How can binge eating be related to dieting?!

As discussed in earlier posts, binge eating can be a difficult problem to identify, especially by people who are suffering from it.
After understanding that further dieting does not help reduce binging, the next challenge is to find ways to improve your relationship with food (among other things like self worth and self esteem).

One of the first steps to decrease binge eating is to start eating 3 meals per day along with a few snacks. By eating regularly, you will avoid feeling deprived and very hungry, which contribute to binges. Your body will start to expect nourishment on a regular basis (rather than sporadically) and will better digest and metabolize the energy. Your mood is also likely to improve since you won't be swinging between feeling very hungry and too full.

Sometimes when our relationship with food is skewed, so are our signals of hunger and satiety. So it is not always easy to listen to these signals and only "eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full". By having a routine with meals and snacks, you don't have to rely on those signals. The ultimate goal is to listen to your internal cues but that takes time and practice.
Ideally you want to eat every 3-4 hours. Planning out meals and snacks may seem time consuming at first, but once you get into the habit, it becomes easier. It can help to use a guide to determine what to eat over an entire day (like the food guide) or even an outline of a meal plan that suggests ways to include the food at meals and snacks. Over time, you will find that you can plan out your meals and snacks in you head rather than rely on a written plan.
For example, most adults require:

One example of how those requirements look in terms of food is:

Planning a routine visit to the grocery store is a good start to having healthy food on hand- so make sure you make time during the week for a shopping trip.
Focusing on balanced meals can also help to reduce binging. The combination of protein, carbohydrates and fibre (from the meat and alternatives, starchy foods/grain products and vegetables) will help to sustain you between meals. However, it is important to remember that eating perfectly is not necessary! It is ok and certainly normal to have a less balanced meal occasionally.

Lunch CAN be a piece of cake!

Back to school time often means back to hectic mornings and thrown together lunches. Many parents admit to feeling guilty about the unhealthy choices tossed into lunch boxes due to lack of time for better preparation.
Too often I see clients who are hard on themselves, expecting to be perfect with meal planning and food preparation. When they ultimately fail to be perfect, all attempts to be healthy are thrown out the window. This all or nothing kind of thinking trips up so many people!

I've spoken in previous blogs about how aiming for perfection or unrealistic goals can ultimately lead to low motivation and abandoning of trying for a "good enough" lifestyle. When it comes to lunches, either for kids or adults, sometimes aiming for a consistent "good enough" lunch is healthier than inconsistent perfection.

Usually, the more fruits and vegetables you bring to work or school, the more fruits and vegetables you will eat. If you don't bring enough food for the day, you may end up buying snacks anyways and chances are they will be less healthy.
Using packaged or prepared foods may be useful for most families and this issue cannot be ignored. If you are able to avoid them- that's great! If you believe that, because you cannot cook your own bread/granola bars/soup/etc that there is no point in trying to find health, prepared items- then think again! Reading food labels is invaluable in helping you find healthy, prepared alternatives to complement a balanced lunch.

Here are a few examples of prepared, ready to eat foods you can feel good about including in your lunches:
-cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, mini cucumbers, pre-cut and washed broccoli (no cutting required!)
-banana, oranges, mandarins, individual non-sweetened apple sauce, raisin boxes and prepared fruit packed in water (many new options are available nowadays that are tastier than the original fruit cocktail).
-yogurt (any kind will do)
-granola bars containing less than 10g of sugar, less than 10% bad fat and at least 2g of fibre (check out my blog post on granola bars for more information).
-juice boxes of unsweetened or no sugar added fruit juice (forget vitamin waters and sports drinks that are ultimately just water and sugar).

As for the actual main meal (lunch): balance is key to help stave off hunger in the early afternoon and keep energy levels high:
1. Include 1-2 servings of a whole grain food such as brown rice leftovers, whole grain bread for a sandwich or even whole grain crackers.
2. Adding 2 serving of vegetables will definitely contribute to the fibre content. This can be leftover veggies, raw veggies or a salad (or a mix of the two), vegetable juice (watch sodium levels and limit juice to replacing 1 serving of vegetable) or even vegetable soup.
3. Of course including a protein rich food is also important. If you have a hard time fitting fish into your diet, this is a good opportunity to do so without having to cook it. Canned salmon and tuna can be easily rinsed to eliminate some of the salt. Even canned seafood such as shrimp and mussels can be great additions to salads. Leftover meats as well as a boiled egg, beans or even nuts are good choices.
4. Including a healthy "sweet" end to the meal can help to curb cravings later on in the day as well as boost your calcium or fruit intake. Yogurt (if you don't include a glass of milk with the meal) or a juicy, fresh fruit are your best bets.

