by Peter J. Nebergall, Ph.D.
Includes photo of Peter Nebergall with cat.
What is the role of food in your life? For most of us, food is far more than sustenance. Mealtime is far more than "filling up at the pump;" it is a time of "communion," between family members, friends, and comrades. For so many of us, eating is indeed "ritual behavior." Social and cultural "rules," rather than "need," dictate what you eat, and how much of it.
But what about when you have diabetes, or Impaired Glucose Tolerance (IGT), or are merely overweight, and wish to do something about it? Those "rules" can and often do get in the way of good self-management.
Many restaurants offer "traditional farmer's breakfasts" (eggs, sausage, pancakes, perhaps biscuits and gravy), and many people eat the same at home. We are re-affirming our "traditional-ness," our connection with our ancestors, with these foods ... Right? But these breakfasts are huge, monstrous blasts of carbohydrate meant to sustain ten or more hours of hard physical labor behind the plow.
We eat like our great-grandparents, but we don't work like them--and we have the nerve to wonder why we're getting bigger? There are plenty more foods, of all types, ready and willing to put weight on our middles.
America is a land of plenty. "People want to move to a country where the poor are fat," says immigrant writer Dinesh D'Souza, but he's talking about famine, not type 2 diabetes. There is more food to go around, here, than anywhere else, and for most of us, more food than we know what to do with. And we overeat.
I submit it is not simple ignorance, nor greed, that causes so many of us to routinely overeat. Rather, it is that we are following the rules our parents and fellows taught us--rules for which the annual Thanksgiving and Christmas food binges are merely extremes. "Are you full yet?"
We need to question those rules. Is it possible to have a "celebration" without eating to bursting? Can one eat less without feeling "deprived?"
Here are a few hints:
1. Fresh foods taste better than "junk" or "convenience" foods, and organic foods taste better than "factory." Last Thanksgiving, we had an organic chicken instead of too much turkey. We ate less.
2. Fast foods (better termed "junk food," because that's what they are--JUNK) are so carb-loaded and high-calorie as to destroy any chance of good self-management. To eat such--is to overeat. Best you don't go there.
3. Count your calories. Counting carbohydrates is necessary for good tight diabetes management, but before you get there, you need to get your total diet under control, and most of us eat far more than we can burn off. Remember, a sedentary adult male needs only 1800 calories a day--and more than that will show up on your scale, your waistline, and your meter's screen. If you count calories (like they do in Weight Watchers), you'll learn portion control, and you'll learn to eat smaller portions.
4. Consider taking up new group activities that do not directly involve eating, and thus a new set of "rituals." Watching football at the "sports bar"--is about eating. Coaching your boy and his friends--is about doing. "Hanging out at the pizza parlor" is about eating. "Going dancing" is about doing. If you are trying to lose weight, doing something is vastly better for you than watching something--and you know, you might lose a few pounds from the doing.