Coping With Food Pushers
By Katherine Tallmadge*
One of my clients, who came to me to lose about 30 pounds, has a real problem. He loves to eat, and he loves to please people. In fact, he said pleasing people is the main reason he overeats. This tendency becomes especially troublesome during the holidays when friends, family and colleagues invite him for meals. My kind-hearted client literally cannot say no.
As a result, he says holidays are a time of joy but also frustration, because his need to be polite is in stark conflict with his goal of trimming down. Many of us can appreciate his dilemma. Holiday delicacies can be difficult to navigate, especially if you're trying to avoid gaining weight from Thanksgiving to the New Year. And that can bring out the best and the worst in people.
We all know hosts who aren't satisfied until they convince us, beg us, to eat more, more, more. Their entreaties are hard to resist, if only because we want to be polite.
To be fair, "food pushers," as I call them, aren't necessarily bad people. Your mom, your spouse, your friends -- they just want to please you. They are people who think they have your best interests at heart and know more than you do about what and how much food (and drink) you should be consuming.
My clients and I have tried various tactics through the years, most of them utter failures. I've tried explaining that I wasn't hungry. I even went through a phase of telling people I was allergic to this or that. That didn't work, either. And I learned that the worst thing you can say to a food pusher is, "No thanks, I'm on a diet" or "Thanks, I'm watching it."
You might as well say, "Talk me into it!" Your excuse is giving the food pusher a double signal -- that you really want it but have to refuse. It might also sound insulting, implying that the food isn't good enough for your refined tastes. And finally your response might make the pusher feel guilty, as if he or she should be "watching it," too. All of these things challenge the food pusher to seduce you.
But I finally began to make headway when I learned the most basic rule of all: Never give excuses. I'm delighted to say that one of the foremost authorities on etiquette told me that this approach is both appropriate and wise.
"The best answer is a simple but firm 'No thank you,'"
declared Judith Martin, the syndicated columnist who writes as Miss Manners. "Once you give an excuse, you open yourself to argument." Martin also offered clear advice in her column to food pushers, and their "endless patter of coercion -- 'Oh, come on, one won't hurt you . . . I made this especially for you . . . it doesn't have any calories . . . you're too thin anyway . . . it's good for you . . . you're not going to make me eat leftovers tomorrow.' Miss Manners asks them to cut it out."
"To offer and provide food is lovely, but to badger people into eating it isn't pleasant," Martin told me. "Politeness consists of offering food and drink without cajoling or embarrassing people into taking it."
While "no thank you" is fine for hosts, I learned I had to use a different tactic with my family.
During visits to my grandparents in Sweden, for instance, every day I felt overstuffed from too many fattening (and, yes, delicious) Swedish meatballs, cheeses and cakes. Inevitably with each visit I came home several pounds heavier.
I decided I'd drop subtle hints and compliments to guide them into serving me food that wasn't going to make me look and feel like a Swedish meatball.
This technique of continued positive reinforcement took several years (in psychology, it's called "shaping"), but it eventually worked. When they served seafood, salads, fruits -- food I wanted more of -- I complimented lavishly. "Sweden has the best fish in the world!" or "I just love your salads!" (which was all true, by the way). Over time, whenever I'd visit, they'd feed me what they learned I loved: seafood, salads and fruits. (Yes, I also loved the fattening stuff, but that was easily obtained, and I wanted to limit my indulgences without announcing it.)
The same technique can work with your colleagues, friends and family, and it doesn't have to take years. At Thanksgiving or during the holidays, instead of focusing on what you don't want or can't have, and using turn-off words such as "healthy" or "diet," simply compliment your hosts and stay positive. Instead of saying "I can't have dessert, I'm watching it," say "The meal was so satisfying, I can't have another bite!"
When given a choice at, say, the Thanksgiving meal, a work party, a potluck, or in restaurants, instead of, "I don't eat mashed potatoes and gravy," say: "The green beans look fabulous!"
My client tried these tactics with his family and friends and has been losing weight ever since. He was surprised at how a simple compliment could stop food pushers in their tracks.
Even Miss Manners agrees that this approach is okay as long as you don't go into too much detail. In the end, no food pusher can resist a happy guest.
