In defence of real food

Food is good. I enjoy eating it and cooking it. Eating is one of our most powerful drives, after all. We need it to survive. Cooking to make food taste nice has meant that we enjoy this essential activity.

For many people who have trouble maintaining their weight, food has become the enemy, and that is sad, because it is essential and can be a non-guilty pleasure.

Michael Pollan writes some interesting rules in his book "In defence of food". He thinks we have stopped eating food, and started eating nutrients. Here are a few of his rules, and some of my own, which will help those who are struggling with their weight. The underlying rule is this.

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

If you want to control your weight, follow these simple guidelines:

• Eat at a table
• If you can't eat it with cutlery, don't eat it at all
• Eat meals
• Cook your own food
• Don’t eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or that include corn syrup
• Be a guerrila shopper - make a list, locate it, buy it and get out of the shop
• Shop the periphery of the supermarket and avoid the middle
• Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
• Try not to eat alone
• Eat slowly
• Avoid fizzy drinks

I agree with him when he says that what we are consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" no longer the products of nature but of food science.



www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

The pressure to be thin

Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. And her image is airbrushed and photoshopped to make her look even more unreal. Don't forget what the photographer Rankin (who did the Dove adverts) says about fashion photography "It is an art form and should not be taken seriously". See my blog of 4 August 2009.

The Canadian Media Awareness Network has some interesting things to say about the pressure to be thin - mostly the pressure on women to be thin. They note the high value of the diet industry - £60 billion - depends on us feeling bad about our bodies so that we go to their classes, buy their food. Did you know that Weight Watchers food products are sold to us by Kraft?

This ideal of women's beauty is a Western ideal, but it is now spreading internationally. Television, showing lots of Western films and shows, is affecting women everywhere. Look at this research article in the Royal College of Psychiatrists journal on the effect of television on teenage girls in Fiji. It shows that disordered eating - fasting, anorexia, bulimia - is one of the effects of prolonged television viewing.

I will bang on about women's magazines later. Hypnotherapy helps you get a clearer idea of what is normal, what you can achieve, and how to be happy with how you are. Make changes where change is possible and necessary, and learn to accept the rest, and be happy.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Become a guerrilla shopper

Researchers show that if you put a jar of sweets on your desk then you eat more than if you have to walk just a few paces to get them. If the sweets are in a glass jar, so you can see them, then you will eat more than if they are in a tin.

Is that obvious? Maybe. If you are one of those people who eat it if they see it (health professionals label you an "external eater") then keep the risky foods out of sight. Ideally, keep them out of the house. In the house is in the hand, in the hand is in the mouth.

External eaters respond to food cues rather than hunger pangs. That is, the smell of freshly baked bread makes you hungry, or the sight of a creamy cake. Or the display in the supermarket (whose clever people know exactly what you will respond to). Or the ads on the telly.

If you are one of those whose urges to eat are triggered by the sight or smell of food, then don't go shopping when you are hungry. Become a guerrilla shopper, rushing in with your list and swooping onto your target before getting out at speed. That will help you avoid the temptations the supermarkets have put in a deliberate attempt to catch YOU.

http://www.carolinebrowntherapy.com/

Body image

Western women are very strongly affected by the social requirement to be slender, even though naturally we come in all shapes and sizes, and we live in a world where food and eating messages bombard us all day long. Call that mixed signals or what. And women in other countries where Western values are being introduced are starting to feel this pressure too.

Dr Eyecandy points out that in France there are debates about requiring digitally tailored images to display the following warning: "Photograph retouched to modify the physical appearance of a person".

Politicians who support the law claim digitally enhanced images portraying unrealistic beauty are to blame for extensive body and self esteem issues in adolescents. And this leads to eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia as well as obesity.


Life is hard enough without trying to achieve the looks that the stars only manage with airbrushing.

So I am all for it. Let's get real.


www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Big isn't better

Eating a large portion does not make you feel more satisfied than eating a small one. That's good news isn't it. So if you eat a smaller portion, you won't physically feel any less content. This research was carried out at Penn State University. They also show that people eat more if they are given a larger portion. Indeed, most of us will eat what is put in front of us. (We do it on an aeroplane, and we do it at home as well!)



So it means that if you serve yourself a smaller portion, you will feel fine. The easiest way to do this is to use a smaller plate. That way you can deceive your eyes about the size of the portion. When your eyes see a full plate, all of you feels that you are not being short-changed.

A normal-sized portion looks pretty mean and disappointing on one of the huge plates we now seem to use for our meals. The same sized portion on a smaller plate looks fine. This is because of the Delboeuf Illusion.

Hypnotherapy will help you to make regular changes to your eating patterns, so that you automatically eat in a healthier way, without having to think about food all the time.