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Several weeks ago, we were planning a retirement party at work. The employee had taken upon herself the task of planning parties for others throughout the years, and we all felt she was owed an elaborate send-off. But the plans were dropped after we learned that she was currently a volunteer in a six-month long nutrition research study. All food and drink during the study had to be consumed at the research center, and she was not allowed to consume anything else. What was the point of having a party if the guest of honor couldn’t eat or drink? She insisted that it didn’t bother her to see others enjoying the food and beverages but somehow it didn’t seem right. Could one have a social gathering without serving something to drink and nibble on? This was the question left by our decision to cancel our plans and now, weeks later, no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. “Come over for drinks.” “Let’s meet for coffee.” “So you want to have lunch?” “Are you free for dinner?” “Refreshments will be served.” These, and countless other food and drink-based invitations, reinforce the idea that when people get together to socialize or even have a meeting, food and drinks should be available. And even if no announcement about eating and drinking is made ahead of time, it is a rare meeting, talk, workshop, or reunion that does not have a table somewhere on which snacks and drinks are displayed. The association between being with other people and eating and drinking must have its roots in our earliest history as social beings. Food had to be shared, especially when its source may have been a long and dangerous hunt. And presumably (my information comes mainly from dioramas in the Museum of Natural History in New York) people gathered together to eat after a successful hunt or later on, a harvest. But in these instances, the food came first and people assembled to eat it. Now, in contrast, even if our primary reason for getting together is to socialize, exchange information, support each other or conduct business, we assume that eating and drinking will accompany the business at hand. Dieters find this particularly trying, especially as many of the foods available at business meetings, conferences and family celebrations are too caloric to fit into a diet and too tempting not to be eaten. Many dieters have complained to me about the difficulty they have sticking to their program when they are confronted with pizza, chips, cookies and regular soda at a business lunch or workshop . Is it possible to get together without eating or drinking? Could we have had a celebration of the employee’s years with our group without food and beverages? No, we couldn’t do so in a conventional setting. It is hard to imagine a group of people standing around chatting with the guest of honor with nothing but napkins on the table. But there are situations in which people do assemble without reflexively looking to see what is being served. They include: 1) Airplanes trips. Carriers will continue to serve drinks but, as everyone knows, unless you bring your own food, or spend an outrageous amount of money for a cookie, you are going to sit through a several hour trip not eating. Interestingly, on trains almost everyone gets something to eat from the café car. 2) Religious services, especially weddings and funerals (although the lack of food in the house of worship is made up for afterwards) 3) Sports. Other than drinking water or a sports drink, most people participate together in many sports without eating. (This does not apply to people in the stands.) I noticed that hikers and long-distance bikers will eat to keep the body going and not as a form of social activity. 4) Spontaneous social interactions. Bumping into a friend on the sidewalk, supermarket or hardware store may lead to conversations lasting several minutes without either party feeling the need to eat or drink while talking. 5) Museums, concerts, ballet, theater. Although many cultural institutions provide places to drink and snack prior to or after an event, many people manage to walk through an exhibit with friends, or sit through a long opera with family members, without eating or drinking. (This is not true for movies.) 6) Watching the fireworks on the 4th of July. Although much eating and drinking occurs before and often after the event, people are too busy saying ooh and ahh to eat or drink. The same goes for really good parades or air shows. 7) Playing cards. A friend who takes her bridge and her bridge partner very seriously told me that while they might nibble before the game begins, it is considered bad form to eat while playing a hand. 8) Seriously interesting conversations. Although I have no proof, I suspect that if two friends get together for an exchange of what is known as gossip, they don’t care if there is food or not. 9) Amusement park rides. One rarely sees couples eating or drinking while being tossed around in something that looks as if it is about to crash. 