Temptations and the unreliability of willpower

Recent research has found that avoiding temptation works better than relying only on willpower when faced with temptation. (You can see the original article here: Restricting Temptations: Neural Mechanisms of Precommitment)

The idea of avoiding "tempting" foods in order to eat less of them seems rather obvious. However, does it work well for everyone? This particular study didn't look at food temptations, so can we expect the same results? I think this is a more complicated answer than initially thought and it will depend on how you avoid temptations.

Let's imagine that the food temptations we are talking about are foods rich in calories, sugar or fat. If there are none of these foods lying around the house or the office and we have to trek to the store to buy them, then it is obvious that we will eat less of them since the temptation is not close by. If we take that thought one step further and say that if we buy these tempting foods in small quantities instead of larger ones, then it will be easier to resist temptations since we won't have any leftovers.

BUT, if we never allow ourselves fun food (at least) once in awhile, then this plan may backfire. If these tempting foods are banned completely from our lives for any reason (to be uber healthy, to lose weight, to get "back on track", etc) we will end up wanting them more- even when none of these foods are in sight. It's the concept of "we want what we can't have". This concept drives most people crazy and increases their cravings for these "banned" food.

The idea of eating only very "healthy" foods is quite popular right now. But is it "normal" to never eat a food rich in fat or sugar or calories? NO. This slippery slope of thinking often leads to a pattern of under eating, feeling deprived then overeating (and possibly even binge eating).

This particular study looked at what happens when people commit to a bigger reward if they resist smaller temptations. This reminds me of what so many people call a "cheat day". Eating only really healthy foods for most days of the week then allowing themselves to "cheat" (I prefer the word treat) for one day or a meal. The popularity of this concept does not make it a healthy way of thinking. Allowing yourself a treat a few times a week and planning ahead is a great idea, and this study suggests it will help you resist the urge to cave to smaller, less rewarding temptations.

HOWEVER, under eating all week long just to give yourself permission to eat "bad" foods is a slippery slope. It is hard to eat these so called "bad" foods in normal portions once you are done denying yourself. You train your body to eat as much as you can on the odd occasion you allow yourself the food. Calling it a cheat or a bad food actually pushes people to eat it in large quantities.

For people who find they "just have no willpower" and feel they cave to all cravings, this study suggests you plan out how you will enjoy more important (or bigger) temptations ahead of time. This kills two birds with one stone- it forces you to plan out your week to see what special event is happening (ex. 5 a 7 at work, birthday party or BBQ) in order to enjoy and fit the "fun" foods (higher calorie temptations we mentioned earlier) into your plan as well as understand that including them on a regular basis is a healthy, normal part of life.

5 reasons NOT to start a diet this new year

1. Failure is the probable result: most diets fail to help you lose weight or keep it off for any length of time. It is very likely that you'll regain the weight back - if you have managed to actually lose any.  They fail for many reasons- mostly because you are human and diets are made for robots. What I mean is that humans (YOU!) were meant to eat good food, enjoy foods you love once in a while, eat with flexibility and eat with pleasure and occasionally for pleasure. Most diets take all of that away. They quiet your greatest internal food expert (hunger and fullness) and make you focus on an outside "expert" (a meal plan, forbidden foods, pills, etc).

2. You'll always get what you've always gotten and then some:  If you have tried many diets in the past, and they have failed (presumably this is the reason why you want to start another one...), then chances are it won't work. NOT because you've failed or did something wrong, but because dieting is a failed concept. Unfortunately, lack of losing weight may not be your only negative. Most people take their lack of success personally and fell like they themselves are failures rather than blaming the outrageous promises of the diet. Ads for diets are meant to hook you in; promise crazy results with even crazier suggestions of how to cut out food and fun. They are meant to dazzle and prey on people's desperation to lose weight. Shame on them- NOT on you. Perhaps if we didn't regard "being skinny" as the ultimate greatness, they would have less power.



3. There is a good change you may actually gain weight: not losing weight is a bummer. Gaining weight is an even bigger let down. This can be due to a few factors-  they can lower your "metabolism" (slow down the amount of calories you burn), increase your appetite and preoccupation with food as well as disconnecting your from your hunger and fullness cues.

4. They are a waste of good money: there are SO MANY other ways, that are far less costly and more effective to help you make changes to your life and diet. The secret all those diet books, pills and plans aren't telling you- you can do it on your own with a few helpful books or websites. AND you don't have to swallow any nasty shakes or bars. Consulting with a registered dietitian who are the experts on weight management will likely give you weight management tools that will help you for the rest of your life (vs diets that only help for the next few weeks). Just make sure you find one who specializes in weight management and takes the mindful eating/ intuitive eating approach.

5. They do not get to the bottom of why you have a certain lifestyle: they do not address the reasons why you emotionally eat, overeat, eat when you are not hungry and other hugely important aspects. They may claim they do this but many are too focused on meal plans, counting carbs/points or special products to actually help you explore these habits. Doing mental exercises that help you understand why you eat, why certain foods are chosen over others, and what emotions push you to eat are rarely included. In fact, some diets may actually fuel your emotional and binge eating.

