David, Welcome to the Lake.

Jill, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome to Firedoglake! Glad you could join us today.

Hello, and welcome to Dr. Kessler and to everyone else who is here to discuss his book with him. Please feel free to direct questions and comments to Dr. Kessler or to myself. I’ll also chime in with occasional questions I’ve got for Dr. Kessler after reading his excellent book.

Dr. Kessler, You introduce a term in your book “Conditioned hypereating.” Can you please tell us what that means?

Thank you for having me. It is terrific to be here.
David

Conditioning hypereating is a constellation of symotoms
1) hard time resisitng palatable foods– a loss of control
2) hard time stopping eating–a lack of satiation
3) thinkg alot about food– a preoocupation

FWIW, I adhere to this principle: exercise and let my body tell me what it wants.

The message I get is basically organic fruits and veggies and whole grains. Lots of legumes. Some fish.

How might we change our society so that we are less likely to be conditioned to hypereating in the first place? For example, would reduced marketing for food to small children make a difference? Would a shift in school lunches away from foods like corn dogs and French fries help?

Glad to see you make the equivalence of carrot cake & carrots on your cover. I love eating my vegetables in the form of cake. (Just kidding.)

I find that if I sit down to a meal, rather than eating on the go, it makes a tremendous difference. I live alone, so I read while I eat, but I also take the time to savor the food. Food eaten on the go has no flavor, and doesn’t satisfy me.

(On that note, did you see the recent Yale report about advertising of children’s cereal? They found cereal marketed to kids was less healthy than cereal marketed to adults for their families, or cereal marketed to adults… http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2689/part-of-a-balanced-breakfast )

that works great for some people–not everyone has the same satiety signals. some people when you say eat when you are hungry respond i am always hungry
d

An additional note about the cereals, they found that of the cereals marketed directly to kids: “In fact, not one cereal that is marketed directly to children in the United States would be allowed to advertise to children on television in the United Kingdom. Only one, Cascadian Farm Clifford Crunch, would be eligible to be included in cereals offered through the USDA Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. In addition, 42% contain potentially harmful artificial food dyes.”

jill
you are absoolutely right. the average 2 year old compensates for their eating– meaning if you give them more calories at lunch they will eat fewer calories during the rest of the day. by the time that child becomes 5 –they loose the abilty to compensate–probably because of exposure to the modern american diet

so we have to start very early
d

fascinating insight. some work by colleagues in canada suggest that when people eat stanidng up — hor d’oerves — at a party– that doesn’t generate sateity signals. expectations have alot to do with this.
d

Dr. Kessler, You mention in your book that rules work better than willpower to control one’s eating. Have you tried that in your own life, and if so, which rules do you set for yourself?

(This is a strategy I’ve used routinely throughout my life, i.e. at various times I’ve set rules like no french fries, no fried cheese sticks, only one order of fried chicken fingers per month, no meat, and even no animal products… I’ve always been successful with rules, except for the very short-lived experiment I tried with “no chocolate” – that didn’t fly. Willpower is a complete failure for me.)

Good afternoon Jill and Dr Kessler.

Dr Kessler, I have not had an opportunity to read your book but to build on what eCAHN said at #9. When we go out to eat, the portion sizes are huge yet I imagine many are like myself who still hear the voices of our parents and grandparents in the back of our minds telling us to eat everything on our plates.

And fixing a meal at home for myself alone, I’ve had to learn to moderate my portions back down to a reasonable level.

How much blame (if any) can we place on the serving sizes provided not only by the fast food joints but even the more upscale restaurants?

You might find the research in Linda Bacon’s book Health at Every Size very interesting. She goes into experiments where people were given 2 sizes of bags of stale popcorn while watching the movie. They weren’t eating it because it tasted good – it was stale! – but the people with bigger bags ate more.

Pardon me for jumping in here, but I have a recent insight on this as I am dating a chef who has also worked as a waiter. He says this is a dilemma because at restaurants right now the complaint is that portion sizes are unhealthy but when they reduce portion sizes they get complaints about that too, and people perceive the food as a ‘rip-off.’ It also bothers him how much food gets wasted and how many disposable doggy bags go out the door when it would be more environmentally friendly if people planned ahead by bringing their own tupperware, although that’s an entirely different topic.

