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The Holiday Overeating Myths
If you know where to sit at the table and what to eat the day before the big feast, you won’t gain weight this weekend. Susan Roberts on four holiday diet tricks.
For many dieters, the holidays are a time for giving up. Faced with a six-week neverending onslaught of fattening foods, you know you can’t win, so you resign yourself in advance and then let yourself go.
The typical adult gains between five and eight pounds in the short interval between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, the equivalent of eating about 20,000 excess calories, or 550 calories a day beyond what you need to maintain weight. Will you be able to avoid putting on pounds over the next six weeks if you resolve to watch each and every bite? It’s possible, but not likely—unless you know good ways to limit the damage.
A big crowd at dinner? Add 35 calories per seated guest. Eating in front of the football game? Yet another 140 calories.
Take the Thanksgiving meal, when, according to various studies, we eat about 3,000 calories to kick off the season. The huge piles of food in our presence on that day cause unconscious overeating, because the sight and smell of abundance triggers real metabolic signals of hunger and expands our stomach so that we need to eat more to feel full.
Then there is the food itself. The defining characteristic of traditional holiday items like stuffing, traditional gravy, yams, and pie is that they’re all extremely high in calories and low in fiber. In other words, they’re the perfect mix of nutritional factors to cause a deficiency in satiety, meaning that you have to eat huge amounts of these foods before you feel good and full.
Having a greater than usual variety of foods on the table is another part of what makes Thanksgiving special—add 400 calories or so for the privilege of all this choice. A big crowd at dinner? That's another 35 calories per seated guest, so with 11 bodies at the average Thanksgiving table you’ll probably eat an extra 400 calories without even realizing it. Music on the speaker system? 100 more calories on top. Eating in front of the football game? Yet another 140 calories, according to the best research. These “social facilitators” of overeating—more omnipresent during the holidays than virtually any other time—are so effective at increasing spontaneous calorie intake that nursing homes, where weight loss is often a problem, are starting to use them to increase their patients’ calorie intakes.
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• Christopher Idone: Turkey Day BacchanalThen there are the after-effects of overeating. Studies have shown that, after eating particularly delicious food you can expect to be hungrier and eat more at your next sitting. Mechanistically, this probably happens because our intestinal processes speed up for great food, emptying our stomachs more quickly. What nutrition scientists call the “second meal” effect would have served us well long ago during leaner times by allowing us to overeat when there was a rare over-abundance of food. Today, however, it creates a negative cycle of having one great meal and then not being able to snap back to more sensible eating, especially when you’re attending party after holiday party.
We can't get away from our instinctive eating behaviors, but we can learn to control them. Here are four simple ways to help yourself based on my incredibly effective "I" diet weight-control program:
1. Start Before Thursday
Even if you’re not the one cooking, you’re not at the mercy of your holiday host, especially if you pre-game starting a day or two ahead. One foolproof way to prepare for a particular impending feeding frenzy is to add to your regular meals two or three half-cup servings of a high-fiber cereal like Fiber One Original or All Bran Extra Fiber beginning one or even two days before the big meal. Don’t make the mistake of eating light before Thanksgiving to bank calories—that’s exactly what will cause overeating. Instead, give yourself this satiety-boost to gain fullness and control. When dinner is served, you’ll automatically want to eat far less.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
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Dr Susan Roberts is a professor of Nutrition and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of The "i" Diet. She has not taken money from food companies for the food endorsements in this article. She welcomes comments on the program through her website and encourages you to become her friend on her just-started facebook site where she is setting up an interactive process to further improve The "i" Diet with new recipes and menus.
The Diet Killer
Dr Susan Roberts is a professor of Nutrition and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of The "i" Diet. She has not taken money from food companies for the food endorsements in this article. She welcomes comments on the program through her website and encourages you to become her friend on her just-started facebook site where she is setting up an interactive process to further improve The "i" Diet with new recipes and menus.
The New Fat Hazard
Dr Susan Roberts is a professor of Nutrition and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of The "i" Diet. She has not taken money from food companies for the food endorsements in this article. She welcomes comments on the program through her website and encourages you to become her friend on her just-started facebook site where she is setting up an interactive process to further improve The "i" Diet with new recipes and menus.
hithere3
This is great. Tell Americans, a majority of whom are overweight, and who comprise the largest proportion of obese people in any nation, not to bother trying to eat less.
Well done!
chengdulaoshi
umm, hi there, hithere3.
I don't really think this is the point of Dr. Roberts' article. This nutritionist and psychiatrist is attempting to point out, quite lucidly, the causes of, and potential cures for, overeating during the holiday season.
She is also schooling us in the established scientific fact that it is often not the *amount* of food that we consume, so much as the *types* of food, that contributes most to America's legendary rotundity.
Americans habitually choose to "fuel up" on a quick and easy McDonald's meal, for example (no slight intended to the Burger King fans out there) when they could just as easily opt for a huge, high fiber salad and not suffer the same setbacks in their Battles of the Bulge.
Dr. Roberts is also attempting to point out the classic situations to watch for during the holiday that can trigger binge eating.
As an American living in China, I see thousands and thousands of Chinese every day. Yet I almost never see a fat Chinese person. But the thing is, these folks are eating all the time. They love to eat!
In the first three months of living here, I dropped twenty pounds without even trying. I eat exactly the same quantity of food, only my food choices are dictated by the cultural milieu that surrounds me.
I loathe behaviorists on humanistic grounds, but I have to admit that they are on to something here. In many ways, we really are the products of our environments.
This is further proven by the fact that, with China's recent opening to the West, many Chinese have begun to adopt America's fast food lifestyle, so obesity is now beginning to rise here. Coronary heart disease - one of America's many gifts to the world!
