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Although is seems hard to believe, Halloween was not always associated with packaged candy in mountain-size piles in every supermarket and drug store. Apples, small bags of home-popped popcorn, and cookies from a favorite neighbor used to be the treats available in my neighborhood when I was growing up. And in second grade the Halloween party activity was dunking for apples in a bucket of water, which was an impossibility for those of us who had just lost our front teeth. Then no longer could we accept apples from the nice old lady who lived across the street because somewhere else in the country, some evil person was putting razors in the fruit and bags of popcorn and homemade cookies were suspect because they could be laced with all sorts of poisons. Something had to take the place of these homemade and home-packaged treats. Regular size candy bars were too large and too expensive to be handed out to the dozens of costumed kids knocking on the door and small rolls of Life Savers and packages of bubble gum were too boring. The candy manufacturers who cleverly downsized their candy bars into packaged bite-size portions, packed them in large bags and made them safe from tampering, easily solved the problem. I was in a CVS recently and found myself marveling at the bags and bags of Halloween candy in the aisle where I always buy my favorite sweet, cherry licorice bits. I had still had a large bag at home so I did not have to sort through the other candies to locate them. But looking at the enormous variety of mini candy bars I have to admit I was tempted to buy a bag. But I talked myself out of doing so since my neighbors are considerably beyond second grade and more concerned about getting enough vitamin D and calcium than eating a bite size Almond Joy. Nonetheless, for anyone with a sweet tooth such as myself, this seasonal abundance of candy does pose an enormous temptation. I suspect many people find themselves buying bags of Halloween-sized candy with the vague idea that maybe they will be giving it away but end up eating all the candy. And because each wrapped item is so small, it is very easy to convince oneself that eating one or maybe two or even three won’t really cause a weight problem. As I walked home I wondered whether the availability of almost unlimited varieties of candy at a time of year when people are experiencing an intense craving for sugar is a coincidence or the response of candy manufacturers to a seasonal biological need. We know from decades of research that as darkness descends on the country with the switch to standard time, people feel tired, down in the dumps and hungry for sweets. So are the candy manufacturers using Halloween as an excuse to supply adults with the sweets they crave this time of year? I suspect that many households hide away bags of Halloween candy in drawers and closets so that sweet snacking can start way before Halloween and continue long after the costumes have been put away. It is hardly necessary to point out that the mini-candy bars are but a prelude to the serious snacking and meal eating that will start at Thanksgiving and continue until the New Year. Indeed, one might regard them as the appetizer to the weeks of overeating that seem to be our fate as we move through late fall and the beginning of winter. However, there are ways of preventing Halloween pounds from haunting you as you struggle not to gain any weight during the late fall and winter. If you have a serious seasonal sweet tooth, as I do, certain types of Halloween candy might be able to satisfy it without endangering your weight. Small amounts of very sweet, very low-fat candy like candy corn will boost the level of serotonin in your brain. In addition to making you feel content and less depressed, serotonin also shuts off your appetite, including your craving for sweets. By giving in to your sweet tooth and eating a small amount of candy, you will be able to prevent yourself from ripping open the bag of mini-chocolate bars and devouring all of them. The amount of candy, what I call the “therapeutic dose” that you need to eat to promote serotonin, is small and similar to what is contained in the mini Halloween candy packs. The sweet should contain about 120-130 calories, about 25-30 grams of carbohydrate, little or no protein and little or no fat. The reason for avoiding protein is that all protein interferes with the production of serotonin. Although fat is an essential and major ingredient in chocolate candies, its presence adds calories without helping satisfy your sweet craving. Fat has one additional problem. It slows down digestion, and the candy must be digested before the appetite and mood effects of serotonin can be felt, Buying a bag of Mars bars or Snickers or M&M’s, all of which are much higher in fat than candy corn, is risky. Because of their fat content, they take a while to digest so no serotonin is made. Before you can say Jack o’ Lantern, you have consumed half the bag of mini candy bars. Do this for a few days and there won’t be a ghost of a chance that you won’t gain weight. Do you still want one of those mini chocolate bars? Here is a trick that turns into a treat. Eat your serotonin boosting fat-free sweet snack in the amount that will boost this appetite-controlling brain chemical. Wait 20 minutes (answer the doorbell and give out some candy). Now eat one small chocolate treat. You will be