Welcome, David -

Michael Polan sez you eat all the french fries you want, as long as you make them yourself.

Dr. Kessler — have we lost the ability to know what the feeling of hunger really IS?

i have had the same experience as you. i have had to retrain myself to eat. portion sizes have a lot to do with eat. i now look at huge portions with some disgust. but it is a relearning process

You’re totally right. Is there any way we might limit direct marketing to very small children? I find Michele Simon’s book very enlightening on this topic (Appetite for Profit) as she reveals the tactics used by industry to avoid regulation and the successes and (more often) failures of “self-regulation” such as CARU (the industry group that supposedly self-regulates advertising to kids). I find it maddening that McDonalds gives out toys with Happy Meals. You could give my boyfriends kids toys with broccoli or toys with a burger. Either way, they want whatever food comes with the toy. When I took his 2 year old to a Mexican restaurant the other day, she asked me why she didn’t get a toy with her meal.

eactly. it’s called priming. once many of us start it is hard to stop

LOL, I doubt that. I’ve heard him advocate variety in one’s diet.

we need to change how America looks at food. it is a fair point that many of are conflicted when it comes to eating
d

To be honest, I think there are probably residual affects as well from when we were younger.

As an example, a few years ago my Godfather’s widow thanked me for having given her an advance look a the teenage male appetite. We had visited them when I was 15 and their son was still in single digits.

I think a lot of men continue to eat the same portion sizes that they could consume when 15 without doing any of the actions that they used then to burn the calories away.

Since somebody brought up Michael Pollan, I’ll throw this question out there:

Dr. Kessler, how do you think your advice compares with Michael Pollan’s popular advice of “Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.” Does Pollan’s advice basically guide one to a diet of foods that aren’t laden in fat, sugar, and salt and thus won’t trigger conditioned hypereating?

not everyone. but for many of us we are eating for reward– self stimulation — so we are always chaising this ephemeral satisfaction

some people can regulate their eating

eating real foods certainly helps control eating for stimulation

Hmm, standing vs. sitting. That’s part of it. But the bigger part for me is taking the time to make eating an event. For humans (and perhaps other animals also), eating is a complex act, encompassing anticipation, memory, the act itself, which involves, taste, smell, sight. If you short-circuit any of those pieces, you don’t feel satisfied, and you eat more because your natural signals are not operating. And it’s not just meals, it’s every time I eat. I had a snack when I came back from bicycling today, and I sat down and enjoyed it rather than stuffing my face while doing other chores. The only multitasking that should be done while eating is talking or reading.

i will try that. the question is why. is it the processing? i want to understand why?

I just read a fascinating book called How to Get Your Kid to Eat But Not Too Much … http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780915950836-10

Most of it was excellent, although it’s an old book and the nutritional advice was clearly 20 years old (she recommends eating margarine… gah!!!). But she goes into the psychology of helping kids learn to eat w/o giving them a complex over it. That is a very personal topic for me as my family was constantly in wars over food when I was a kid, and I grew up with a very unhealthy relationship with food as a result. Fortunately, I overcame it but my brother never did. He was obese when he died, a year ago.

Have you ever make french fries at home? My parents used to, and we sure didn’t have them often. Of course, you’ve got to start with the whole potato. Frozen not allowed.

eating patterns get embedded in our neural circuitry. you make an excellent and interesting point

Because it’s just too much damned trouble to do very often. See my 33.

i think the world of Micheal. the best antidote to sugar fat and salt is real food. there may be limits to feeding the world entirely from locally grown food– but as a principle he is correct.

My grandmother lived alone for most of the last 10 years of her life and every lunch and dinner, she would set the table and eat at the table just because that was what adults were supposed to do.

And I try to follow the example as much as I can as it really does set the whole deal up.

On that topic, a trend I’ve seen lately is gourmet French fries at expensive restaurants. For example, at one place I dined on French fries flavored with rosemary and truffle oil. They were delicious but they were still fries. I want to get the most bang for my buck out of my calories. If I’m going to sin, it better be something I like more than fries (like the chocolate cake and gelato I had last night!).

It seems to me that any efforts to improve the diet of Americans is undermined on a daily basis by fast-food advertising. Is there any serious effort being made to control that?

