Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Too much of a good thing?


Hannie’s done a great post on what she’s been craving lately and possibly considers to be her ‘trigger’ foods. No its not oily greasy chips and KFC, its things like – bananas, peanut butter, natural yoghurt! I think a lot of us could relate to it, with the exception of the ricecakes (bleghh!) I could have written a very similar list. Just for fun, here is mine in no particular order:

Bananas, peanut butter, natural yoghurt, dried fruit such as dates and apricots, heavy grain/seed bread, plain oats, granola, fruit scones, banana bread, cheese, sushi, dark chocolate with nuts.

We all LOVE food. We understand that there are a lot of clean foods that taste great AND make us feel good. In the right quantities, many of the above things that I crave can form part of any healthy meal plan … But that’s the issue – can you stop at ‘the right quantity’ or ‘in moderation’? It always comes back to good old portion control!

When it comes to clean foods emotional eating may not play as great a part in controlling portion sizes (unless perhaps if you’ve placed yourself on a restrictive diet). However, because most of the items are (sweet) fast acting sources of carbohydrate we also have the body’s physiological responses to contend with. We get an insulin rush then drop AND a nice release of happy chemicals from the brain and can end up overeating. Cheese is slightly different but apparently releases a similar chemical in the brain found to be released in the brains of heavy drug users… addictive much? Unfortunately it is possible to have too much a good thing.

So what is the solution for you? To eliminate these foods? Completely or just for a while?
Don’t eliminate them but keep them out of the house? Or … purposely incorporate them into your meal plan?

I’ll let you know what my current strategy is and how its going so far in part 2

xx

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Peanut butter or any kind of nut really is a trigger for me. I can't stop eating them. I don't keep PB in the house when i'm trying to lean out. I do get the 100 cal pks of almonds and i'm okay with those. Right now I have 4 jars of PB in the house YIKES! Those will last 4 days ;)


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