satisfied. Why? Because the serotonin is shutting off your appetite for sweets and even eating one mini chocolate bar may seem like too much sweetness in your mouth. The feeling is similar to what you feel when you thirsty, drink enough water to satisfy your thirst and then don’t want anything more to drink. As to the snacks you have to buy for those Trick or Treaters: What about adding small boxes of raisins or tiny bags of pretzels or popcorn? Just don’t give apples to anyone without any front teeth. | permalink | related link |   ( 3 / 57 )Is everyone worried about memory loss or just everyone I see these days? Get together with friends or have a casual conversation at work and eventually someone is talking about a relative or friend who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Mention that you couldn’t find your cell phone and a dozen stories will be told about misplacing everything from keys to the family pet. Reminisce about an event or acquaintance from several years ago and notice the agitation as people try to remember names, places, and dates. “What can we do to prevent memory loss?” seems to be the question everyone older than 27 seems to be asking these days and so far there are very few answers. Provoking the brain to work harder by doing math problems, word puzzles, learning or relearning a language, or figuring out how to read a map without turning it upside down may be beneficial because the brain could be forced into making new memory connections to replace those that are disappearing. However, it is still not clear how learning calculus will retrieve the name of one’s second grade teacher (mine was Miss Lawrence). But the one intervention that has now been studied systemically and shown to work is exercise. About a year ago, studies were completed in Australia on the relationship between consistent exercise and improvement on standardized tests of memory. The study, which was published in the American Medical Association, asked people who had memory problems, but not Alzheimer’s disease, to follow an 18-month exercise program. Walking or other moderate-intensity exercise was to be done for at least 150 minutes each week in three 50-minute sessions. Others with similar memory disabilities were not given any exercise guidelines or instructions. Those in the exercise group did about 20 minutes more exercise each day than the other group. Standardized tests for Alzheimer’s disease were used to measure changes in recall and cognition to detect either positive or negative changes in memory. What the researchers found was surprising and hopeful. After only six months, the physical activity group did better on these tests than the other group, and this improvement lasted for almost a year after the study was completed. Interestingly, the amount of exercise was not incompatible with the lifestyle of the participants nor was it exhausting, painful or difficult to do without special facilities like a gym or using a trainer. The activity was simply walking. And there were no side-effects to this intervention. You don’t have to wait until your memory has deteriorated before considering exercise as a therapeutic option. There are so many benefits from regular exercise such as better mood, decreased stress, weight loss, decreased heart disease, better balance, and increased energy levels that it hardly seems necessary to add one more reason to take a fast walk or start climbing stairs. But the memory-exercise connection is compelling. If something as simple as walking three times a week could not only halt memory loss but improve memory among those already at risk for Alzheimer’s, then pushing aside other obligations to make time for our own physical activity routine seems absolutely essential. If you can’t get to a gym, if the weather is too cold or hot to exercise outside, if you can’t find the treadmill because it is covered with clothes you are going to take to the thrift shop, then download an exercise routine from the Web, or take out an exercise DVD from the library. If you don’t have 50 minutes to exercise three times a week, do it five times a week for 30 minutes. We all have 30 minutes somewhere in the day to save our memories. As for me, I am off to the gym. That is, as soon as I can locate my gym bag. | permalink | related link | ( 3.1 / 35 )In an article entitled “Born Cheap” in New York magazine, the writer, Adam Sternbergh, asks whether we inherit the tendency to be frugal or extravagant with money. He describes families in which the sibling’s spending behavior reflects that of their parents. If one parent is obsessively concerned with saving money and the other thinks nothing of spontaneously buying an extravagant non-necessity, often the children will grow up to spend one way or the other. To answer critics who assumed that these spending behaviors were learned, scientists from MIT and other institutions took MRI brain scans of people who were given money and pictures of items on which they could spend the money. They were told they could keep whatever money they did not spend. The MRI scan detected different parts of the brain that were activated after the volunteers saw pictures of items whose price was either acceptable or too high. When the tightwads’ volunteers saw an item whose price in their opinion was too high, the scan showed that a brain region associated with encountering an unpleasant stimuli such as a disgusting smell was activated. And when the volunteer