I become hyper-aware of it when I’m trying to stick to a strict diabetic weight loss diet. The amount of fast-food, pizza, etc. advertising is unbelievable.

sorry about your brother. food is more powerful than we realize. too much or too little focus on food is equally problemmatic.

Thanks for being here Jill and Dr. K.

I just walked an hour to come to work in my weight loss regime and came in to 3 feet from my desk someone has brought in a huge bag of leftover Halloween candy. Oy vey. Which I will be coexisting next to for the next 8 hours. And trying to detach from.

HELP!

I am an emotional eater. Comfort food. Celebrate with, eat out of boredom, stress, anger, sadness.

(I come from a family of great cooks who could throw out a sit down Sunday dinner for 40 with fried chicken, whipped potatoes, gravy, country ham, creamed peas, green beans, biscuits and rolls and so on. It sounds like a massive meal but when there are forty eating it, it really wasn’t so much for the individual to eat.)

Of course, I also had to train myself to not fix those huge portions for just myself.

i agree with you 100 per cent. giving toys to kids with food only reinforces the food. it adds emotional gloss. it makes the food more reinforcing.

there are millions of poeple like you. it is not your fault. their are things you can do to protect yourself from all the food cues.

i was driving in northern virgina last week. it is restaurant after restaurant. papa johns, domino, applebee’s fridays, chilis. the food cues are not just on tv. they are everywhere

i hear that there is a little problem with the server. an people are having a hard time loading and commenting. i am sticking around. sorry for the inconvenience.
david

Having serious trouble with the computer right now on firedoglake. Wonder if it is my computer or the site?

Re food. I know I often eat when I am simply thirsty. Sometimes eat to wake myself up instead of surrendering to tiredness.

Slow, conscious eating sometimes. Other times eating for taste buds satisfaction or mechanical overeating.

I read once that our stomach is about the size of our fist. I need to think of that, I don’t NEED to chow down all that much to be satiated.

great self awareness. our bodies send off many physiolgoical signals. how we interpret them is key. does eating really wake you or only distract you momentarily from feeling tired?

NOTE: We are back – thank you for your patience.

glad we are up and running.

It is amazing, eating usually makes me even sleepier, but I still convince myself eating will perk me up. What do they say insanity … or addiction … is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I like your idea about restaurants, etc., listing calories. I live in NYC and I am stunned to see some of the high numbers and it does de-incentivize me.

learning to cook is a critical skill. fewer people know how to do it. with the result that they are eating more processed food.

I had trouble too, server errors…
Back now…

My family is originally from Spain and my husband’s is from Italy so meals are “real foods” that you need to prepare, simply or not. It makes a huge difference for me to think about how my family looked at eating growing up and how different it is from the “American” meat and potatoes diet or fast food diet.

But…my husband is a chef and has his own problem with “hypereating”. Major sweet tooth, can devour an entire cake or quart of ice cream in one sitting, usually after midnight :)

So, on pbs interview I think you once said there is some kind of brain chemical trigger for overeating manipulated by food producers. Now is that like nicotine was to tobacco in the food, or is it with packaging and presentation, too. Remember hearing how the movies used to have the fast imagery flash on the screen to get people to buy soda and popcorn.

Hello?

Is this thing on? Testing? Test test

O Sole Mio

(Sorry got carried away for a minute)

Thanks for staying around Dr Kessler

some of the typical salads have over a 1000 calories–that makes the case for menu labeling in my mind. manyh times, i don’t know what to eat

Oh, I also just started a new “gluten-free” regimen and I feel 100% better. I was having some major digestive issues following surgery which I had never had before. I tried it out on a lark really and I am shocked how much better I feel, lost 10 lbs too.

Yeah, my paternal grandparents ran a road side restaurant when my father was a kid and I learned as much or more from him than my mom but both were good cooks. The folks also bribed us by letting whomever did the cooking of dinner avoid the after dinner clean up chores but it worked.

it’s called evening hyperphagia. much of overating is done late in the day unitl bedtime. some of it is an effort to calm yourself down.

i am interested in what you have cut out.

how did it change how you look at food?
d

I want a piece of carrot cake.