Alas, the vast majority of Americans who could profit from Dr. Robert's advice will never actually *read* her article, and thus the cycle of obesity in America will probably continue.
(By way of illustration, please note the relative dearth of comments to this article, compared to the flood of comments on a recently-posted TDB piece, exploring the complex and nuanced social and political implications of Sarah Palin's recent pant suit dilemma.
"What, Sarah is having wardrobe worries?"
Happy Thanksgiving!
MikeLicht
Sorry. Real Guys just gotta deep-fry their turkeys.
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/turkey-torching-tips-for- guys/
drjonathan
Dr Roberts:
I do appreciate your article, as it does point out several psychological techniques to assist the overweight person with portion control. However, I do notice that your article mentions "the best scientific research available," but then fails to reference just what that is. The reason for this is probably more complicated that you think: There really isn't very good American research on how to help people eat healthy and be healthy. To prove my point I simply offer this: Of ALL industrialized nations, our nation typically ranks LAST in terms of lowest obesity rates, best fitness levels, and lowest levels of cardiovascular disease. LAST. Our nation, which is not only our citizens but also the "health" care system that provides care, has miserably FAILED to keep ourselves at reasonable weight and level of fitness. If YOU are going to reference the 'best' scientific research available, I expect you to tell me what it is exactly, since our nation's researchers have failed terribly to do what most nations do easily. (and to be honest I expect MORE from you, a psychiatrist, who should be well aware that psychiatrist precriptions for mental disorders cost Americans millions each year, but are usually only slightly better than placebo... according to the research of YOUR OWN COMMUNITY).
If you have some stunning research and just 'know' what it takes to keep Americans healthy, you really need to reference it, since most psychiatrists and nutritionists in America should be classified as failures for the amount of money they cost us versus their expense. Especiall when we compare your performance to other countries.
For instance: have you EVER successfully taken an overweight person and guided them until they were fit, healthy, and no longer overweight? If so, THAT is the story you need to tell. If not (and by the way you, your mom, or you neighbor that you helped don't count), you really shouldn't be spouting off on this topic. If so... THAT is what Americans need to hear.
chengdulaoshi
Dr. Jonathan,
I am not a doctor (nor do I play one on T.V.), and therefore confess to being woefully unqualified to cut in on your professional conversation with Dr. Roberts. However, it seems to me that your post does contain a few glaring logical fallacies that bear examination.
You write:
"There really isn't very good American research on how to help people eat healthy and be healthy. To prove my point I simply offer this: Of ALL industrialized nations, our nation typically ranks LAST in terms of lowest obesity rates, best fitness levels, and lowest levels of cardiovascular disease. LAST. Our nation, which is not only our citizens but also the "health" care system that provides care, has miserably FAILED to keep ourselves at reasonable weight and level of fitness."
Isn't this a bit of a *non-sequitor* (a logical fallacy in which the conclusion does not follow from the premise)?
There may or may not be "really good American research" on the causes and potential cures of obesity. Your declaration that there is no such research seems to me a startling claim, in view of the fact that obesity has been the subject of thousands of research studies by top American scientists for decades.
But assuming for the sake of argument that we grant you this claim, how does it follow that this is the cause of continuing obesity in Americans?
I mean, isn't it possible that excellent and conclusive research has been conducted, many times over, and despite the knowledge that exists thousands of Americans simply choose to *ignore* the research findings and choose to eat whatever they damn please?
Researchers are only researchers, after all. They lack the legal authority or physical capacity to *force* people to listen to their conclusions and/or follow their advice. They can't stand beside every American queued up at Burger King and say "my God, man, don't eat THAT!." Even if somehow they could, their audience would probably just ignore them. It's still a free country, after all.
As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
You continue:
"Have you (Dr. Roberts) EVER successfully taken an overweight person and guided them until they were fit, healthy, and no longer overweight? If so, THAT is the story you need to tell. If not (and by the way you, your mom, or you neighbor that you helped don't count), you really shouldn't be spouting off on this topic."
You may or may not be aware that Dr. Roberts is the author of "The Instinct Diet," a highly successful book outlining her research into the causes of obesity, as well as her plan for weight loss, based on her theory that our eating behaviors are "hard-wired" into our genetic makeup, causing us to 1) eat when food is available, 2) choose the most calorie-dense foods, and 3) react irrationally to the feeling of hunger.
Dr. Roberts' diet plan is designed to help us to use these instinctual drives to our advantage, and in the process help us lose, rather than gain, weight.
Thousands of Americans have been successful in achieving substantial weight loss through Dr. Roberts' system. There are 32 testimonials to Dr. Roberts' Instinct Diet system on Amazon. Of those testimonials, 27 readers gave the system Five Stars, the highest rating possible.
Most of the testimonials report substantial weight loss using her system.
The review appended below is representative of the results reported using Dr. Roberts' Instinct Diet.
* * *
I am a 59 year old male. Eight weeks ago I weighed 179 pounds. My target weight is somewhere around 155 or maybe a few pounds lower.
At the end of eight weeks (two weeks of stage 1 and six weeks of stage 2), my weight is 161.5. That is a drop of 17.5 pounds or just slightly under 10 percent of my initial body weight.
I did not do any aerobic exercise during this period beyond my normal daily activities, which sometimes includes walking between a half-mile and a mile. I had no cravings or hunger except a few mild late-night cravings during the first week.
My intention is to stay on the stage 2 diet until I reach my target, which should be within 3-5 weeks if I continue to lose at the same rate.
UPDATE: At 12 weeks, I have reached my target of 155. This is a drop of 24 pounds, or around 13-14 percent of my starting weight. This is my best weight in 25-30 years.
* * *
In brief, Dr. Roberts' many years of clinical experience and real-world success in helping obese Americans lose weight would appear to make her a supremely qualified person to "spout off" on this subject.
Thank you.
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