Sometimes its necessary to rely on cafeteria food to get you through a tough day when you don't have time to pack a lunch. Try being realistic with how often you will use the cafeteria and set a goal for yourself before the week begins to avoid hitting a slump mid week.

Practice these simple guidelines before tackling more time consuming tasks such as preparing extra food on the weekends for hot lunches during the week and turning leftovers into gourmet sandwiches. This way you can slowly but surely change your lifestyle to include more homemade lunches, save money and eat more healthy.

Baffling blood sugar

I was recently asked to help out a family member control their bloods sugars. They have diabetes type 2 (adult onset diabetes) and have noticed that their blood sugar levels are often high (over 7mmol/L) in the morning before eating breakfast. Starting out the day with high blood sugars often leads to high blood sugars for the remaining of the day because it is hard to lower already high blood sugars if insulin is not involved. Morning sugars reflect what was eaten the night previous and will reflect how our body is "handling" that last meal or snack. The same can be said for any time of the day. There are 2 general reasons why blood sugars sugars can be high after a meal:

1. Too many carbohydrate rich foods were eaten, meaning either portions were too big or too many carb rich choices were eaten, or both. We need to eat some carbs at each meal, but too much can lead to high sugars. Carbs are found in 3 of the 4 food groups: fruit, grain products (rice, barley, couscous, pasta, bread, bagels, cereal, etc) and anything made from milk (milk, yogurt, Yop, ice cream, but not cheese). The idea is not to avoid carbs, but to spread them out over the day.
If we eat too many carb rich foods in one sitting, they will turn into sugar and rush into the blood stream like a tidal wave. As you may expect, the body cannot handle a tidal wave as well as it can a slow drip of sugar. It takes longer for the body to deal with high amounts of sugar in the blood and thus the sugar stays in the blood longer than wanted (= high blood sugars). People without diabetes can handle higher amounts of sugar than diabetics.
Not everyone knows that milk based foods, fruit and grain products all get turned into sugar. Usually people will only look for the sugar content on the food labels BUT some nutrients are turned into sugar after digestion- mainly starch. You can't always read the starch quantity on the label and since it affects sugar levels as well, it is important to read the total CARBOHYDRATE content in foods and NOT the sugar content. Both sugar and starch are types of carbs, so by looking at the total carb content, you are looking at the bigger picture. One "carb choice" = 15g carbs. The average person needs 2-4 carb choices per meal. The general rule for one portion is 1/2 a cup (diced fruit, cooked pasta or rice, yogurt).
If we are eating over 4 choices of carb rich foods per meal, that may explain high blood sugars.

2. The other reason for high blood sugars may be due to an imbalance in the meal. If we don't have fibre, protein with carbs/starch present in a meal, there is a high likelihood that blood sugars may be high afterwards. Carbs get digested into sugar. Protein and fibre help to slow down how fast starch is broken down and absorbed by the body. Therefore they can help to prevent a tidal wave. Think of a sugar cube placed in a glass of water. It is dissolved quickly. Now, wrap the sugar cube up in a Kleenex. It is dissolved more slowly- the Kleenex represents the fibre in the meal. We find fibre in vegetables (non-starchy) and whole grains like brown rice, whole grain bread, whole grain pasta, etc. Now, imagine putting the sugar cube in a plastic container with holes, then put into the glass of water. The container represents the protein in a meal which will also slow down how fast the sugar is broken down. Protein is found in meat, chicken, fish, eggs, peanut butter, nuts, tofu, beans and cheese.
Not only does protein and fibre slow down the digestion of sugars, but by including vegetables and meat & alternatives in a meal, we naturally eat less of the starchy side dish.
The typical balanced meal would include half a plate of veggies, 1/4 meat and 1/4 starch. That roughly translates to be about 1-2 cups of vegetables, 3-5oz of meat and about 1 cup of starchy foods. Most people find these portions are small, so if you are a big eater and find it hard to cut all portion sizes down, the most important food to eat in moderation is the starchy food.

We have to expect that eating will raise blood sugars because most meals and snacks will contain carb rich foods. The goal is to have blood sugars raise no more than 4 points. To evaluate this, you have to take blood sugars before the meal then again 2 hours after the meal. 2 hours after the meal is when the blood sugars should be the highest. If you start off with high blood sugars before the meal, at least this method can rule out problems with the current meal. Some people blame the recent meal on high blood sugars, but if you started out at 12 and ate breakfast and you go up to 14 or 15- that's NORMAL. Why were you 12 to start with is the issue to deal with.

Reflect back on what you ate last, were there too many carb choices? Did I combine fibre, carbs and protein? If not, those are great goals to start with, before chosing a fad diet or increasing medications.