Free Food Cures by Carol Svec

whenever she prepared meals so she couldn’t mindlessly enjoy these tasting portions before dinner. The lesson: “Tasting” is eating. If you nosh your way through food preparations, keep your mouth otherwise occupied by chewing sugarless gum, sipping on hot tea, or singing along with your favorite CD .
    Beware of mindless eating—part two. Kimberly didn’t overeat…she just picked off other people’s plates. Because it was only a couple French fries from her son’s portion or a cookie from her daughter’s snack pack, Sarah didn’t think those nibbles could account for the trouble she was having losing those few extra pounds. As an experiment, I asked her to carry a bunch of plastic zippered sandwich bags with her for a day. Every time she picked someone’s food, she was to place it in a bag instead of eating it. Then, she brought that one day’s worth of pickings to me. We were both surprised to discover that she was grazing through about 1,000 extra calories per day of other people’s food! That’s a full breakfast and dinner. The lesson: Be picky about your pickings! If you plan for calories, you can enjoy them more. Be mindful .
    Choose your sweets for their staying power. Brenda is a writer who spends most of her days sitting in front of a computer. She kept a jar of hard candies on hand for whenever she got the urge for something sweet. Brenda inevitably crunched the candy instead of sucking it and ate one after the other, racking up calorie upon calorie. Each piece has less than 25 calories, but Brenda could easily eat six (about 140 calories) in just a few minutes. I had her swap her hard candy for Atomic FireBalls, which are very hot candies. They are hard as rocks, so Brenda couldn’t just crunch them away. They give off two waves of “atomic” heat, so she never forgot that she had a candy in her mouth. After just one, Brenda was satisfied and didn’t need any more “sweet” for the afternoon. Although each Atomic FireBall has only 40 calories—more than a small sucking candy—Brenda still saved herself about 100 calories per day…and up to 10 pounds in a year! The lesson: If you have a sweets habit that you can’t break, look for a way around it by substituting similar treats that might last longer or give you fewer overall calories .
    Avoid the snack traps. Kevin, a television actor, had done a good job dropping most of the weight he had put on between seasons, but he had a snack habit that kept him from his weight-loss goal. His determination fell apart when faced with “snacky” foods—especially late in the afternoon. One serving would turn into two, which could turn into three or four before he would finally stop eating. For three weeks in a row, he vowed to me (and to himself) that he would stop after eating just one serving of pretzels, or one small bag of baked chips, or one granola bar. But vow or no vow, he ate two to three times more than he was allotted. They say that the camera adds 10 pounds, so he was justifiably worried that his extra weight would be magnified on the screen. I suggested that he switch from “snacky” foods to “real-food” snacks—calorie-controlled portions of foods that we typically eat at meals. For example, he now snacks on a two-serving container of fat-free cottage cheese, or 2 cups of hearty vegetable soup, or half a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with lettuce, tomato, and mustard. It worked like a charm! The key for Kevin was that the snacky nature of snack foods made him want to continue eating, while the food-like nature of my substitutes allowed him to feel satisfied sooner. Everyone has certain foods that are, well, let’s say problematic . Foods that, once you start eating, trigger a need to keep eating. For Kevin, it was snacks. For other people, it is ice cream, or peanut butter, or even dry breakfast cereal. The lesson: It is possible to break away from the never-ending snack, without going hungry. If you have a problem