I spent several days with a good friend who has a wt problem. We would eat; I would not be hungry for hours. She was almost immediately hungry. Is there evidence to the opinion that there is a gene/whatever that controls the full feeling…I observed that I thought she never felt full.

What do you think of support groups?

There is something emotional and social, too, about eating. Food = love. I know at work, when people bring in food to share, that is harder to resist. I wouldn’t buy that food and indulge that way, but somehow it is free and available and kind of socially nourishing.

it not just one stimulus. understand how cigarettes hooked poeple. sure nicotine is key. but then there are other stimuli. the smoke, the throat scratch, the color of the pack, the cellophane crinkiing of the pack, the imagery, the cowbody, the social values and norms, the sense it was cool. multisenory is key

what captures your attention when you look at the cover of the book. if you understand that you understand the neurobiology of eating.

Well, I started by cutting out all wheat, barley and rye (the last two I rarely ate anyway :)
So, no bread or pasta. Since I don’t have celiac I’m not strict if a speck of flour makes it onto my food but I could tell in 2 days that this was going to help me recover.
And as a bread lover and baker I thought it would be much harder that it has been. Feeling good is the best way to stick to the “rules” as you say.
That led me to limit or restrict non-wheat starches too, like rice and potatoes though will occasionally eat those.
I eat lots of protein and that seems to inhibit overeating for me.
Instead of wheat pasta I’ll have rice noodles, Thai-style.
I’m going to experiment with gluten free flours but I wanted to try elimination method first…
Look forward to reading your book!

Dr. Kessler – how much of an issue is ‘eating while doing something else’ – I see this as a huge problem at work — none of us get enough time to really have a decent meal.

I think I might drink too much diet soda. Thinking it is filling me up. But there is caffeine and sodium and sweetener.

support in any form is key. it reinforces behavior. it is probably oneo of the most effective methods of gaining control.

yeah, I think you called it a syndrome?

I have reduced the amount of pain I have from arthritis by avoiding wheat products -

BTW, Dr. Kessler, I saw you on book-TV. You made a lot of sense, and I was not surprised to find out that eating salt, fat, sugar changed the brain. Your book is in my pile waiting to be read.

your observations are correct. probably is learned behavior. conditioned and driven. maybe a genetic tendeny to respond to external stimuli

Interesting. I will relay that to my mom…thx

i confess it is one of the habits i wish i could kick. a diet dr pepepr is sitting in front of me now. the sweetness, carbonation, temperature, cafeine all add to its reinforcing properties.

Well, I was always a somewhat picky eater (dislike cheese, liver, and some other things). It basically told me that I did not have to rely on MacDonalds or pizza and could actually fix a complete meal for myself.

As an example, I will buy an eye of round roast, cut it up into steaks for myself and freeze them individually. I’ll take one out of the freezer into a small skillet and pan broil in butter. Nuke a small potato and a fruit cup or small bowl of fresh fruit (cantaloupe, strawberries) or small salad and I have a reasonably balanced meal that is almost healthful and doesn’t take a lot of time.

I think the bottomline for me, as I told my mother years ago, I can read so I should be able to cook (Joy of Cooking is at least one example where all the terms are spelled out understandably)

and some of us grew up when the oversweetened babyfood for the mother’s taste buds, not the kids. And Mom made kool-aid or jello with was it two cups of sugar maybe, food coloring and stir. Peal us off the ceiling after that. And all that white bread.

I once read we crave salt when we are angry and sugar when we are sad. Ever hear that?

Michael Polan sez shop the perimeter of the supermarket. (Hint: that’s where the real foods are.)

the rules have to be personal. they have to work for you. rules imposed from the outside are not going to be effective in laying down new learning.

it is what separates us from many of the europeans. i do think we can plan better. a little planning makes a whole lot of difference.

OT: I also want to thank you for your work on death and grief….assuming I am talking to the right person.

[Moderator note: While understanding the desire to check on this, please stay on topic of the book salon. Thank You]

He also says if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it don’t eat it :)

does it help control what everyone calls emotional eating?

