Kati Burton, MS, RDN
You walk by the coffee shop at 10AM after your daily workout, eyeing the pastry case and considering a latte. It has been years since you sat cross legged by the window with a good book or friend casually dusting off croissant crumbs and smiling wide to hide your carelessness. How simple it was then to eat and drink in the pleasures of wasted time and fat. As much as the magazine articles at the grocery store claim, “FAT: it’s what’s for dinner in 2022!” you cannot help but shy away from the stuff. It’s link to heart disease and a growing waist have landed you in a pit of low-fat yogurt, baked chicken, and romaine lettuce. The move away from cheese and bacon have left you forlorn at dinner parties and dismayed by the occasional dinner date with butter.
From your friendly Dietitian, my ask is that you grab a handful of nuts, get cozy, and listen in: YOU are strong, funny, interesting, and active. You walk even on days when it’s rainy and cold! And even if you don’t, you move your body and smile and interact with others with gusto. YOU my friend are downright attractive and married to the wrong diet. Why limit yourself to the cheap low-fat and low-sugar packaging when you’ve got so much to give? Set aside the 100 calorie packs and delete your Shape subscription. It’s time to bury this poor partnership and find pleasure in sourcing and enjoying your food.
Here’s your plan:
Give yourself permission.
Unlike driving around town at the whim of unpredictable traffic lights, the GREEN light is always ON when it comes to eating and drinking. We want to believe that the traffic light analogy for dieting of RED (stop), YELLOW (slow), and GREEN (go) will influence our food choices, but the reality is that we are going to eat it and perhaps feel shamed by it regardless of its nutrition content. Understand that you are behind the wheel and can give yourself permission to run the RED light with boundaries that you set for yourself.
Practically speaking, here are some tips:
Be prepared. If you eat a light breakfast and have snacks on hand during the day (nuts, seeds, fruit), you are less likely to have cravings and gravitate towards unhealthy foods. Prepping 2-3 side dishes on a Sunday also helps to accompany proteins at the dinner meal. If something has been made in the fridge, you reduce following through with an urge to eat away from the home. When you encounter treats on the go, a well-fed person will be in a calmer state to make a healthy choice.
Consider your current diet. Are you restricting certain food groups like grains without medical necessity? In the age of nutrition journalism, everyone is an “expert.” Trust your instincts and discuss your diet with your doctor or a registered dietitian nutritionist. By limiting certain food groups, you may actually prompt a nutrient deficiency and cause more harm than good. You may also feel less satiated and end up overeating.
Enjoy what life has to offer. There are many times when we feel tired, stressed, bored, and what do we do? This is what we call a “trigger time” when we may overeat on any food, “healthy” or not. Set a schedule for your day and recognize possible “trigger times.” What can you do during these times instead of wander to the kitchen? Walk? Call a friend? You decide what works best for you.
Ditch the packaging and labels.
When we are inundated with messaging on the television, in magazines, and down the aisles of the grocery store, it is incredibly difficult to purchase food and food products that meet our energy needs and yes, add pleasure to our lives through taste, texture, and shared experience. I cannot remember a time when I enjoyed the taste of a meal replacement shake for its texture and recommended a friend take a taste. When selecting foods to eat, don’t over think it. There is no magic “diet” food, as you probably already know. When a label screams out to you that this product will “help shed pounds,” know that the food carries its own set of calories from sugars and fats and will probably cost you more money than its raw components. Instead of following a diet food brand, choose instead to purchase foods that are packaging and label-free whenever possible. This nutrition base should include whole grains (oatmeal for breakfast!); fruit and vegetables (raw, lightly roasted or steamed, blended into smoothies); meats, fish, and non-meat proteins (grilled sirloin on spinach, salmon and creamy cilantro sauce, tempeh with maple syrup marinade); nuts and seeds (on the go or top whatever you are eating!), dairy and non-dairy alternatives (look for those fortified with calcium, vitamin A and D). Most of these foods above do not come in a package and supply more pleasure and waistline support than any product that’s been molded into a diet food. “Clean” eating should involve more dirt, my friends!
Take it slow.
How often do you find yourself:
eating while driving?
eating while engaging in a work call or video conference?
eating while Netflix binging? (And more than just popcorn!)
eating an entire sandwich in two minutes between commitments?
You are not alone. How empowering would it be if you found out that discontinuing this behavior may help you meet your physical, emotional, and mental health goals?1 Research has shown that when we eat while distracted, we end up eating more calories in the moment and receive less pleasure benefits or signals from the brain to stop eating. It is also clear that when we eat slower and with more attention, we tend to eat less later in the day. One way to practice slower eating is to meet with a friend or family member at least once per week and engage in conversation while placing your fork or spoon down between bites. Chew slowly and even share what you are tasting with your meal companion.
Recognize your diet history and talk to someone to strengthen your food philosophy and relationship.
When we say “diet history” this includes all the food behaviors we have picked up over the years. Most were out of our control in our younger years and became more within our control as we age, however, much of our adult eating habits are highly influenced by the food environment we started eating in. Whether a caregiver encouraged you at 5 years old to clean the entire plate before dessert or you ended up in military service and ate large portions of food in under 15 minutes, we all have our food stories. Some of these are subconsciously damaging to our emotional and mental health. Everything from negative self and body-image, depression and anxiety, history of trauma or abuse, disordered eating, diagnosis of sensory processing disorders or other medical conditions can result in or come from poor feeding relationships. Talk to your doctor, therapist, and registered dietitian nutritionist to process these connections and redesign a healthy, permissive, and open relationship with all foods that benefit your mind, body, and spirit.
1 Eric Robinson, Paul Aveyard, Amanda Daley, Kate Jolly, Amanda Lewis, Deborah Lycett, Suzanne Higgs, Eating attentively: a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 97, Issue 4, April 2013, Pages 728–742, https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.112.045245
Kati Burton is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and owner of Burton Nutrition. She enjoys eating sardines with her almost 2-year-old daughter, Agathe, and making gluten-free chocolate chip cookies (celiac disease diagnosis, 2021). She passes her non-working and non-parenting time running and skiing in the mountains with her husband Josh, swimming laps, and reading fiction. Kati fervently believes in enjoying cheese and an occasional glass of wine because life is too short. You can contact her to inquire about article topics or to schedule a nutrition counseling session at burtonnutrition@gmail.com.
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