Tag Archives: overeating

Most Americans Clean Their Plates. Most Americans are Obese. There is a Connection.

The encouragement to eat everything on your dinner (or breakfast or lunch) plate comes in many forms. “Don’t be wasteful.” “Make a happy plate!” “Finish your food or you’ll get no dessert.” Or, my personal least favorite, “There’s starving children in _____ that would love to have that food.”

No matter how you phrase it, most of us are taught from a young age to eat everything that is placed before us.

eating from plate

While wasting food is never a good idea, there are plenty of ways to prevent waste that don’t include stuffing ourselves with every last morsel of food.

However, if you’re part of the clean-your-plate crew, you’re not alone. The average adult eats 92 percent of the food on their plate, Shape Magazine reports, no matter what that food may be.

Eating everything on your plate, healthy or no, could be causing you to overeat without you noticing. In turn, that could cause unwanted weight gain.

The Morning-After Pill for Your Food Baby is Available OTC

Happily, there are some simple steps you can take to “reprogram” yourself out of the need to eat everything placed in front of you. (more…)

The Morning-After Pill for Your Food Baby is Available OTC

Food baby is the cutesy term for your feeling and appearance after overeating. Whether your baby was conceived due to gas or while binging at the buffet, the result is the same: a bloated stomach that makes you appear pregnant.

pain from bloating

As most of us can attest, this bloating experience is uncomfortable and can last for quite a while. If you’re facing this phenomenon, the best thing you can do is treat it as soon as possible. And know that relief comes sooner than nine months!

Shape Magazine reports today a few things we didn’t know about our bundles of food baby joy. For one, there’s a morning-after pill of sorts for your food baby, although they recommend not waiting that long. Using an over-the-counter antacid may help relieve your food baby symptoms almost immediately. Acid reflux is one of the main side effects from overeating, and popping a Mylanta or Zantac will help neutralize any extra acid your body is producing.

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The 11 Most Criminal Examples of Food Gone Too Far

Have you ever seen a picture or video of food that made you sick just from looking at it? That’s what happened when we saw a video from the Travel Channel’s popular show Man v. Food. The dish was so piled with meats, cheeses, sauces, and who knows what else, it could no longer be identified as food.

We know that food challenges aren’t the only culprit when it comes to shameful servings, so we decided to come up with a rap sheet for the worst food felons. Here’s our Most Wanted list of top culinary criminals starting with the simply overindulgent and ending with the disgustingly gluttonous.

green tea latte

Wanted for: Imitating a Healthy Beverage – Green Tea Latte
Starting off our list is the deceptive Green Tea Latte from Starbucks. Getting a venti (20 oz.) of this beverage with whole milk will cost you 500 calories and 71 grams of sugar. So much for the idea of green tea always being a healthy choice.

disney ice cream sandwiches

Wanted for: Ridiculous Use of Sugar – Ice Cream Sandwiches
Disney, it’s a happy, magical place. It’s also a place where you can get ice cream sandwiches as big as your face. The two homemade chocolate chip cookies and three heaping scoops of ice cream are delicious, but I speak from experience when I say you’ll have sugar shakes and nausea for hours after eating.

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Worst Burger of the Year: 3,000 Calorie “The Beast” in Kansas

If you’ve got $20+ to blow, and happen to be in Kansas, fast-food restaurant Spangles has a challenge for you.

Launched on Christmas Eve, the Beast is a limited-time offering by Spangles, though will continue to be sold while customer demand for it exists. The burger itself features six 1/3-pound steak burger patties, 12 slices of American cheese, mustard, ketchup, onion, and pickle.

We asked Mary Hartley, R.D., to break down the Beast nutritionally. While Spangles says the burger has 3,000 calories, she estimates that the number is closer to 3,570. “To put it in perspective, one burger provides almost two days worth of calories, sodium, and calcium; 3.5 days worth of fat, cholesterol and iron; 6 days worth of protein; and 16.5 days worth of saturated fat; but (oops!) no fiber.”

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Overindulge Over the Holiday? Exercise Every Day to Counteract the Effects

If you’re clothes are feeling a little tighter today, you are certainly not alone. Christmas is a time for family and feasting, and we understand if you subjected yourself to some holiday binging. However, the overeating you did yesterday doesn’t have to completely derail your health. In fact, according to a new study published in The Journal of Physiology, the adverse effects of binge eating can be solved by continuing to exercise.

holiday exercise

Studies taking place before this one showed that even just a couple of days of consuming more calories than you burn negatively impacts health. The energy imbalance this creates can have a major impact.

The new study shows that daily exercise, even if it’s for a short amount of time, can greatly improve your health even if you ate thousands more calories than you burn.

