Part 2: Offenses of the Harried and Hungry

Many of us have professions that, in the absence of a good life-work balance, could easily consume us.

This isn’t always a bad thing—it usually means we are living in the moment; we are passionate about our work. It also can mean, however, that the less-immediate things in our lives get put on the back burner: our health, for example.

There are five nutrition “offenses” that I see esteemed and educated professionals committing again and again. To see the first two, check out . This week, let's take expose the final three:

The third common offense is drinking your daily calories. Some people don’t realize how many calories are sitting in their glasses. Often, drinking calories is just habit: you have a tall glass of orange juice with breakfast or a beer with dinner. It is also much easier to drink than to eat while you are doing other things so convenience can be a factor. Maybe stopping at Caribou for a double mocha latte is your treat to yourself for a hard day’s work. Alcohol has calories, too, and a night out with friends can easily leave you with a massive calorie “hangover.”  We aren’t exactly sure how yet, but we know that liquid calories affect our appetites and hunger levels differently than solids. In other words, if you’ve eaten calories in a solid, it’s likely you will eat less at the next meal as opposed to if you’d just consumed calories in beverage form.

The most obvious solution to drinking your daily calories is to replace caloric beverages with calorie-free beverages. If you do drink a caloric beverage, be sure to factor those into your daily calorie allotment. Lastly, be aware of how many calories your favorite alcoholic drinks contain—these can add up fast.

Emotional eating is the fourth common nutritional crime. It affects both men and women and involves eating when bored, eating purely out of habit, or eating when anxious, stressed, angry, or sad.

What causes emotional eating? Food is something to do, eating is pleasurable and can be comforting, and it can also be a delaying tactic we use to consciously or subconsciously postpone a dreaded task. Eating emotionally can be dangerous: It often occurs when we aren’t really hungry or continues beyond the point where we should have stopped eating, which can lead to drastic over-intakes of calories. Frequent and uncontrollable emotional eating can be a sign that something in your life is not quite how you’d like it to be. Preventing emotional eating can be tricky. You might have to figure out non-food replacement activities to employ. For example, you could send an email, go for a quick walk, or read the newspaper. Practicing “mindful eating” and getting in tune with your true hunger can also help some people. In some cases, you might need to go further, however, and fix outside stressors in your life before you’ll be able to better control your emotional eating. 

The last nutrition crime is maximizing calories per bite. This means that you base the majority of your diet on high-calorie (energy-dense) foods, with much less of your diet coming from healthier, nutrient-dense foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Unfortunately, calorie-dense, often highly-processed foods seem to be the most readily available and usually do not perish easily, which also makes them convenient.

Because these foods are high in sugar and unhealthy fats, low in fiber, and are mostly only satisfying in the short-term, you don’t have to eat a large quantity to take in too many calories.

What can be done to minimize your calories per bite? First, being able to recognize what is and is not a calorically-dense food is crucial. Then, you will need to make substitutions. For example, you might swap the 450- calorie piece of cheesecake for a much larger 200-calorie bowl of fresh strawberries.

Remembering to not make these less-healthy foods “forbidden” is also of utmost importance—severely restricting yourself can make your mind want these foods more.