steven's Blog

 

You know that feeling: You just finished your lunch, perhaps a sensible turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, but already, all you can think about are sweets. For me, it happens about two bites before my desk-side meal is kaput. I hear its whisper: "Peppermint Pattie." What? What's that? And then again, from the back channel coils in my brain, it hisses: "Pepper-mint Patt-ie." But I didn't grab a Peppermint Pattie when I bought my sensible lunch because, at that time, I thought I was in control of this operation. As it turns out (my body, on autopilot now, is barreling back toward the cafeteria in search of a minty sphere of delicious-ity), the food goblins in my head are in charge.

 

Turns out, I'm not the only one with a bad case of the food goblins.

 

Lauren Sambataro, the director of nutrition at New York's AKT In Motion (a private Upper East Side gym that counts Sarah Jessica Parker and Kelly Ripa among its clientele) says that our brain function—or lack thereof while eating—is complicit in weight gain. "You have to be really aware and present with your food," she tells me. "If you’re mindlessly eating, your brain is not acknowledging that there’s food coming in. If your brain is not acknowledging that, your digestion and metabolic functions won’t be working at capacity. You’re going to want more food and you’re going to start craving sweets. It’s going to be an endless cycle." And while Sambataro concedes that calories in versus calories out isn't exactly an old wives tale, she says there are ways around restrictive diets. "There’s a delicate balance of all of the functions in your body. If you have that balance, it doesn’t matter what calories are coming in or out."

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To get your body—and your body-mind—back on track for good, Sambataro has some easy fixes:

 

1.

 

Breathe: "People under stress just don’t breathe enough. Breathing brings oxygen to the body and that can actually enhance your metabolism." Sambataro recommends taking five deep breathes before beginning each meal.

 

2.

 

Cheat: Sambataro recommends a weekly splurge day to all of her clients: "You sort of have to trick your hormones into not knowing what’s coming," she says. "It’s good to have a cheat day and just binge—not on like cake and crap—but to have significantly more calories because that actually will raise your leptin levels, which is the hunger hormone. By having a cheat day, you actually sort of wake up those levels of leptin again. If you eat really consistently all the time, the leptin kind of goes to sleep."

 

3.

 

Don't food shame: Praising and celebrating your food, regardless of its caloric content (though, again, heed Sambataro, who warns: "I can’t say that if you’re happy about eating pizza every single day, you’re not going to get fat!") can aid in proper digestion. "It doesn’t matter what you’re eating, but if you feel guilty or have any remorse for what you’re eating, your brain is going to recognize that as a stressful event for the body," she says. "[Negative thoughts] can actually make cortisol go up, which is the one thing that we don’t want to do—it definitely shuts down the digestive organs, your metabolism. Nothing is really going to work correctly if the brain thinks that you’re under stress. By having guilty feelings about something you’re eating, whether healthy or not, you’re going to produce a stress response. That’s really the last thing that you want when you’re eating."

 

In an effort to give my endless overthinking a rest, I decided to employ Sambataro's strategy this weekend at an out-of-town wedding weekend I attended. I made sure to breathe before eating, order the sweet potato fries when they called my name, and praise every bite of late-night, post-party quesadilla that came my way. (I also realized that every lean person I know is the first to order the savory pasta dish at dinner, sample the homemade brownies a colleague made, or order a calorie-rich IPA. Save for a few worrisome exceptions, I do not know a single thin woman who orders the fish entrée and then spends dinner looking longingly at someone else's pappardelle the way I tend to do.)

 

So I went for it: I told the food goblins to buzz off. And I'll tell you what—it worked. By allowing myself the option of having a cookie if I wanted, I was more acutely aware of whether or not I actually wanted one. I didn't once hamburglar someone else's mashed potatoes and I actually left half of my quesadillas untouched because I was just kind of over 'em. I didn’t gain a single ounce.

 

But I did gain some perspective. A Peppermint Pattie is not going to make me fat. Especially if I don’t let it. I look forward to making your post-lunch acquaintance, you beautiful, smart, competent Peppermint Pattie, you.

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