Stop emotional eating (for your sake and your children's)

The more I speak with people about dieting or weight loss, the more I realize that emotional eating plays a huge role. In my defense, I am not the instigator of this topic (and have a hard time talking about it with people outside of the consult room) but it does sometimes feel like an inevitable topic, especially with strangers.

There's the tired cliché about women who are sad, reaching for chocolates to sooth but emotional eating goes much more deep than this. Eating to spite someone (or go against their "helpful" diet advice), eating due to happiness or celebration and eating due to loneliness are all examples.

Stress is perhaps the biggest culprit. Stress from work, home or social life has been a huge influence for many of my clients. It's not always obvious to them but most evening snacking sessions can be due to stress from the day. Making time to reduce stress and have a few moments to breath during the day can help reduce relying on food's ability to calm you down at night. Things like "I deserve this snack because I worked so hard all day" or "because I skipped lunch" or "taxied everyone around this evening" are not uncommon reasons we give ourselves to eat when we are not hungry. It is important to eat foods you love, to eat when you are hungry and to sometimes eat for pleasure rather than necessity. However, eating to reduce stress is a vicious circle, Especially if you are doing it on a regular basis. Most people who are not mindful eaters tend to increase feelings of guilt and anxiety, rather than feel comforted, when eating comfort foods.


Focusing on eating when you are hungry and asking yourself "why do I want to eat" before reaching for food when you are not, is just one way to start being more aware of emotional eating. Of course, the biggest issue with emotionally driven eating is possible weight gain and not being hungry at meals.


Another reason for reducing emotional eating was recently highlighted in a study involving children and parents. It found that offering food to children to soothe their "negative emotions (i.e. sadness, anxiety, etc) was the number one thing parents can do to encourage emotional eating by the child. Unfortunately, the impact of the parents doesn't stop there. The study also suggested that the parent's "emotional feeding practices" (i.e. emotional eating) can influence their children's emotional eating. So it is suggested that there are two ways to reduce emotional eating in children- stop using food to ease their negative emotions (i.e. ice cream to ease sadness or to cheer up the child) and take a look at (and stop) the parent's own emotional eating.

You can read more about this study (Associations between child emotional eating and general parenting style, feeding practices, and parent psychopathology) here.

Are my eating habits normal? Use this tool to know when to reach out for help

There are a few ways to screen for an eating disorder. One short and easy questionnaire is called the SCOFF. SCOFF is an acronym that is used to help people & professionals remember the specific questions. It is touted as being simple, memorable, easy to apply and score. It is designed to raise suspicion of the presence of disordered eating rather than to diagnose. It is mostly used by health professionals but since it is easy to understand, it can be used by anyone. 

The SCOFF questions

Do you make yourself Sick because you feel uncomfortably full?
Do you worry you have lost Control over how much you eat?
Have you recently lost more than One stone in a 3 month period? (or about 6kg or 15lbs)
Do you believe yourself to be Fat when others say you are too thin?
Would you say that Food dominates your life?

To score the questionnaire, give one point for every “yes”. A score of 2 or more indicates that there are symptoms present similar to those in anorexia nervosa or bulimia. In other words, if you (or who ever took the test) scored 2 or higher, you may need help in re-establishing a healthy relationship with food and your body. 

There are other more in-depth questionnaires for helping to determine whether you have symptoms commonly associated with an eating disorder. One very popular one is called the Eating Attitudes Test-26 (or the EAT-26). You can take the test anonymously here.

Thinking that your disordered eating is not "bad enough" to seek help or the idea that you aren't sick enough to merit the help of a professional is one of the main reasons people suffer from eating disorders. Getting help sooner rather than later helps to speed recovery and lift the burden off your shoulders. 

No fry, easy, crispy chicken recipe

It is rare that I post recipes as blogs but when I find a tasty, quick & easy recipe, sometimes you just have to share it!
We have been cooking a lot more chicken in our house lately and although BBQ chicken is delicious, it is nice to expand our horizons once in awhile. We were in the mood for a baked version of fried chicken. Here is a quick recipe (it took a total of 35 minutes to make but only 10 minutes of prep with 25min of cooking) that contains ingredients we already had in our pantry!

1 tbsp grainy mustard
2 tsp curry powder
1 tsp coriander powder
2 eggs
1 tsp salt

2 cups panko
1/2 tsp curry powder

10 small chicken thighs, boneless

1. Preheat the oven to 400oF.
2. Put a rack on a baking sheet and spray with cooking oil spray.
3. Mix together the first 5 ingredients in a shallow bowl.
4. In another shallow bowl, mix the panko and 1/2 tsp curry powder.
5. Dredge the chicken through the wet mix then coat in panko mixture.
6. Place the coated chicken onto the sprayed rack. Spray with cooking spray.
7. Place in oven for about 20-25 minutes or until the chicken reaches 77oC or 170oF.
8. Serve with a ketchup curry dip: mix 3/4 cup ketchup with the juice of 1 lime and 1/2 tsp of curry powder.