10) At your own wedding! Everyone else may be eating and drinking but the honored couple are unlikely to forgo their first dance in order to eat the appetizer. We still haven’t figured out how to socialize at work without food or drink but our guest of honor benefited. We used money that would have gone for the party and bought a going-away gift instead. | permalink | related link |    ( 3 / 119 )For thousands of years our bodies have relied on the sun to change certain compounds in our skin into vitamin D. Even though this is the natural way of acquiring this essential vitamin, it is not always the most reliable. Even if you don’t live in a part of the world where it is dark six months of the year, difficult weather conditions may make sun exposure uncomfortable or impossible. Moreover, few of us have jobs that allow daily sun exposure; presumably lifeguards get enough of this vitamin during the summer but those jobs are fairly rare and seem to be limited to people who not only can swim well but sport excellent hair and great bodies. Additionally, our national concern with skin cancer and, for some of us, the wrinkling and aging of skin, have made us into sunblock and sunscreen users. Even at low strengths, these substances can block the skin synthesis of vitamin D. Yet this vitamin is absolutely essential for bone growth and maintaining bone integrity. Much ongoing research is being done to characterize its role in the heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and even mood disorders. People most at risk for not getting enough sun and vitamin D are infants, young children and the elderly. The rapidly growing child needs vitamin D for bone growth and the frail indoor- living older individual needs vitamin D to prevent bone loss. Rickets, a disease caused by lack of vitamin D that used to be common in children, led to bone deformities and short stature. Fish oils and oily fishes such as mackerel are good sources of vitamin D; a prevailing memory of my pediatrician’s office was the odor of cod liver oil, which was considered a reliable source of this vitamin. Fortunately, vitamin pills have removed the struggles of mothers in getting their kids to swallow the foul-smelling liquid. Unfortunately, not all kids get this vitamin in pill form because it is assumed, erroneously, that fortified foods like cereal and milk will provide the vitamin D not being made by the sun. But the vitamin D content of food is too low to do this unless large quantities are consumed. Elderly individuals have a different problem. They may not be using sunscreen to prevent wrinkles; presumably when one reaches the late eighties or nineties, worry about wrinkle development in latter life is no longer an issue. But they are rarely outside and when they are, they sit in the shade or are covered up. I volunteer as a visitor at a Miami old age home. My offers to take the women I visit outside, in their wheelchairs, is always rejected as being too much of a bother. So despite the prevalence of sunny days, these women never are exposed to the sun and never benefit from its effects on vitamin D manufacture. They don’t take vitamin pills either, even though they are available, because as one woman told me, “ I take enough pills everyday. Why add one more?” But one does not have to be very young or very old to be at risk for vitamin D deficiency. According to government standards, the vitamin D requirement raises from a daily requirement of 200 I.U (international units) before the age of 50 to 400 I.U for the second half of life. These figures are now considered too low and recent conferences on vitamin D have markedly increased the requirements, especially from middle age on, to 1000 I.U. or more. Physicians can order blood tests to determine the levels of active vitamin D and make recommendations based on what you personally need. Vitamin D deficiency has been suggested as one factor in depression, although the research findings are controversial and it may take several more years of research to know whether the vitamin will help depression. It is unclear which comes first: vitamin D deficiency or the lifestyle of someone getting depressed who stops taking vitamins and doesn’t go outside. But unless physicians, or the family members of someone who is depressed, are aware that an individual may be vitamin D deficient, it may be weeks or months before supplements are taken. Many people hate taking pills, even vitamins. An alternative is cod liver oil. But one taste should drive even the most determined pill avoider back to that bottle of vitamin D tablets. Think of it as sunshine in a bottle (without causing wrinkles). | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 95 )A new weight-loss client of mine (let’s call her Susan) was explaining why she had gained almost 80 pounds over the past l8 months. The death of a parent had led to chronic problems with her siblings over the disposition of the mother’s home and possessions. As she explained to me, she felt angry much of the time and found that eating helped soothe this uncomfortable emotion. The foods she selected were very high in fat: fried chicken, French fries, bagels heaped with cream cheese, salads heavy with mayonnaise, baked potatoes with gobs of butter. “When I realized that I was going to lose my fight with my siblings, I just couldn’t bear thinking about it. Eating lots of fat made me tired enough so I could retreat to my bed and go to sleep. It was a way of escaping from a really bad situation.” It is difficult to find studies that affirm Susan’s experience but anecdotal evidence is robust. Large quantities of fatty foods produce a lethargy and fatigue that some have described as “being drunk on food” or being in an “emotional coma.” One consequence of feeling this way is that the eater feels incapable of dealing with the problems caused by the stressful situation. In some cases, where there really is no way of making things better, the escape offered by the fatty foods is quite compelling. Carbohydrate consumption produces a different sort of emotional effect. Many research studies have shown that because the brain chemical serotonin is increased after