From the savory cereals to dusty pancakes and delicious pastas, grains and their flour derivatives have always been a mainstay on so many family dining tables. The “white or wheat” bread controversy and whole grain vs. processed flours debate have been closely examined for the past several years. If you’re considering making some important changes [...]
Yesterday I did something kind of scary. I invited 6 incredible women friends over to help me read through the manuscript of my new book. Several of these women have had their own struggles with food and weight so they could provide great feedback, based on their own experiences. The reason why this was scary [...]
In an excerpt from Brian Wansink’s book Mindless Eating, the author retells a conversation with a friend: Over coffee a new friend commented that he’d lost 30 pounds within the past year. When I asked him how, he explained he didn’t stop eating potato chips, pizza, or ice cream. He ate anything he wanted, but [...]
None of us choose to be fat. As a child, we don’t say, “I want to grow up and be large, Mommy!” It happens, often subtly and slowly. Years worth of misguided eating habits begin to settle on our hips and thighs. We ask ourselves, “What went wrong?” “A fat-forming transformation in our eating habits [...]
Holidays like Christmas, New Year’s, Valentines Day, Easter, Fourth of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving are usually challenging times for food addicts. Every kind of sugary, starchy, fattening food is on display and the temptations never cease. Everyone gives decadent food as gifts and every party is flowing with delicious options. Most people with food addiction [...]
Most diets are based on the concept of deprivation, in one form or the other. And as we know, they are rarely successful. We deny ourselves everything from chocolate to pizza to pasta in the hopes we’ll beat our own internal system. Yet it is estimated that 95% of people who lose weight gain it [...]
Culturally, we are all taught to believe that bad moods = comfort foods. Whether it’s the lonely woman home at night eating a pint of ice cream or the overworked binger who scoffs down a pizza after a stressful day, we believe negative states of mind encourage pig-outs. But is this necessarily true? When Brian [...]
Most of us realize our desire for a particular food can mask an unmet emotional need. Perhaps we need a good cry or a hug and instead we find ourselves opening the refrigerator, as if that chocolate milk will suffice. How can we tell the difference between emotionally based hunger and genuine hunger? In the [...]
Deprivation diets don’t work. Adjustment diets do. Adjustment diets are based on making slight alterations to your food intake and lifestyle that may take a little longer to but last over the long haul, since you’re not fighting against your own physiology and psychology. So let’s explore the idea of an adjustment – one you [...]
40 adults were invited to watch a videotape and give some feedback when it was over. They were also given a complimentary bag of M&M s to eat while reviewing the video. Half were given a one-pound bag, the other half were given a half-pound bag. After the program, the researchers “weighed in” the results: [...]