Katherine Tallmadge is a Washington nutritionist and the author of "Diet Simple"
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53597-2004Nov16.html
How to Take Carbonated Drinks Out of Your Diet*By Cynthia Measom, eHow Contributor
updated: January 12, 2011
Wean yourself off of carbonated drinks instead of abruptly cutting them out.
For some, the fizzy nirvana of a carbonated drink is the perfect pick-me-up -- especially if it's caffeinated. Yet, whether you drink sugar-laden soda or a diet version, too much is never healthy. Bloating and weight gain can be side effects of carbonated beverage consumption, which sometimes make people uncomfortable enough to kick the habit. Once you decide to take carbonated drinks out of your diet, it's best not to go cold turkey if you want to taste success. Instead, tell yourself that this will be a gradual process.
Things You'll Need:
• Caffeine-free diet drinks
• Black tea
• Green tea
• Water
• Coffee
• Sucralose
Make up your mind to work toward completely eliminating carbonated drinks from your diet. If you're not fully committed to the goal, it won't work in the long run.
Switch to a lesser evil. For instance, if you drink two regular carbonated drinks per day, trade one for a diet, caffeine-free version for three or four days, then trade the other. Caffeine is part of the addiction, and it will take approximately three weeks to kick the addiction, according to Web MD.
Eliminate one diet, caffeine-free soda after three or four days and replace it with chilled water with a slice of fresh fruit, green tea, black tea or coffee. Keep drinking the other soda if you wish for three or four days, then make the switch to a non-carbonated beverage.
Stock your refrigerator and your workplace with plenty of non-carbonated beverage selections. That way, you won't be tempted by the soda machine.
Tips & Warnings
• If you can't live without caffeine during Step 2, trade a carbonated beverage for black tea or coffee. Use an artificial sweetener such as sucralose if you can't stomach it plain.
• Not a water lover? Non-carbonated drink mixes are available to add to a bottle of water. Low-calorie and no-calorie versions exist.
• Be careful when substituting other beverages for carbonated drinks. For instance, 100 percent fruit juice may have Vitamin C value, but check out the sugar content and calories.
http://www.ehow.com/print/how_7760381_carbonated-drinks-out-diet.html
Fish: Natural Weight-Loss Food*
The best plan for achieving a healthy weight and maintaining it is to change your eating and exercise habits. Replace foods that expand your waistline with healthy foods, like fish. Fish is a food that is full of satisfying flavor, low in calories, and stocked with heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 acids are essential fats that your body can't make. They help keep the blood from clotting too easily and add to a better cholesterol ratio.
Fish is a fabulous addition to any healthful diet because its low saturated fat content makes it the perfect protein substitute for fatty cuts of beef and pork. Even shellfish is low in saturated fat and isn't as high in cholesterol as many believe.
Learn how to incorporate fish into your healthy lifestyle.
Health Benefits
Although fish is lean, it does contain some healthy oil. Known as omega-3 fatty acids, these fish oils are thought to offer some amazing health benefits, such as helping to prevent heart disease and cancer, treating psoriasis and arthritis, and relieving the agony of migraine headaches and helping with weight control. Fatty fish tend to have more omega-3s than leaner fish, but even "fatty" fish contain less fat than lean beef or chicken. Even canned fish like tuna, sardines, and salmon, when eaten bones and all, pack your meal with plenty of good-for-your-bones calcium, too.
Nutritional Values
Coho Salmon
Serving Size: 3 oz, cooked
Calories: 157
Fat: 7 g
Saturated Fat: 1 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Carbohydrate: 0 g
Protein: 21 g
Dietary Fiber: 0 g
Sodium: 44 mg
Potassium: 391 mg
Snapper
Serving Size: 3 oz, cooked
Calories: 109
Fat: 2 g
Saturated Fat: <1 g
Cholesterol: 40 mg
Carbohydrate: 0 g
Protein: 22 g
Dietary Fiber: 0 g
Sodium: 48 g
Magnesium: 31 mg
Potassium: 444 g
Selection and Storage
When buying fresh fish, always smell it. If you detect a "fishy" odor, don't buy it. Whether you buy whole fish, fish fillets, or steaks, the fish should be firm to the touch. The scales should be shiny and clean, not slimy. Check the eyes: They should be clear, not cloudy and bulging, and not sunken. Fish fillets and steaks should be moist. If they look dried or curled around the edges, they probably aren't fresh.