I discovered real fruit juices are much tastier and much more satisfying. Every once in awhile I get the hots for a fizzy drink, but not very often. And foods that taste better means I eat less, because I feel full and satified.

in some stores, not sure there are many real foods

Lately my eating has been VERY ritualized. I bring tupperware containers to work (which is why the extra food people bring in frustrates me). And one night a week I will go for a goopy dessert. I think too much deprivation makes you boomerang. But I don’t always exercise enough while I am being balanced with food, or if I am exercising a lot, I am not that careful with the food. Gotta get both zones going simulataneously. But the exercise does help with endorphins and metabolism, and after doing exercise I don’t want to undo by overeating.

well, in my place, just getting people away from their desks to eat lunch would be a huge thing. If nothing else, the IT people would have fewer emergency calls between noon and 2, but I also think that eating in front of the computer is bad for stress..which makes people eat more in any case.

Just getting here. There may also be a problem with parents using food as a reward for good grades or good behavior — “What a good girl! Here’s a cookie.” That trains kids to consider food a reward. Mercifully my mother never did that.

that’s the other david kessler who worked with kubler ross. important contributions

you used the term fizzy drink. where are your from?

Yep. I’ve gone back to some of the foods my mother made as comfort foods, instead of using processed foods for comfort. For example, a cheap cut of pork, slow cooked until it falls off the bone, sauerkraut, on mashed potatoes. Has a lot of flavor and feels good going down. As an added bonus, because I’m single, if I cook it, it will provide 3 or 4 meals.

sounds like you are doing a good job of balamcing. in today’s environent we all need to protect ourselves from the constant bombardment with food cues.

I don’t know if this had any bearing on anything but as a child, I was allowed to drink coffee from a very early age. I still have a couple of mugs or more per day (though not after middle of the afternoon usually). But the coffee was always something that never seemed to bother me as much as it did other folks)

(Black with one packet of sugar for a 16oz mug)

your mom did a good job

In the poor areas of NYC there are more fast food outlets than supermarkets. There are some fabulous farmers markets in NYC, but in areas that the poor don’t frequent. So this year they started doing some in the poorer areas, and I hear they are successful. It’s the only real food they get.

I do better in that regard if I limit nightshades, like tomatoes (sniff), potatoes (meh, I grew up with rice) and eggplants (sob — I’ll eat eggplant until I burst).

For the most part. I will allow myself to eat maybe four or five Reese miniatures or a handful of mixed nuts or such but I think it also may go to the fact that we really didn’t eat dessert that often (when I was real young, a bowl of Cheerios with a banana was often the ‘dessert’ after cleaning my plate)

food is so highly processed theses days that it goes down in a “wosh” — that’s one of the reasons why you keep eating til it is all gone.

Yes. And sometimes in lieu of taking a break when you don’t have time, you give yourself a “food” lift to pacify yourself… chips or candy bar from the snack machine … cuz you are working so hard, time to bribe the “inner child”

I remember that quote from Rhoda on the Mary Tyler Moore show when she went to take a piece of candy. “I might as well apply it right to my hips.”

there is a wonderful program staring up to help people start fresh food carts. city is invovled. cathy noonas who works in the dept of health is great.

do you know there is nicotine in eggplant, not much. but the tobacco industry made the argument. pretty outragous. i like eggplant.

does the bribe work? problem is there is no lasing effect. momentary satisfaction. that is it.

Thank you…I had no idea there were 2. Sorry to the MOD

When I started to eat healthier my grocery bill went up. But I realized it was worth it.

I notice that protein satisfies my hunger best.

It is true that restaurants give such big portions and I really should have half put in a doggy bag right away, otherwise I am like the windup toy that hits the wall and keeps on moving its little arms and legs and doesn’t stop, I keep “cleaning my plate” cuz it is there.

It’s not just New York. I could tell you horror stories about Covington, KY where I lived on the main street, in the “pricey” part of town, and still had to walk 3/4 of a mile to where I could get decent meat and produce in a small local market, or 1½ miles to a chain supermarket. The only things close to the house were unspeakable places purveying unspeakable “food.” In the poorer areas of Savannah it’s not much better, but at least we do have better public transit. It’s criminal.

It is that millisecond high — and then comes the flood of self-disappointment! :(

food is so highly processed theses days that it goes down in a “wosh”

Boy, did that just make my jaw drop! You don’t really have to CHEW processed food, do you? So of course you gobble it faster, and your body doesn’t have a chance to say ENOUGH.

