Bingeing
March 12th, 2008The second classic dieting pitfall is the binge. When a diet sends your body into survival mode, it tries desperately to hang on to the fat you have and, naturally, will try to devour every morsel of food that you lay your eyes upon. When your distant ancestors came upon a bounty of food there was no guarantee when the next would arrive, so they took advantage of the opportunity to stock up on calories. Flash forward to today. Although you may have deprived your body of calories for only days or weeks, it will tend to binge when you come upon edible gold mines. When presented with a fat- and calorie-dense plate of cookies, you are virtually powerless to stop with one. This is known as “restrained-eater phenomenon.” The easiest way to avoid this automatic binge mechanism is not to restrain yourself in the first place.
Here is how to turn the tables. First, avoid turning on your body’s antistarvation devices by eating enough food throughout the day. Make sure that your diet contains at least 10 calories per pound of your ideal body weight. For example, if your goal weight is 125 pounds, your daily menu should contain, at a bare minimum, 1,250 calories. You’ll almost certainly need more calories to fuel your day-to-day activities, but if you have fewer calories than this, your metabolism is bound to fall, and you’ll be likely to binge. Second, make sure that those calories come from sources that leave you feeling satisfied and provide plenty of vitamins and fiber. Foods that are rich in complex carbohydrates (and naturally low in fat) do just that.
Try oatmeal with fruit for breakfast. Eat as many vegetables as you like—carrots, sweet potatoes, spinach, broccoli—prepared without fatty oils or butter, as you will learn to do with recipes included in this book. Treat yourself to new international restaurants where you can try different varieties of pasta, rice, and bean dishes flavored with delicious spices rather than animal fats (one of Western civilization’s biggest culinary downfalls). They are all right when you know exactly what you are looking for. For a change of pace, get to know your local Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, or Mediterranean eateries. Restaurants that stick to traditional recipes often have more vegetarian selections, or will gladly substitute tofu or other nonanimal products for meat.
Think of it this way: You will end up eating eventually. Your body will make sure of that. And, in today’s society you can’t escape coming into contact with giant bags of doughnuts, buckets of chicken wings, and colossal chocolate muffins. How you are feeling when it happens makes all the difference. If you just treated yourself to some vegetable lasagna, hearty pasta salad, or lentil soup, you will be able to see these other foods for what they are: a greasy load of fat or sugar (sometimes both). You’ll be better able to keep them at arm’s length, because you are well nourished.