Eat A Good Lunch To Maintain Weight

HEALTHY EATERS HAVE A GOOD LUNCH

How and where you eat is important, too: which means at a table, not at your desk, in front of a TV or while walking.

It’s become fashionable to say you’re too busy for a lunch break, but if you sit down and eat something mindfully — paying attention to the fact you’re eating — your brain will register ‘I’ve eaten’ and you won’t be so prone to cravings and hunger pangs later.

Last year, I led a study published in the Journal of Health Psychology where we gave 60 women a cereal bar to eat. One group had it while watching TV, the second while walking and the third talked to a friend while eating.

They were then offered snacks including chocolate, carrot sticks and crisps. Those who had eaten while walking ate five times more chocolate.

Any distraction can disrupt the brain’s ability to process the fact you’re eating and its impact on your hunger. We don’t recognise food we’ve had and want more.

JUST BECAUSE NIGELLA DOES IT ...

The modern world has become obsessed with food, in the form of controlling what we eat and cutting out food groups such as sugar or gluten or devouring cookery TV shows and books and needing to make every meal exciting. I’m afraid neither of these is healthy eating.

Celebrity chef-style meals tend to be high in butter, salt and fat. They also make food preparation seem complicated, so people feel intimidated by cooking from scratch and give up and buy ready meals and oven chips.

I wish there was a TV show that showed how to make pasta with stir-in pesto and salad — a typical dinner in my house. The truth is that most people probably have only a handful of recipes in their repertoire, such as spaghetti bolognese and shepherd’s pie, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Meanwhile, demonising certain foods, whether it’s carbs or wheat or sugar, also sets up an unhealthy preoccupation. Ultimately, it often makes these foods more alluring — and irresistible at moments of weakness.

Source: dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3448464/Ten-mind-tricks-make-healthier-eater.html#ixzz4Czbsn1v2

Hunger Is Not A Sign To Snack

Healthy eating is obviously about putting the right kinds of food in your body, but it’s also about having the right attitude to food.

Food plays too many roles in our lives. We use it to cheer us up when we’re sad or bored and to communicate the kind of person we are.

To be a healthy eater means eating for the right reason: hunger. It’s time to rediscover the feeling of hunger. An easy way to do this is to stop snacking and start having three proper meals a day.

Studying the behaviour of overweight and obese people, I often hear them say they overeat because they feel hungry between meals.

But they’re not really hungry — they’re getting hungry. It’s natural and not something to panic about if you’re eating a proper breakfast, lunch and dinner. It just means you’ll really enjoy your next meal.

Eating when you’re hungry is a nice feeling. I’ve found that it’s only when people don’t eat proper meals that they want snacks.

THREE-MINUTE CRAVINGS RULE

Remember that hunger isn’t just a physical process to do with how full or empty the stomach is — feelings of hunger essentially come from the mind. So if you crave something and feel you can’t think straight until you’ve had it, it’s worth exploring what is going on psychologically.

People like to think cravings are biological or due to an ‘addiction’, and tell themselves they ‘need’ a chocolate bar. In fact, it’s not the actual food they crave, it’s the meaning they have wrapped around the food. Chocolate represents a distraction, a break from work or a treat after a hard day.

Craving episodes last only a few minutes, so distract yourself — chat to a colleague or take a walk — then see if you still feel so desperate for it.

Last year, psychologists at Plymouth University and Queensland University of Australia reported that playing the computer game Tetris for three minutes reduces the strength of cravings for food and soft drinks. They suggested that during a craving, people visualise food they are thinking about — a visual task such as Tetris can disrupt this.

IMAGINE HOW YOU’LL FEEL AFTER A CAKE

Many people weaken at the sight of a shiny eclair or a basket of fries. But a good way to resist is to think about how you’ll feel afterwards — guilty, overly full and wishing you hadn’t.

Psychologists call this ‘anticipated regret’ — a technique shown to be effective for changing health behaviour such as exercise and food choices.

You could even picture your liver struggling to digest that food or the pockets of fat in your tummy or thighs desperate to suck up the calories.

If you embed that image in your mind, linking it to the food, you won’t want it the next time it’s winking at you from the shop window.

Even better is to think about how wholesome and smug you’ll feel after eating something healthy. I never liked running, but after doing a charity run following a friend’s death, I started doing it more regularly.

What motivates me is to think of the smug feeling I’ll have when I’ve finished. Don’t frame it in your mind as a loss — frame the healthy choice as a gain. You’ll feel proud of yourself for looking after your health.

Source: dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3448464/Ten-mind-tricks-make-healthier-eater.html#ixzz4CzaxMGYN