It may be the nation’s last, accepted form of prejudice. But the stigmatization of obesity has repercussions beyond the pain it inflicts on its targets: It threatens to impede efforts to fight the obesity epidemic.
Read more: www.msnbc.msn.com
By Tina Haupert
A few years ago, I worked in a 9-5 desk job in an office where the kitchen was an ever-present buffet of donuts, muffins, cookies and other larger-than-life pastries. I honestly can’t remember too many days when there wasn’t some sort of sweet treat tempting me to eat it. I often fell victim to those goodies when my stress levels rose, and instead of dealing with what was actually stressing me out, I temporarily masked my feelings with the treats. For a long time, I didn’t recognize this pattern was happening — until it led me to gain several pounds.
Even now when I feel stressed, I still crave sugary carbs, which are loaded with calories and fat and not helpful when it comes to maintaining my Feel Great Weight. It’s not always easy to overcome those emotions, but these tricks have certainly helped me (and will help you!) get a handle on stress eating.
Know Your Triggers
When I felt overwhelmed by a monstrous to-do list or frustrated by a difficult project, I’d often find myself turning to sugary treats for comfort, but learning my motives was key for controlling those cravings. Once I was more conscious of these triggers, I started to change my eating patterns.
Ask, ‘I Am Really Hungry?’
When I feel the urge to stress-eat, I take a moment to assess my actual hunger. I’ll even ask myself: “Am I really hungry?” I know my physical and emotional hungers are different, so I try to wait out a craving to see if my hunger subsides.
Stock Up On Healthy Eats
If I am really hungry, I will eat a healthy snack, like a peanut butter and banana sandwich or Greek yogurt with cereal and nuts mixed in. The combination of healthy carbs, fat and protein satisfies my hunger while helping me feel more relaxed at the same time. Similarly, snacking on crunchy raw veggies like carrot or celery sticks helps me deal with my frustration without consuming a lot of calories.
Use Distractions
When my urge to reach for a sugary treat is really strong, I distract myself from the idea. I’ll either take a brisk 10-minute walk, listen to music on my iPod, read one of my favorite blogs or chat with a friend for a little while. Most of the time, doing one of these things calms me and helps me get a handle on my stress eating.
Pretend It Doesn’t Exist
Think: out of sight, out of mind. For example, if I know there are cookies in my kitchen, I’ll inevitably want to eat them as soon as I start to feel stressed. If I forget that they exist, the chances that I will turn to them for comfort drops considerably.
Be Healthy
This one might seem kind of obvious, but simply trying to be healthy in my everyday life helps me manage my stress levels and cravings. I try to exercise regularly and get adequate sleep each night, because I know if I’m tired or cranky, I’ll reach for food as soon as I start to feel stressed.
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/stress-emotional-eating_n_1428801.html
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Emotional Overeating: Practical Management Techniques
Statistics report that Americans are an increasingly overweight population. Among the factors contributing to our struggle to stop tipping the scales is the component of “emotional eating” – or the use of food to attempt to fill emotional needs. Professionals in both the physical and emotional health fields encounter patients with emotional eating problems on a regular basis. Even clients who do not bring this as their presenting problem often have it on their list of unhealthy behaviors that contribute to or are intertwined with their priority concerns. While not an easy task, it is possible to learn methods for dismantling emotional eating habits. The goals of this course are to present information about the causes of emotional eating, and provide a body of cognitive and behavioral exercises that can help to eliminate the addictive pattern. Course #40-26 | 2011 | 44 pages | 30 posttest questions
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According to a recent study headed by scientists from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the University of Granada, eating commercial baked goods (fairy cakes, croissants, doughnuts, etc.) and fast food (hamburgers, hotdogs and pizza) is linked to depression.
Published in the Public Health Nutrition journal, the results reveal that consumers of fast food, compared to those who eat little or none, are 51% more likely to develop depression.
Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed. In other words this means that “the more fast food you consume, the greater the risk of depression,” explains Almudena Sánchez-Villegas, lead author of the study.
