Sleep Eating?

Are you someone who rarely wants to eat in the morning?  Do you eat most of your calories after dinner or wake up at night to eat?  You may be suffering from Night Eating Syndrome (NES).

NES is defined as someone who eats at least a third of their total calories after dinner and wakes up at least 2-3 times per week at night to eat.  This disorder is rarely spoken about by health care professionals or patients due to embarrassment or lack of knowledge.  Many individuals with NES are overweight due to night eating and sometimes are not even aware of what they ate.

NES is usually triggered by a stressful period of life event such as a divorce, death of a loved one or loss of a job. It is thought to have a genetic component as well.  It can be difficult to treat and there is no clear cut therapy for change.

What can you do if you think you have NES?  Various treatments exist but here are some simple things to start off with:

• Even if you are not hungry, eat at least 3 meals a day starting with breakfast.  Normalizing your meals and making yourself eat in the morning can help with regulating your body to start to eat at normal times
• Increase physical activity and exercise.  Exercise not only helps to increase your metabolism but can also regulate the circuits in your body to want to eat at regular times
• Keep a food and sleep diary.  This can help both you and your health care professional in sorting through how to best help solve the problem
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and medications such as Zoloft (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)) can be helpful bridges in getting you to where you want to be with your lifestyle

NES can be treated successfully.  Admitting to yourself and your health care professional that you may have NES is the first step towards recovery and healing to get you on the path towards change.  Changing this disorder can change your waistline and your life.

Does Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now Apply To Mindful Eating?

Several years ago I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and typed up my notes for clients to help with mindful eating.  Since mindful eating is in the limelight I thought it might be timely to share my notes with all of you.

Tolle states “disease is what happens when life gets out of balance.”  His principles for life can be applied to any lifestyle change you may want to make.  He states maintaining presence is a good way to help the feelings of wanting to eat when you are not physically hungry.

You’ve just finished dinner but the leftovers in the refrigerator or the dessert hidden in the freezer is calling your name.  You are not physically hungry but don’t know what to do.  Here’s some tips from Tolle:

1. Focus your attention on the feeling inside of you
2. Accept it for what it is
3. Don’t think about it
4. Don’t judge or make an identity of yourself out of it
5. Stay present and continue to be the observer of what is happening inside you
6. Become aware of the silent watcher  - that is the power of now – the power of your own unconscious presence

If you stay present and not react to the pain body it allows for a powerful transformation inside.  If you can sit long enough and apply the above principles the voice telling you to eat something can die down, allowing you to go on with your evening and go to bed satisfied versus full and guilty.

Many people use outside solutions – food, alcohol, drugs, etc. to help their unease – which can become addictive or abusive and all that is achieved is short –term symptom relief.  Using the challenges in life to awaken you rather than go into the “pain-body” or numb place and stay present in that moment can be life-changing.

If you are identified with a strong pain body – that is your identity - you may experience a strong resistance to change and you would rather stay in the pain body than take a leap into a different existence.  Observe the attachment to your pain, the pleasure you receive from staying attached to it.  The resistance will cease if you bring presence to it.  Acceptance is the key to working through resistance and creating change.

The root of suffering is constant wanting.  Living in the present moment and mindful eating can be the key to liberation.

Mindful Eating for Our Kids?

Does texting, emails, faxes and needing information at light speed affect our eating?  Drive-throughs, eating in the car, and 5 minute meals does affect our eating and health, and not in a positive way.

I had dinner with some European friends last week who were amazed at how little time Americans take for eating.  Long lunches and dinners with interesting conversation and enjoyment of food are the theme.  Is mindful eating partially responsible for lower obesity rates in Europe?

Mindful eating can be an unfamiliar concept.  Since many adults do not know how to eat mindfully we are bringing up a generation who are completely unaware of the notion of savoring and enjoying their food.

Indeed, snacks on demand around the clock was a recent article in the NY Times discussing how every sporting and child event is stocked with snacks, many of them processed and refined.  A study in the Journal of Health Affairs examining the eating habits of 31,000 children showed that snacks now account for about 27% of calories consumed by children.

Barry Popkin and Carmen Piernas of the University of North Carolina state:

“Our findings suggest that children ages 2-18 are experiencing increases in snacking behavior that are moving towards higher consumption patterns.  This raises the question of whether the physiological basis for eating is becoming dysregulated, as our children are moving towards constant eating.”

What are some tips for mindful eating for ourselves and our children?

• Chewing and tasting your food to obtain as much flavor in your mouth as possible can actually increase serotonin levels which decreases your desire to continue eating
• Pausing to savor and enjoy each bite can increase satisfaction and fullness
• Taking time to eat at the table, away from distractions such as televisions and computers, and not in the car helps focus on eating from true hunger

Try “the raisin exercise” as I call it in my office.  Take one solitary raisin, smell it, and then put in your mouth.  Chew it for about 30 seconds before swallowing, something not all that easy to do. 