The curry flavor was not overwhelming and the chicken thighs were juicy and tender. The panko stuck well to the chicken and the poultry did not even need to be cut since the thighs were already in small pieces.

Bon appetit!

Eating disorders: "simple" solution, complex issue

Eating disorders can be hard to understand. What seems like a straight forward “skewed vision of one's body” is rarely this simple.

Providing a fridge full of good food or begging people with an eating disorder to "just eat!" very rarely works. No matter how minor the problem seems to be (and it is common to scoff it off as not serious enough for therapy) professional help is needed to recover. One problem that tends to be underestimated is binge eating disorder. Unfortunately, many people who suffer from BED have the same body image problems as people with anorexia or bulimia.

Why professional help? Because they help the sufferer deal with all the major complexities of an eating disorder. Believing yourself to be “fat” when you are thin (or a normal weight) is only one of the symptoms of an eating disorder. A major component that goes one step deeper is the fact that self-worth is based on weight. The higher the weight, the lower the self-worth. Rather than looking at all aspects of life that make up an evaluation of one’s self, like being a nice person, a good student, a kind daughter/son, punctual, reliable, etc-  weight is the most important aspect.

This is why exploring more than just body weight is needed for recovery. Specialized psychologists and dietitians can help with all behaviors of an eating disorder to help increase other aspects of life that make up self-worth.

When weight loss is the goal, no amount of weight lost is enough. Food becomes feared since it brings the person farther away from their goal of weighing less. This fear can be compared to a fear of dogs. If someone has an intense fear of dogs, they will likely do anything they can to get away from one or avoid being close to one. This intense fear can lead them to do things that puts their life in danger. Imagine running into traffic after being scared by a dog on the street or being confining to the house since there may be a dog outside. Neither of these behaviors are healthy but they are done to avoid the dog. Similarly, if someone is scared of food, they may avoid social situations where food is the main event, live with a dangerously low body weight or even sacrifice their teeth to get rid of any food eaten.

So, would offering food to someone who is scared help to decrease this fear? Well, in the short run, no. It is a process that takes time. Small exposures to the thing that is feared (whether it be dogs or food) and working up to the equivalent to petting a dog works best. Although someone who is underweight would benefit from eating high calorie foods, it takes time to work up to being able to do it. This process is best done with the help of a professional to help guide and provide support. Usually it starts by adding “safe” foods to a routine and progress to more “scary” foods.

One thing that has been proven time and time again, is that returning to a healthy weight by eating the foods your body needs is the most effective treatment for an eating disorder. 

So called "healthy" habits

Nothing gets my goat like pseudo nutrition advice - and unfortunately the most damage is caused by people who are believed to be "experts" with no actual knowledge. Case in point: bodybuilding and workout "gurus".

In the past, I have been involved in the "workout" or "bodybuilding" world. I have since decided to focus on other domains of nutrition partly because somethings just never sat right for me with this area of "nutrition". 

Firstly, there is not much of an opening for dietitians. Too many trainers take over the role of dietitians, psychologist and even doctors. Unfortunately, they do not have actual knowledge to back up their advice. And no, anecdotal or single case studies do not count as science based facts. Because dietitians believe in balanced meals, the consumption of all 3 macronutrients and that all foods can fit into a healthy diet- we are less dazzling. We are less "interesting" than people who taut amazing, too good to be true, miracle, quick results and this is because dietitians are regulated by an Order that helps to ensure that we are qualified to give nutrition advice and that our knowledge is based on science. 

Secondly, for people who claim to love their bodies and want to be super healthy, its a mystery to me why they rely on so many powders (i.e. protein powders and so called "vegetable" greens), processed foods (meal replacement bars, protein bars, fibre bars), and unnatural "natural" supplements (garlic capsules and plant enzymes). Of course, not all weightlifters or bodybuilders use these products but many do and many more are being encouraged/pressured everyday. The money spent on these products is unbelievable. The worst part is, they are not regulated and often come with a bunch of untested health claims. It's beyond my comprehension why dietitian's suggestions to eat high fibre foods, add real garlic and food fats to recipes and to include lean protein rich foods daily is not taken more often. I can tell you that a glass of chocolate milk tastes better and is much cheaper than a protein powder drink.

Lastly, the lack of variety of the types of foods eaten continues to astonish me. Every book or diet warns of a different "bad" food and promises the superpowers of a different food. None of the diets admit to how crazy their recommendations really are and they all apparently have "proof" of how and why they "work". I compare this lack of insight to someone who believes in fairies finding the idea that Santa Claus exists ridiculous. In other words, with these diets you are merely trading one food myth/misconception for another. From a dietitians point of view, a healthy diet includes a variety of food from all the food groups. Boiled chicken, eggs, sweet potatoes and oatmeal are only a few of the many healthy choices. Anything otherwise is just untrue.