains. “I don’t want to get to the point where I tell myself I can’t have something. Instead I have a portion-controlled amount of the splurge food and log it in my food diary to make myself accountable. It’s amazing that after one bite, I often find it disgusting and throw the rest away! This happened recently when I tried an Oreo Cakester. I’d eyed those at the market for months, imagining the chocolatey, fluffy goodness melting in my mouth. What I tasted instead was lard; it coated my tongue and turned my stomach. Into the trash it went!”
A year and a half after taping the show, she had lost seventy-five pounds. And Jennifer is still losing, thanks to exercise coupled with her new way of eating. “Now, to satisfy my sweet tooth, I chew sugar-free gum,” she says. “It provides a sweetness and keeps my mouth busy so I can’t eat other foods—bonus! I’ve also rediscovered meringue cookies. I make small ones at home that are only about ten calories each. There are so many ways to vary the flavors of them, too. My favorites right now are vanilla, peppermint, and mini–chocolate chip.
“The Best Life program has allowed me to find balance,” says Jennifer. “My new life is so much more rewarding than my old sweet fixes.”
Finally, do the same for sugar: Gradually cut back in recipes like banana bread, cakes, pies, and cookies. (If making desserts at home gets you into trouble, then don’t. Instead get a single-serving treat when you go out. Just make sure to check labels and choose sweets with the lower sugar levels.) And with chocolate, the higher the percentage of cocoa, the less sugar it contains. Milk chocolate generally has less than 40 percent cocoa, and dark chocolate usually has 50 percent or more.
Meanwhile, pump up other flavors. As you bring down the salt, sugar, and fat, keep food tasty and interesting by infusing it with other flavors. Sodium is the toughest hurdle because, as Dr. Pelchat explains, “People aren’t drawn to salt just for its taste—it also brings out flavors in foods, such as those in olive oil and other fats, and it masks bitter flavors.” So if you like olive oil, buy extra-virgin (it’s more flavorful) and sample a few brands to get one that is deep and intense. And use a heavier hand with herbs, spices, onion, garlic, lemon, and other citrus juices or grated citrus rinds in your dishes. For instance, spare yourself the 960 milligrams of sodium in a serving of Herb and Butter Rice-A-Roni by adding fresh chopped or dried herbs to a half cup of cooked brown rice and tossing with toasted almonds and a dash of salt and olive oil for a mere 160 milligrams of sodium. And if you find that lowering the sodium makes the bitter flavors in greens, like watercress and arugula, emerge too strongly, just mix them with romaine, oak lettuce, or other milder greens.
Fruit is going to be your ticket to weaning yourself off sugary desserts, but strawberries for dessert is a tough sell if you’ve been indulging in brownies, cakes, cookies, and pies. If it’s excellent-tasting fruit, you’ll have a much easier time making the switch. One of the Best Life nutritionists sends me Harry and David pears every year, and I get nearly as excited by that package as if she’d sent me a box of chocolates! Here’s where farmer’s markets really come through for you: The ripe-picked apples, pears, peaches, melons, and other fruits leave most supermarket fruit in the dust. And if you don’t have access to exceptional fruit, mixing together a little honey and orange juice and tossing it with chopped fruit does wonders for taste.
THE CASE FOR THE SALT SHAKER
If you’re wondering where all the excess sodium in the American diet comes from, don’t look at the salt shaker. It’s responsible for only about 6 percent of our sodium intake. Instead read the labels of the processed foods you’re eating, or check out the online nutrition charts for chain restaurants. That’s where the staggering numbers show up.
So I’m going to suggest that you go ahead and use the salt shaker at the table and drastically cut back on processed foods and carryout, and taper the salt in recipes to the levels recommended on pages 96–97. Those few crystals that you sprinkle on your food before taking a bite give you a much stronger salt taste than if you’d added many times more salt into the food while you’re cooking. And that salt-sprinkled dish will probably give you even more sodium satisfaction than a high-sodium canned soup or other processed food. In a Monell Chemical Senses Center study, using the salt shaker when eating a low-sodium (1,600 milligrams per day) diet raised sodium levels only 20 percent to about 1,920 milligrams daily—still fairly low.
There’s just one catch to skipping salt while cooking and adding it at the table instead. “You’ll keep sodium low this way, but it doesn’t help you reduce your taste for salt,” says Dr. Pelchat. That’s okay, as long as you’re still able to break your addiction to salty foods. Having some salt on your sautéed zucchini doesn’t necessarily translate to craving salty fast food. However, if you’re not making any headway, you might try putting away the salt shaker for a while and training your taste for salt way down. Eventually the addictive food might taste unpleasantly salty.
Check labels. Yo
u may be surprised to find out that there are 250 milligrams of sodium in the cereal going into your bowl (11 percent of your daily max) or 8 grams (2 teaspoons) of sugar in the raspberry vinaigrette dressing in your fridge. While the name Chubby Hubby should be a tip-off, you might not have imagined that just a half cup of this ice cream delivers about 60 percent of your daily saturated fat allotment. Once you start comparing labels, you’ll find great-tasting foods with half the sodium, salt, and fat. Expect a little trial and error—not every food will be to your liking.
Eat more of the healthy foods you already like. You probably have a number of healthy foods in your repertoire, like shredded wheat (a low-sodium cereal), bananas, watermelon, salad with homemade olive oil and balsamic dressing, and low-fat sweets such as Fudgsicles and fruit bars. Lean on these foods as you work on incorporating even more healthy foods.
ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS
Changing something as deeply rooted as your eating habits requires dedication, determination, and planning. For the planning part of the equation, try this goal-setting worksheet, the same one you used in the previous chapter. Pick a goal, fill out the worksheet, and come back to it in twenty-four hours to make sure you don’t need to tweak anything. If it seems to be working out, do it for two weeks; that’s not so long that it feels oppressive, but it’s long enough to start instilling a good habit. If it’s not working out, then choose a new two-week goal. Blank worksheets are in appendix 4, or you can download them for free at www.thebestlife.com/motivation.
The Life You Want Page 14