saw an item he wanted, another area in the brain associated with pleasurable activities, the nucleus accumbens, became activated. Thus it was clear to the researchers that the brain might influence whether we buy or deny ourselves purchases. Might these brain responses also hold true for people who keep track of how many calories they are consuming? We all know people like the tightwads who would recoil at the idea of eating something dreadfully caloric even if the food was delicious and within their caloric budget. I have a friend like this. She and I once ended an all-day hike in the mountains in a village around late afternoon. It was a hot summer day and people were strolling around the village square eating large ice cream cones or sitting at cafes spooning ice cream sundaes. My mouth started to water and I suggested that we stop and also have some ice cream. After all, we had expended far more calories than we had eaten that day and certainly my barely 100-pound friend did not have to worry about being overweight. She looked at me as if I had suggested we eat roasted worms and said we could get some iced tea instead. I also have a friend who follows what some have called the See Food Diet, the one that goes something like this: “Whatever food I see that I like, I eat.” She exercises diligently, eats moderately-sized portions of meal food and does not eat out of emotional need. But she loves good food and when she sees something that she knows will taste good and give her pleasure; she never hesitates to eat it. The number of calories is irrelevant. Occasionally, she moans about always having to lose 15 pounds but this does not stop her from eating what she wants. She is a caloric spend-thrift and no more thinks about her weight while she is consuming some high-calorie food than an impulsive shopper thinks about a future credit card bill while impulsively buying a desirable item. Many of us fall somewhere in the middle, especially if we have struggled with our weight at some point and don’t want to continue to struggle. When we go to a restaurant, we may decide against ordering the chowder made with heavy cream or a fried dish because we know that the caloric cost is too high. On the other hand, having “saved those calories” we then may feel that we can eat dessert, especially if it is shared. This really is not too different from getting something on sale and deciding to spend the money saved on another item. According to the article on spending behavior, the new belief that spending habits may be, to some extent, hard-wired in our brains has led economists to rethink how to curb excessive spending and increase saving. One method proposed by Thaler and Sunstein in their book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness is to enroll employees automatically in a 401(k) savings plan. If the employee does not want to be enrolled, then he or she has to take action to leave the plan. This plan apparently increased enrollment to over 90% in a company that adopted it. Could we adopt this plan to get people to choose healthier and calorically responsible foods by making it harder for them to pick irresponsible ones? If some of us are born with brains that will not stop us from ordering a 1200-calorie fast food hamburger, then can we manipulate our food environment to make it harder for us to do so? A recent survey showed that displaying the caloric contents of foods in New York and New Jersey area restaurants had no impact on the food choices of customers and, if anything, people were ordering even higher calorie foods. Customers asked about their food choices expressed desire to get as much food for their money as possible or simply didn’t care how many calories they were eating. If we assume that some people‘s brains will make them uninterested in saving calories, then the approach to getting people to make healthier choices has to be similar to getting people to save money. In an ideal world, fast-food restaurants would offer a complete meal with hamburger, baked potato, vegetables and dessert (chocolate pudding prepared with skim milk for example) for the same price as a fat–laden bacon cheeseburger. Junk foods would be much costlier than fruits and cut-up vegetables and rather than being in a prominent place in convenience stores, hidden away in dark corners. If snack foods were put in clamshell plastic packaging, the kind that requires a hacksaw to open, fewer people would be able to rip open a bag of potato chips and eat them immediately after purchase. Restaurants could reframe their menus to describe healthy specials in mouth-watering terms and excessively caloric foods in rather prosaic and possibly somewhat unappetizing terms. And if food manufacturers and restaurants could produce moderate calorie foods to taste like outrageously caloric varieties, many of us would be happy to eat these “rip-offs.” After all, we do that when we shop for clothes or accessories. We don’t buy one-of-a-kind designer items in Paris or Milan. Most of us wait until a replica is available and affordable in a Target, Marshalls or Macys. Obviously, certain foods will never be able to be made without costing an enormous number of calories. Perhaps the only way to stop our urges for such foods is through advertising. Since it is the advertisers who made us yearn for foods that were unknown to us before they were marketed (I am thinking of Dove bars) couldn’t they make us stop yearning for these