To help kick the diet soda, I bought a SodaStream seltzer maker for home. So far I’ve kept soda out of the house, but I still drink one a day at work.

not a disease. a constellation of symptoms. it is the result of learned and motivated behavior. invovles the learning, habit, memory and motivatinal circuits of our brains. not a disease. part of being human.

thanks. i look foward to knowing what you think after you read it.

And some restaurants have this fast music going on. Especially over the holidays. And I swear that makes you gorp your food down faster without even realizing it.

Dr. Kessler, thanks for letting me download your book to my Kindle!

Well, my position for myself is that no one ever kept their job because they worked through lunch. I try to get a walk in AND lunch just to get out.

understand the cycle of consumption — cue–activation–reward –release and that each time you respond to a cue it only stregthens the neural circuitry — and what keeps you trapped– certainly sugar fat salt is at the center

It’s in their best interest to get you in and out as fast as they can…

average bite twenty years ago about 20 -30 chews. how many chews for a potato chip?

and advertising is so adept and seductive about certain products, too. associating images with products.

look at how designer coffee infiltrated the American and global consciousness.

In NYC I am noticing designer “cupcake” shops popping up. Is that a sign of the recession? Comfort food that is pricey but cheap enough for a quick food fix? Magnolia bakery. Crumbs. Or maybe that is in the wake of the Starbucks trend. Though now people are saving those cappuccino dollars more.

making the walk a habit is terrific. making any health behvior a habit is great.

I’m not sure if there is an audiobook but I would love to request that format, I am addicted to audiobooks. Allows me to exercise while listening to books. Also, has helped my insomnia as well :)

we are living in a food carnival

All of this talk of food is making me hungry! It’s time for me to get ready to serve up the beef stew I started yesterday and which has been simmering VERY slowly all day. With some nice whole wheat bread, and a salad. We have wonderful red pears for dessert. I’ll be reading the rest of the thread later. Eat well and healthily, y’all!

A coworker and I have just started that. We walk around the block and visit for 20 minutes. It is so humanizing! I was surfing the net during my break, but this is better balance.

happy dinner.

Yum.

there is an audiobook. simon and shuster did it. they asked me to do the read. but i am not a “trained voice” it turned out well

it is a brilliant thing to do. just keep it up. every day– so it feels normal to do– and you want to do it.

excellent! i will buy it tonight!

Dr. K., you said I think you had yoyoed with your eating in the past. How do you now maintain balance with food?

Here’s a good recipe. I double the seasonings.

dr kessler,
have been reading your book–it’s very powerful. thank you for making those links which help bring about more personal awareness.
–do you keep your rules, absolutely? i can go weeks without eating white flour or sugar and feel great. then something trips me up, like ice cream. can you make any suggestions for getting back on the horse…any tricks or methods you might have to regain balance. the psychological and the physiological are related in such complex ways!
–also, i do some work with young people. i wrote a book for 9th and 10th grade Girl Scouts about healthy food, sustainability and community activism. i keep thinking that younger people need to know about your ideas and information…is there any kind of curricula or have you thought about doing that?
(and thanks jill for arranging this.)

sugar fat salt on every corner. what do you expect?

Reading through the new comments, I was struck by how this all reminded me of a phrase I came across recently, “drinking saltwater:”

Problem is, all of this becomes like chugging saltwater.

Drinking saltwater is a terrible idea. Because it makes you thirstier than you were before you started drinking it. So, you have to drink more saltwater. Then, that makes you thirstier still, so you end up drinking more saltwater. Which makes you also drink more saltwater. And so on. Until you die. Still thirsty.

Ditto empty email checking. Ditto anxiety about anxieties. Ditto every other Lizard Brain impulse to solve a perceived problem by amplifying the thing that’s actually causing the problem.

Via

The post on 43 Folders was talking about productivity, but hypereating is unproductive eating, right? Thinking of scones and cupcakes as saltwater is probably a good connection for me to be making.

That said, it is interesting how much moralizing about food is going on in this thread, even if it is self-directed.

i eat half of what i used to eat. not perfect. if i am stressed i can fall off the wagon–but that is part of being human.

there is a quote I like, “choose spiritual food for spiritual hunger.”

Also, “eat for sustenance, not oblivion.”