You might be surprised at how much taste one little raisin can have.  The burst of flavor can be quite satisfying.  Applying this exercise to the rest of your food takes work, but the results can surprisingly healthful.

Besides being satisfied with less food, you’ll actually be able to taste and enjoy your food and possibly lose weight and improve your health in the process.  Mindful eating offers a plethora of benefits…and that is information that deserves light speed.

Shrink your Waist with Sleep and Protein

 “I’m hungry Mother, I really am,” said the little puppy Rolly on 101 Dalmatians.

I often hear “I’m always hungry; I don’t feel full after a meal; I still want something after I eat but I can’t put my finger on it.”

Appetite is affected by both physiological and psychological issues.  Since the psychological may be a whole research paper in itself let’s stick to the physiological things you can do to keep your appetite normal and healthy.

Two hormones affecting appetite are Leptin and Ghrelin.  An easy way to remember them is leptin lowers your appetite and ghrelin grows your appetite.  When they are in sync your appetite is in line with your metabolism.  Things that can throw them off are lack of sleep and imbalances in the diet.

If your sleep is compromised it affects your hunger levels.  Eve Van Cauter at the University of Chicago has done 25 years of research on how hormones affect sleep.  Her research shows that when you are sleep deprived your leptin levels are 18% lower and your Ghrelin levels are 28 percent higher.

Her subjects also reported they were much hungrier than usual and craved salty, sweet food when they lacked sleep.  Think of late night pizza and nachos when you stayed up too long.  Craving salty, sweet food and increasing leptin and lowering ghrelin are the perfect combination for weight gain.

Appetite can also be thrown off by the wrong combination of carbohydrate, protein and fat.  David Cummings, M.D. at the University School of Medicine in Seattle found that protein was the best suppressor of appetite.  Fats seemed to have a neutral affect.

Carbohydrates initially lowered the appetite, but then rebounded later with a vengeance.  I still remember my days of eating a “healthy” bowl of cereal for breakfast only to be famished 2 hours later – unaware that it was due to a lack of protein at the most important meal of the day.

Good sources of protein include:

• lean meats, poultry, fish
• eggs
• plain yogurt, cottage cheese, hard cheeses
• nuts/seeds and nut butters

Take home message?  Getting your rest and making sure you eat some sort of protein at each meal and snack will keep your appetite even keeled.  So maybe a good idea is to eat your protein and get some rest with Rolly.  What have you got to lose…besides weight?

This piece is part of Prevention not Prescriptions

Finding your Recipe for Weight Loss

How do we lose weight?  This magic question seems to elude and allure us to weight loss programs and gimmicks.   Water cooler conversations focus on the person who lost weight – how they did it, what are they eating, how long did it take?

I’ve thought about and wrestled with both the question and answer to weight loss since I was a little girl, which is the reason I became a dietitian.  I was a little round as young as second grade and always wanting the second ding-dong or ho-ho after school (who knew what a trans fat was in the 70’s?).  Why was I was always hungrier and bigger than my skinny friends - was it just that I needed to eat less calories or exercise a bit more?

Both the Los Angeles and New York Times have written about restaurant calorie counts, begging the question whether counting calories is the answer.  Health writer Jeannie Stein from the LA Times wrote several informative articles last week, one which asked “Does menu labeling really alter Habits?” 

New York Times article “In the Obesity Epidemic, What’s One Cookie?” discussed Michelle Obama’s strategy of “small changes add up,” in which one eats either 100 calories less or burns 100 calories more.

Is that enough? The challenge of weight loss is unique in that we are genetically diverse as human beings with different metabolisms and lifestyles.  And our food supply and large restaurant portions does not play to our advantage.

It might be time to stop looking for a simple answer and come up with a solution tailor made to your needs.  Ask yourself:

1.  Where do I store my weight?  If you have a lot of belly fat you may be eating too many carbohydrates (processed and starchy) and need more lean protein and good fats to keep your appetite under control.

2.  Instead of focusing on calories, think about how much food your body requires to be NO LONGER HUNGRY versus full.  Studies show when we shift into mindful eating it actually starts re-wiring our brains to be satisfied with less food.

3.  Exercise and activity are not really an “option” if health and weight loss are your goals.  Make exercise like brushing your teeth every day– something you do to keep all the systems in your body – including your metabolism- working at full capacity.

Think about what will work for you and focus on the REWARDS of what you want rather than the limitations.  That is how I found my answer.  Although I needed to look like my job, my driving force was to feel comfortable and healthy in my body.  Finding the path and answer to your water cooler question becomes the recipe for weight loss. Your recipe is the key to prevention and not prescription.