foods? Maybe they can figure how to activate the part of our brain that responds to unpleasant odors when we see fried chicken, spare ribs, chocolate candy and ice cream. And then we all can become tight wads when we decide how many calories we want to consume. | permalink | related link |  ( 2.8 / 25 )The first course, a pasta dish, arrived and my husband and I looked at each other in surprise. There couldn’t have been more than a cup of skinny spaghetti on the small, salad-size plate. The waiter came over, sprinkled some freshly grated cheese on the sauce and left us to enjoy the first course of our first meal in Florence. We looked at each other and laughed. “I guess we both forgot what normal size portions look like,” I said. Neither of us had been in this beautiful Italian city for decades, and after a day of exploring the streets and museums on foot, we were hungry. We were eager to sample the varieties of pasta and seasonal vegetables recommended by our guide books and made our way to a neighborhood restaurant suggested by a friend. Normally, we would have ordered only one course but the second courses (what Americans would call the entrées) looked too tempting to pass up. My husband ordered an eggplant dish with tomatoes and all sorts of wonderful herbs and I had the seasonal specialty of porcini mushrooms poached in a flavorful broth. Like the pasta dish, our second courses were also small and easily fit on a salad plate. Chewy slices of bread were on the table but no butter and no olive oil for dunking. We decided to split a dessert, assuming it would be too big for one person. It was tiny, a sliver of intensely rich chocolate cake. The plate on which it sat was even smaller, about the size of a saucer. As we walked back to the hotel, stuffed and happy, we compared this meal to the typical meal we would have eaten at an American-Italian restaurant. A saucer of olive oil would be on the table so bread could be dunked (at about 100 calories a dunk), the pasta portion would be large enough to feed a family of five, and the “main course” would consist of eight or more ounces of protein. Were there any Italian restaurants that would have offered poached mushrooms, or eggplant and tomatoes, as the main course? And could the restaurant have gotten away with serving a dessert that was only a taste? Most of the people we saw on the streets during our earlier hours of walking were thin. This was confirmed by clothing sizes in the stores. It was hard to find men’s pants in sizes over 38- 40 and women’s clothes on the racks rarely went above American size 12 or 14. Yet here was a population that ate lots of carbohydrates. They enjoyed not only pasta but also rice and polenta (corn meal) and bread. Indeed as an Italian friend told me, ”A meal without carbohydrate is not considered a meal.” Here in the states we have been told, over and over again, by self-appointed weight loss experts that carbohydrates will make you fat and avoiding them will make you thin. And yet we Americans are growing more obese by the minute. The years of avoiding carbohydrates in the interest of weight loss has done nothing but make us fatter. How do we make sense of this? Look at the meal we were served. Carbohydrates were the first course. They were served with only small amounts of fat from the cheese so we digested them pretty rapidly. While we were waiting for our second course, our brain was busy making serotonin, the brain chemical which not only turns on a good mood but also shuts off appetite. The small second course was perfectly adequate because we were not very hungry by the time it had arrived. The serotonin was working to diminish our need to eat. And the dessert was just a taste treat, something to compliment the intense flavor of the small cups of espresso we drank along with it. The portion sizes were normal, at least normal for anyone not living in the U.S. We looked around at the other diners and every course we saw being served was just as small. We have grown so used to absurdly large portion sizes in our country that we forget how inappropriate they are. Rather than convincing us to accept smaller portions, many restaurants, especially fast- food chains, lure customers by offering enormous portion sizes. We will never stop gaining weight as a country and start to lose it until we are willing to change our perceptions of what is normal food intake. We will never stop overeating until we are willing to give up the notion that eating lots of protein and avoiding carbohydrate will make us thin. Unfortunately, we can’t all go to Florence and experience first-hand what it is like to eat extremely good food served in small portions. But we can follow the food customs: Start a meal with carbohydrate and follow it with a small portion of protein or vegetables. And who knows, the money you save on food may pay for a trip to Italy. | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 351 )Even though the season is still summer, the later sunrises and earlier sunsets warn us of the approach of fall and return to standard time. Those of us who get up early and return home late notice that the extra hours of daylight we could count on have disappeared. And some of us are already feeling the early signs of winter depression because the absence of light affects our mood. Despite the number of years that have passed since scientists identified Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the cause of this mood