carbohydrates are eaten, a general improvement in mood results. Anger, anxiety, irritability, confusion and fatigue decrease and energy, vigor, and hopefulness increase. The stressed individual who eats carbohydrate is less likely to try to escape her problems and more likely to try to cope with them. In my experience with weight-loss clients, many switch from the fatty foods to carbohydrates when they realize that they are going to have to deal with the problems presented by the stressful situation. Many years ago, I had a client whose husband had a terminal illness and was given a very short time to live. She told me that she deliberately ate large quantities of fat in order to knock herself out after visits to the hospital. She came to see me several weeks after her husband died because, as she told me, “I have to make all sorts of decisions now and I can’t think clearly when I eat so much fat. What can I eat that will keep me calm but not interfere with my thinking?” She responded to eating therapeutic amounts of carbohydrate, especially in the afternoon and evening when her loneliness and grief threaten to overwhelm her. The problem with using fatty foods as a way of avoiding difficult problems is that, like going on an alcoholic binge, the relief is short lived and has side effects. The health consequences from a diet of fried everything may last much longer than the problems caused by the stressful situation. (Susan still has not solved her conflicts with her siblings and now is dealing with the need to lose those 80 pounds.) Carbohydrates are not only healthier; they do not leave the eater with potential medical problems and, if chosen wisely, supply a variety of vitamins, minerals and fiber to the diet. But they do not act as an edible anesthetic. The stressed eater is still aware of the problems that triggered the eating. Perhaps the answer to what should be eaten when stress arrives is this: Eat carbohydrates (but not fruit as it does not lead to serotonin production) and seek emotional support from your family, friends or health care providers. Stress is hard to bear alone but the solution is not to curl up with a bag of potato chips for company. Recognize your need for emotional help if you see yourself turning to fats as a way of turning off your stress. There is sure to be someone who can offer more comfort and help than a candy bar does. | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 98 )“Next to Normal” is a Broadway musical dealing with the common, but rarely sung about, problems of mental illness and the impact this has on the family. Despite its theme, the musical is often very funny while being uncannily accurate in depicting the symptoms of bipolar disorder and how current therapies affect the patient. In one very long musical sequence, the patient, the mother of the family, is put on a variety of medications to stabilize her out-of-control mania. In scene after scene she comes back to tell her psychopharmacologist about the side effects of the various medications he is trying and their lack of efficacy. To my amazement, she sings that one medication took away her appetite and then made her gain 10 pounds. “ Did you hear that?” I whispered to my husband as people around us laughed. “They sing about weight gain from anti-depressants on stage but psychiatrists still won’t talk about it.” As we left the theater, I felt hopeful that this hidden cause of obesity might finally become mainstream. If it could make its way into the lyrics of a popular play, then maybe weight gain due to antidepressants and drugs used for bipolar disorder might be recognized as contributing to the epidemic of obesity In fact, the only part of the song that did was not entirely accurate was the weight gain of l0 pounds. Of course, this was supposedly after only a few weeks of treatment. Many drugs, especially those used for bipolar disorder, can produce weight gains upwards of 70 pounds over six months or so. One of the saddest aspects of medication-induced weight gain is that people who experience it were often a normal size before drug use and without any history of eating problems or obesity. In our weight-loss center at a Harvard University hospital, we saw many clients who not only had been thin but also had led physically active lives. They would tell us that they did not recognize their own bodies after several months on their medication. Not only were they unable to control their eating, they no longer could exercise as their extreme weight gain left them fatigued and often with back or leg pain. Their family and friends did not understand what was happening and these formerly thin people were subjected to unkind and sometimes abusive statements about their new size. A few became recluses because they could not bear people looking at them. One of our clients, in high school at the time, refused to go to school because of the way she looked. Her mother had to home-school her. And yet, as we point out in our book, The Serotonin Power Diet, this does not have to occur. The side effect of chronic hunger produced by the medications can be aborted by getting the brain to make more serotonin. No one is sure how the weight-gaining medications affect food intake but serotonin’s role in turning off hunger has been known for at least 35 years. It would be ideal if a drug existed that turned serotonin into an appetite terminator but there isn’t any. The only safe and effective way to get serotonin to function more potently as an appetite suppressant is to make the brain manufacture more of this chemical. This is easy to do and it is too bad