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Happy Holidays! By the Way, You Might Explode

“I ate so much I’m going to explode” is a popular phrase around the Thanksgiving table. If your family is like mine, you’ve had a least two giant feasts over the holiday weekend and feel near to bursting. Not that you are going to burst, because that can’t really happen.

holiday meal

Actually it can. The first recorded case of someone eating until they exploded comes from Stockholm in 1891. In that case, the individual’s ability to empty his stomach had been impaired by the massive amount of opium he had ingested. When doctors went to pump his stomach, it overfilled and ruptured.

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The Color of Cutlery and How it Affects What We Eat

A team of white coats from Oxford University have published findings that will no doubt complicate your already muddled understanding of dieting. In Flavour Journal, the Brits reveal that taste, craving, and satisfaction of certain foods are determined by the manner in which they are served. Hors d’oeuvres are consumed more quickly when served on red plates, yogurt tastes better on a white spoon, and cheese tastes saltier when eaten off a knife. These findings, while great cocktail party fodder, could have a profound affect on your personal diet.

Cultery

Researchers Vanessa Harrar and Charles Spence lead the study and used variables like weight, size, color, and shape of cutlery to determine whether or not sensory cues from earthenware influenced eating. “The results revealed that yogurt was perceived as denser and more expensive when tasted from a lighter plastic spoon,” they said. “Food was rated as being saltiest when sampled from a knife rather than from a spoon, fork, or toothpick.” These seemingly trivial findings show that how we eat could be just as important as what we eat. (more…)

Find the Right Diet for Your Personality in “Who Are You Meant To Be”

Every year, more new diets pop up claiming to be revolutionary and suitable for everyone. And every year, millions try them out, hoping that they’ll finally find the solution to losing weight.

Dr. Anne Dranitsaris, PhD and Heather Dranitsaris-Hilliard believe that this model is not how weight loss should be approached. In their new book, Who Are You Meant to Be?, released January 1, 2024, they outline how an individual’s personality affects their behavior and, in turn, their dieting styles.

“We’re looking at [dieting] through a different lens than most. What is it that’s driving our behaviors? Why do we people behave like we do around food?” said Dranitsaris-Hilliard.

The mother-and-daughter team’s book is not a diet guide, but it may be applied toward eating styles as part of an integrated look at human behavior. Through their research, they have identified eight different “striving styles” and find most individuals fall under one of these. (more…)

Dr. Oz Promotes ‘Fat-urday’ Cheat Day for Weight Loss

Does the thought of cheating on your diet get you excited? It does me. I eat clean Monday through Friday and once the weekend rolls around, visions of hamburgers and chocolate bars start swirling my mind. And because I believe in balance I don’t consider indulging ‘cheating,’ but rather allowing myself an occasional treat as a ‘reward’ in a sense. In fact, I eat ice cream and pizza just about every Sunday and I don’t feel bad about it since it’s a rare occurrence.

Apparently, having a ‘cheat day’ is quite a popular topic as Dr. Oz is dedicating an entire show to the idea. He’s calling it ‘Fat-urday,’ saying we should eat whatever we want one day of the week because it will lead to more weight loss.

This means if you eat healthy the six days of the week, Dr. Oz is giving you a license to eat whatever you want on Saturday be it donuts, milkshakes or an entire plate of french fries. Or all three! (more…)

New Study Shows People-Pleasers Eat More at Social Gatherings

Finally, an explanation as to why so many people tend to eat more food at social gatherings than in any other situation.

A new study shows that individuals who tend to be people-pleasers were found more likely to eat equal amounts of food as their peers, or more in order to make others feel comfortable, as compared to those who care less about making others happy.

The study examined 100 college students who were required to take a questionnaire to assess their sociotropy, a personality trait associated with people-pleasing. The students who scored high in people-pleasing categories were those who said they ‘tended to put others’ needs before their own, worried about hurting others, and were sensitive to criticism, among other behaviors.’ (more…)

How To Prevent and Stop a Binge This Holiday Season

It’s so easy to overdo it during holiday events. Family gatherings often include obscene amounts of food in all their richest forms. It may be that you simply want to sample all the special dishes that you have not had since last year. It may be that it just doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving without the green bean casserole or it doesn’t feel like Christmas without the eggnog. It may be that you have eaten too many sweets and feel like something salty will help you feel better, or you catch yourself alternating between salty and sweet. It may be that you are mindlessly grazing on all the finger foods while catching up with family members. You may even be getting encouragement to eat more from well meaning family members. Any of those things and more can encourage you to eat too much.

For some the danger is simply eating more than intended or indulging in a food item that you have removed from your diet. When you are trying to lose weight, counting calories often becomes extremely important. When you are trying to get healthier, there are often certain foods that are best to avoid. Overindulging during the holidays can delay reaching our goals. For others the danger goes beyond simply over eating and could be considered a binge. While special foods are often part of the enjoyment of the holiday season, feeling uncomfortable from eating to much is never enjoyable.

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