and eating disorder is still not well understood. What is known is that as the relative hours of daylight shorten and the hours of darkness lengthen, many people experience a cluster of unpleasant symptoms that may last for months. The symptoms include extreme fatigue and greater need to sleep, an increased desire to eat sweet carbohydrates, a significant decrease in mental motivation and unwillingness to take on new work or social activities, and, finally, depression, anger and irritability. These changes in mood, appetite and behavior may begin as early as October or November and last through the winter into mid-spring. Not everyone experiences the full range of symptoms and often the symptoms they do experience are mild. However, they can still affect one’s life style. A friend told me how her routine changes when it is dark by late afternoon. “During the spring and summer, I come home from work, put on my walking shoes and go for an hour walk before dinner. Or, if there was a class I wanted to take at the gym in the early evening, I would take it. But when it is dark by 4:30 or even earlier, all I want to do when I get home is get into my sweats, lie down on the couch and watch television. I even turn down invitations to go to evening plays, concerts or lectures because I hate leaving the house when it is dark. I might as well be hibernating in a cave.” This winter depression disappears in the spring as the hours of daylight overtake those of darkness. What often does not disappear is the number of pounds that are gained during the fall and winter. The months of eating more and moving less is a ‘perfect storm’ for weight gain. Most people exit the winter heavier by 10-15 pounds and some sufferers from winter depression will gain 30 or 40 pounds. Unfortunately, these extra pounds do not disappear as easily as snowflakes in May. There are some ways to combat winter depression. Artificial sunlight in the form of light boxes containing light bulbs that mimic the spectrum of the sun has been used to alleviate the symptoms of winter depression. Sitting in front of these so-called sun boxes in the early morning diminishes the fatigue, sleepiness, apathy and depression of this seasonal disorder. Still, light does not seem to have as much of an effect on overeating. Antidepressants are also effective and sometimes may be used along with exposure to this therapeutic light. But antidepressants bring their own problems with eating and weight gain and, if taken for many weeks, may exacerbate the overeating caused by the short days of winter. Moving to countries along the equator is not a practical option, although snow birds who go south for the winter do report feeling much more energetic, less depressed and in control of their eating than when they were in the dark north. Now is the time to plan defensive action against creeping winter weight gain. By following these guidelines, you can make it through the winter without your waistline expanding like the snow drifts. 1. Eat according to your body’s seasonal rhythm. Your body will crave carbohydrates and the urge will worsen as the day goes on. As we describe in The Serotonin Power Diet, eat protein, low-fat dairy products, and vegetables in the early part of the day. Switch to healthy low-fat or fat-free carbohydrates in the late afternoon and at dinner. This will ensure that your body gets the nutrients it needs and the carbohydrate it craves. 2. Make a contract with yourself to exercise. If it is convenient to do so, go to a gym. The bright lights, music, noise and other members will get you moving even if you have to drag yourself to the locker room to change. Go as often as you can; this means at least 3 times a week or more. You will feel invigorated when you leave; it always works. If going to a health club is not possible, use your home treadmill or stationary bike. Make sure you have it in a brightly lit place, not in a dark cellar. Go to the library and borrow some funny movies that you can watch while exercising. You will feel better, and laughing will improve your mood. Libraries are also the source of exercise DVDs. The routines that you can do at home are just as good as working out on a machine. In fact, many of the routines will get you to move your entire body and you might consider alternating these video routines with using the treadmill or bike. 3. Play outside. Not only will you burn calories, you will also have the benefit of real sunlight on your face and that will help to restore your good mood. 4. Do fall and winter recreational activities that can burn off many activities. While shoveling snow, chipping ice off of the car, and plowing through a snowy backyard to get to the bird feeder will use up calories, there are things you can do outside which are also fun. Hiking in the fall when the weather is cooler, the leaves have turned color, and the bugs are somewhere else can be exhilarating. Raking leaves is work but on a clear crisp fall afternoon, pleasure as well. Biking is also a sport that lends itself to the cooler days of fall. Bike to an apple orchard where you can buy fresh cider and munch on some newly-picked fruit on the way home. And as fall turns into winter, sledding, skiing, ice skating, snowshoeing and snowman construction will use up many calories. Take heart: The days start getting longer again on Dec 22. | permalink | related link | ( 3 / 342 )Back Next |
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