the Broadway show didn’t mention it. Serotonin is made when non-fruit, starchy or sweet carbohydrates are eaten. As long as the food is eaten without protein and with very little fat, serotonin is made within 20 minutes or so. And as soon as it is made, it acts to shut off further eating. Clients in our hospital weight-loss center and our private practice were given a diet we have reproduced in our book. They were told to consume a carbohydrate drunk, which we had developed for the clinic. It allowed the brain to make serotonin very quickly. They were also allowed to substitute a carbohydrate food for the beverage, if they wished. Weight loss was immediate and easy because the additional amount of serotonin seemed to diminish or remove entirely the need to eat all the time. Some of the clients had to stay on the weight-loss plan for many weeks because they had gained so much w eight from their medication. They all told us they wished their psychopharmacologist had told them about our diet when they first started gaining weight and not after their weight gain became a major side effect. But who knows? Now that weight gain from antidepressants and mood stabilizers is put to music, maybe some songwriter will tell the audience about eating carbohydrates to lose weight. | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 131 )Television advertisements for highly caloric, yummy-looking foods have been around for so long that some of us avert our eyes when they appear so we won’t immediately give into the temptation to obtain the food. Otherwise, we would be phoning the local pizza place or raiding the freezer every time the commercials came on the screen. Over the past several months I noticed something about the commercial breaks that may drive all of us to the kitchen to find something to eat even if the advertised product is not food. The time dedicated to showing commercials between segments of a network television show seem to be getting longer and longer. I noticed this when, during the commercials. I tried to take care of those last-minute household chores of the evening. To my astonishment, it was possible to get the coffee maker ready for morning breakfast on one break, brush my teeth for the allotted time on another and, if my dog was fast enough, take him out for a last minute “pee” break. But then once these tasks were completed, I was faced with the problem of what to do during the subsequent two or three minutes of advertisements. Going to the kitchen to find something to eat was always a possibility as was spending the time deciding whether I wanted to eat or not. Eating to use up time is a chronic problem that many of us face. regardless of whether we are on a diet or simply trying to maintain our weight. When faced with large amounts of uncommitted time, such as on a rainy Sunday afternoon or during the evenings, it is too easy to spend the time walking back and forth from the kitchen. Often the best way to prevent this is to get out of the house or become so involved in an activity that the desire to snack is forgotten. In fact, diets will succeed only if the dieter can figure out how to spend the time he or she used to be spend eating doing something else. It is easier to identify activities that use up several hours than it is to find something to do for three-minute intervals every ten minutes of a television show. Few people are going to run to the piano to practice a scale or put a few strokes of oil on a canvas during the commercials. So I thought I would come up with a list of activities that can be done during the advertising interval and are far away from the kitchen. 1. Look up definitions of words whose meaning is a mystery to you. If you don’t have a dictionary, Google them. 2. Write a thank-you note or sign and address birthday, anniversary or other celebratory cards. 3. Check your appointment schedule for the next day. This is particularly important for people such as myself who write down meeting and other appointment dates but fail to open the calendar where they are written. 4. Scan the weather report in the newspaper so you can find somewhere in the world with worse weather than tomorrow’s forecast for where you live. 5. Check to see if your pet’s water bowl is filled. 6. Get down on the floor and do a minute’s worth of push-ups or abdominal crunches. 7. Stand on one foot during the commercial. With practice you might be able to do it for the full length of the advertising. This is a great way to improve your balance. 8. Go through the container where you keep your earrings and line up them up. Think about what to do about those missing a partner. 9. Fold clothes (this always has to be done). 10. Write down what you remember eating during the day and check to see if you consumed any vegetables, fruits or dairy. If not, program your cell phone or computer to remind you to do so tomorrow. This may take two commercial breaks to accomplish. 11. Empty your wastebaskets or yell at your kids to do it if it is their chore. 12. If you plan to travel to a foreign country, repeat an essential phrase in that country’s language like “where is the toilet?” 13. Check the thermostat and argue with your partner/spouse over the setting. This may take longer than the commercial break. 14. Floss your teeth, again. It’s impossible to do this enough. 15. Brush your cat or dog. Do not do this if animal is on bed unless you want fur on your pillow. 16. Watch the advertisements. Sometimes they are funny. | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 56 )Back Next |
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