Emotional Eating
Yesterday, out of the blue, without any foreboding gossip or rumor, the company I work for was taken over by a competitor. All afternoon we sat stunned and unnaturally quiet, trying to absorb what had happened and what it might mean to our future.
Two hours after the announcement of the sale was made, I walked through the office, a large call center divided into several teams that handle certain accounts or patients at different levels of care. Apparently quite independently of each other, each team was trying to handle the tension and the underlying anxiety in their own way.
What did they all choose? You guessed it: FOOD.
We eat when we’re happy and celebrating; we eat when we’re lonely; we eat when we’re bored. And, above all, we eat when we’re upset. When our whole world seems to spin out of control, food remains the only object that can seem to keep us anchored and stable. We reach to it for comfort, for re-assurance, for love. And we remain blind to the fact that our affection for it allows it to exert control over us. Over the next few months, as reorganization plans are implemented and the winds of change sweep through the offices of management and the cubicles of worker bees, we will reach out, over and over, for the comfort of eating to steady our stomachs and soothe our nerves.
Corporate downsizing – just another weapon to make us fat!
Does the pressure never stop? Perhaps when we’re dead, there is no longer any compulsion to eat – or maybe we are destined to go into our graves as a starving corpse who tries desperately to communicate with the living about the overwhelming urge to eat.
Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she recently published a psychologically-based weight control e-workbook, “Diet with an Attitude” which develops mental skills towards the goal of permanent weight control. She can be reached at http://www.DietWithAnAttitude.com. She provides support and guidance in use of the workbook through her regular blog, http://dietwithanattitude.blogspot.com
Historical Approaches to Weight Loss and Healthy Eating
Here are a few interesting facts:
Today, we have made nutrition a science; we think that our experts know the secrets to healthy eating.
A much wider variety of healthy foods are available to us today than ever before.
However, in modern society, more of us have weight problems and become ill or even die from conditions related to being overweight than ever before!
Maybe it’s just possible that we have something to learn from the way that people ate in the past – throughout much of human history, in fact. One thing goes without saying, and is probably the most important factor – in the past, food was more natural. While it may be true that people ate more fat and even more calories, they acquired them from food that was close to its natural state, and therefore better for health.
But here’s something else – something that may surprise you. People in most ancient societies – and right through the Middle Ages and Renaissance – did not follow the advice that most nutritionists would give today. They hardly ate any breakfast at all, though we are often told that breakfast is the ‘most important meal’. In fact, they were likely to eat only one large meal a day – or two at the most, in which case one would be larger than the other. And here’s another thing that would make modern nutritionists shake their heads in despair – quite a lot of the time, it seems, that one big meal was eaten rather late in the day – often after the sun went down and the day’s work was done!
This is, of course, the direct opposite of what we hear nowadays. We are told never to skip breakfast, and that numerous smaller meals are better than fewer large ones. According to traditional societies, though, that’s just not true. People in ancient Greece and Rome would eat very little in the morning – a small piece of bread, maybe, or a fig or two. They would work throughout the day, eating little or nothing. Then, when work was done for the day, they would sit down to a great meal. What it consisted of would vary according to how well-off the people were, and the precise region they lived in – but for everyone, the evening meal would be comprised of most of their daily calories. They would go to bed on a full stomach, digest during the night, and be energized – and have little need to eat – next morning.
As time went on, some farming cultures varied this basic plan somewhat, and had their main meal in the middle of the day. They would then have a light supper – rather like our lunch – late in the evening. In fact, there are people in some European cultures today who eat exactly like this to this day.
Today, breakfast is sacrosanct, but it actually was not even invented until the seventeenth century. At that time, the idea of breakfast was popularized by the British royal family – and their ‘breakfast’ consisted of several courses, including meat, salads, and even dessert. In fact, the royals and aristocrats were the ‘deviants’ all along. They didn’t eat like most people did – they increased the amount and frequency of their meals, and ended up with much of the health and weight problems that we have today!
By contrast, the peasants’ meals seemed to be, for the most part, just right – as long as there wasn’t a drought or famine in the area, that is. Of course, part of it might have been the simple food and hard labor, but evidence suggests that people in bygone times had very few weight problems, despite (or maybe because of?) their tendency to eat most of their calories at one meal, which was often an evening meal, at that! Should we follow their lead? It goes against conventional wisdom, but it seems worth thinking about. If nothing else, we should appreciate the fact that this type of eating has been around a lot longer than modern diets and eating plans, and seems to have been successful, for the most part. So if you’re not a breakfast person, don’t despair – chances are you weren’t bred to be!
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Help Stop Snoring, Limiting Eating Before Bedtime
It’s getting to close to bedtime and your stomach is looking for a late night snack. You go to the kitchen and decide on a nice thick slice of chocolate cake. After brushing your teeth you tuck yourself into bed and within hours you feel the familiar hand of your spouse trying to wake you up so you’ll stop snoring.
Snoring is a problem that almost everyone has had to deal with at some point. Whether it was a parent who snored, a partner or their own snoring problem, it changed not only their sleep patterns but their stress level as well. If we don’t get a good night’s rest we can end up irritated, frustrated and angry with the person who snores, even if logically it seems that there is nothing they can do about it.
There might be something that can easily change the situation and help them to stop snoring. The solution might be found in their menu. The foods we eat can have a direct impact on whether or not we snore.
Eating right before you retire for the night gives your body less of a chance to digest the food. This can result in the food sitting within your stomach and depending on the size of the snack or the meal it can also cause you to feel pressure on your diaphragm. It is that pressure that can result in snoring.
Adjusting your meal time might help improve the snoring. If you are accustomed to eating dinner later in the evening at eight or nine o’clock, it might be wise to move that ahead several hours so that by the time you do hit the hay, the food will have been digested and it won’t result in a restless sleep that is filled with the sounds of snoring.
Experimenting a bit with eating times is wise in this case. It might be as simple as an hour difference in time that results in you snoring or not. That is a small change that can have a big result in not only your sleep but in the sleep of those who have listened to you snore night after night.
Snacks are often a regular routine of night time television viewing. Eating potato chips, popcorn or pretzels is a great way to add flavor to an evening of sports or movies. Choosing a different snack might help you to have a sounder sleep though. Some research suggests that honey has a positive effect on the airways and can help stop snoring. Eating an apple dipped in honey or having a cup of warm tea with honey will not only help with stopping the snoring but it won’t place such a heavy burden on your digestive system at the end of the day.
Overall the main points to remember when eating to avoid snoring are:
* Avoid eating late in the day.
* Avoid eating snacks that contain too many calories
* Avoid snacks that take a long time to digest.
Looking carefully at your diet and your dietary habits might result in not only a healthier eating pattern but also may help with a snoring problem. Simply adjusting what you eat and when you eat it could stop your snoring completely.
MaxTaylor runs the website, http://stopsnoring.mega-advice.com a website specializing in Stop Snoring tips, products, and articles. For more information visit his site:Stop Snoring