It's best to cook fresh fish the same day you buy it. (Fish generally spoil faster than beef or chicken, and whole fish generally keeps better than steaks or fillets.) But fish will keep in the refrigerator overnight if you store it in an airtight container over a bowl of ice.
If you need to keep it longer than a day, freeze it. The quality of thawed, frozen fish is better when it freezes quickly, so freeze whole fish only if it weighs two pounds or less. Larger fish should be cut into pieces, steaks, or fillets to ensure a quick freeze. Lean fish will keep in the freezer up to six months -- three months for fatty fish.
When buying most shellfish -- clams, oysters, lobsters, crabs, and crayfish -- it's imperative they still be alive. Live lobsters and crabs are easy to spot. Clams and oysters are trickier, though; you must be sure the shell is closed tightly or closes when you tap the shell.
Fish and shellfish have been dogged by safety questions, including those arising from man-made contaminants. Oysters and clams, if eaten raw, carry a particular risk of passing on diseases such as hepatitis or Norwalk-like viruses. Cook them thoroughly to avoid food-borne illness. Partially cooked shellfish can still harbor harmful bacteria.
Pesticides, mercury, and chemicals like PCB sometimes find their way into fish. Though fatty fish is richer in omega-3s, they're also more likely to harbor environmental contaminants.
Here are some precautions you can take to reduce the odds of eating contaminated fish:
• Eat fish from a variety of sources.
• Choose open-ocean fish and farmed fish over freshwater; they are less likely to harbor toxins.
• Eat smaller, young fish. Older fish are more likely to have accumulated chemicals in their fatty tissues.
• Before you fish, check with your own state's advisories about which waters are unsafe for fishing. Try the Department of Public Health or the Department of Environmental Conservation.
• Don't make a habit of eating the fish you catch for sport if you fish in the same place over and over again.
• Avoid swordfish and albacore. They may be contaminated with mercury.
Preparation and Serving Tips
For the uninitiated, fish is most perplexing to prepare. But the number one rule is: Preserve moistness. That means avoiding direct heat, especially when preparing low-fat varieties of fish; you'll get the best results if you use moist-heat methods such as poaching, steaming, or baking with vegetables or in a sauce. Dry-heat methods such as baking, broiling, and grilling work well for fattier fish.
Fish cooks fast, so it's easy to overcook it. You can tell fish is done when it looks opaque and the flesh just begins to flake with the touch of a fork. If it falls apart when you touch it, it's too late; the fish is overdone. The rule of thumb for baking fish is to cook 8 to 10 minutes per inch of thickness, measured at the fish's thickest point. For grilling and pan-frying or broiling, cook 4 to 5 minutes per inch of thickness.
For fish soups, stews, and chowders, use lean fish. An oily fish will overpower the flavor of the broth. Citrus juices enhance the natural flavor of fish. Some favorite fish seasonings are dill, tarragon, basil, paprika, parsley, and thyme.
To succeed at long-term weight loss, it's important to learn new ways of eating that you enjoy. You can lose weight easily when you enjoy healthy foods, like fish, and prepare delicious, yet low-fat, fish recipes.
*http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/natural-foods/natural-weight-loss-food-fish-ga.htm
Tilapia Twist
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=214235
Nutritional Info
• Fat: 1.6g
• Carbohydrates: 31.4g
• Calories: 224.2
• Protein: 23.3g
Ingredients
4 - tilapia filets
1 - jar of a fruit based salsa
2 - large apples, cored and sliced into 4 sections
1 - can of pineapple rings
1/4 - cup of banana pepper rings
Directions
Makes 4 filets or 4 servings
Heat oven to 350 degrees
~Place the 4 tiapia filets in a deep cassarole dish
~Arrange the apple sections around the filets
~Place 1 or 2 pinapple rings on each fillet
~Pour the jar of fruit salsa over the tilapia filets, and apples
~Place the 1/4 cup of banna pepper rings randomly over the filets and apples
Place cassarole dish in oven and bake for 45 min
After 45 min, broil for a golden top for about 3-5 minutes
Number of Servings: 4
Photos: Sodahead.com, battelle.com, grilledsalmon.org, find.myrecipes.com
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