The study demonstrates that those participants who eat the most fast food and commercial baked goods are more likely to be single, less active and have poor dietary habits, which include eating less fruit, nuts, fish, vegetables and olive oil. Smoking and working more than 45 hours per week are other prevalent characteristics of this group.
A long-term study
With regard to the consumption of commercial baked goods, the results are equally conclusive. “Even eating small quantities is linked to a significantly higher chance of developing depression,” as the university researcher from the Canary Islands points out.
The study sample belonged to the SUN Project (University of Navarra Diet and Lifestyle Tracking Program). It consisted of 8,964 participants that had never been diagnosed with depression or taken antidepressants. They were assessed for an average of six months, and 493 were diagnosed with depression or started to take antidepressants.
This new data supports the results of the SUN project in 2011, which were published in the PLoS One journal. The project recorded 657 new cases of depression out of the 12,059 people analysed over more than six months. A 42% increase in the risk associated with fast food was found, which is lower than that found in the current study.
Sánchez-Villegas concludes that “although more studies are necessary, the intake of this type of food should be controlled because of its implications on both health (obesity, cardiovascular diseases) and mental well-being.”
The impact of diet on mental health
Depression affects 121 million people worldwide. This figure makes it one of the main global causes of disability-adjusted life year. Further still, in countries with low and medium income it is the leading cause.
However, little is known about the role that diet plays in developing depressive disorders. Previous studies suggest that certain nutrients have a preventative role. These include group B vitamins, omega-3 fatty acids and olive oil. Furthermore, a healthy diet such as that enjoyed in the Mediterranean has been linked to a lower risk of developing depression.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120330081352.htm?goback=.gde_145741_member_104896837
By Carrie Gann
Obesity linked to hormonal changes, lack of sleep
We’ve all heard about the importance of getting a good night’s sleep, and now scientists offer more evidence to back that up. A new study found that people who get less sleep may be inclined to eat more, move less and gain weight.
Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., studied a group of 17 healthy volunteers between the ages 18 and 40 for a week in their homes, monitoring how much each one typically slept and ate. Then, they brought the volunteers into the clinic’s research lab for eight days: Half of the volunteers were allowed to sleep according to their usual pattern, and the other half got only two-thirds of their usual shut-eye.
All the volunteers were allowed to eat as much food as they wanted from the hospital cafeteria or from outside the research center. The researchers also measured how much energy each volunteer expended each day.
The sleep-deprived participants wolfed down an average of 549 calories beyond their usual intake but burned no more calories than their well-rested peers.
“A lot of people have this idea that if they’re up late, working hard, they’re burning more energy. But we found no change in how much they moved when sleep deprived,” said Dr. Andrew Calvin, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. “They’re consuming an additional 549 calories per day, but not burning any of them off.”
Those excess of unburned calories is a surefire way to gain weight, which numerous studies have connected to a variety of chronic health problems.
The volunteers who got less sleep also had higher levels of leptin, a hormone that suppresses appetite, and lower levels of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates appetite, in their blood. The findings seem counterintuitive to what researchers would expect in people who are hungrier, but Calvin said the hormones were most likely an outcome, rather than a cause of people eating more.
Scientists have previously studied the physical downsides of getting too little sleep.
In 2011, Australian researchers found that adolescents and teenagers were more likely to be slimmer if they went to bed earlier, while those who stayed up late were more likely to engage in sedentary activities.
Previous studies have also found that workers covering late and overnight shifts were more likely to be obese and have type 2 diabetes, which may be associated with unhealthy eating habits, according to an editorial published in December.
The connection between sleep and weight may be important for the more than one-quarter of Americans who get six hours of sleep or less every night. Calvin said the future research on how sleep affects eating habits may give scientists useful insights into two of America’s biggest health problems: sleep deprivation and obesity.
“This study, while small, suggests that these two may indeed be linked, and if the findings are confirmed, they may suggest that sleep is a powerful factor in how much we eat and our chances of gaining weight,” he said.
Source: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/03/14/sleep-less-eat-more-gain-weight/
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