Portion size is a problem all over. When I went to Florence over 20 years ago, a gelato was four bites and a cone. Now it’s the size of an orange. Italians look fatter to me, too.

it is how we look at food. what is it that you want. until you chnage what you want, you will always fall back to it. for me, i can’t look at huge protions of food anymore. psychologists call it a critical perceptual shift
d

Yes. Get out of the office. I also think it is better from an oxygen standpoint – our HVAC leaves lots to be desired.

good sayings.

you are right. need to take food off the pedestal. the more focus –the more want

the Americanization of the european diet.

I very often get the child’s plate if the place allows that….plenty enough is served. I hate the huge portions…

I remember hearing Paul Newman during an interview say that was his secret. He consciously decided what was half of what he normally would eat at the beginning of cultivating the habit and he would have the waiter put the other half in the doggy bag immediately. I said that thing about one’s stomach is about the size of a fist and that is a reminder for me, that I can get along on so much less. I think people like me, emotional eaters, wait for the over-stuffed signal to stop, rather than staying conscious while eating and monitoring it. Fear of being hungry? An emotional unconscious fear?

Also, that whole thing they say about alcoholism. One drink is too many and a million is not enough. Emotional eating is like that. One bite is too many and a million not enough.

Sometimes at work if there is a treat, I tell myself I will take one one minute before leaving, so I don’t attack the bowl. It seems to help me postpone sometimes. The self-lie-promise… “just one”… rarely works. Better to leave it alone.

problem is the type of food that usually is on the kids menu.

Dr Kessler,
How does the periodic cravings for one specific food come into play with all of this? I know myself, there are times when I only want to eat say a couple of pieces of cold fried chicken or just must have bacon and eggs and will not be satisfied until I get that specific food.

Dr. Kessler, The most fascinating part of your book was where you described how chain restaurants prepare their food. What did you learn about restaurant food that was most shocking to you?

Sorry I’m late to the conversation. Two questions:

Do you consider overeating to follow the addiction model?

I’ve found in the past, with myself and others, that periods of weight loss have followed events that have changed the enviornment eg moving to a new house, getting a different job, a change in relationship. Is there some association with environment change and weight loss?

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

David, Thank you for spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book and healthy eating.

Jill, Thank you very much for Hosting this great Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought Dr. Kessler’s book yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

much truth here. fear of being hungry. sounds riducuolous but is prevelant. ever sit there looking at the last slice of pizza and wonder who is going to get it.

What a good idea! Must check. Do they offer more than chicken fingers?

nothing to do with hunger. something has “cued you” a past memory, a location — you eat to get the thought out of your head or if you get distracted you go on to other things

pizza … exactly right … now there is an emotional trigger food.

cerainly invoves the same neural circuts.

how much fat and sugar was loaded and layered into the food. sometimes even injected.

Looking forward to reading your book. Thanks Dr. K. Thanks Jill and Bev! Great salon. So glad the server came back.

thanks for having me. thanks especially to bev and jill
good night everyone
best
david

;)) Yes. And Mexican is often just smaller portions….

Toby, will think of your ritual and try to stay with my walking one. Go get some oxygan. What is “HVAC”?

Very cool. And I would have been too embarrassed but you broke through the barrier and have inspired that. I thought of that and thought the children’s menu section police would stop me, like there would be an age limit. Or they would bring me a coloring book and crayons. :)

You may have to persist, kindly….but it means alot to me….It gets easier if they think you will tip well, also. Let me know how it goes….

There was a great recent piece from the LA Times about how our brains aren’t tricked by artificial sweeteners and they might actually make us eat MORE.

Thanks to everyone for participating today.

HVAC = Heat Vacuum Air Conditioning

RevBev, you are on the vanguard and I thank you for sharing that! :) Will keep you posted.

Interesting, Jill. And diet soda has differing amounts of caffeine and sodium and calories, too. I want to opt more for water.

Will google the article. Thanks for this. It was perfect timing for me. I have just returned to the zone of discipline and good intentions. :)

Glad the server finally cooperated. I felt so sorry when we couldn’t get through for a while.

Oh…. judging from the fragile status of my plants … we have HVAC, it is indeed good to get outside of that. Thanks for coming back to explain. :)