It’s the time of year when your clients, co-workers, friends and relatives start sending you chocolates, cookies and other tempting gift baskets for the holidays. For those of you who’ve already received such a gift, you know how troublesome it can be!  Just this week, two of my clients shared their holiday gift stories with me and asked my advice on how to handle them.  

Problem #1: From a city girl:  She had just received a jumbo sized box of delicious truffles from her boss.
My Proposed Solutions:
1. Hmmm .. guess you could open the box at work and “spread the wealth” (or fat) with your co-workers. Muffin tops for all! But it is likely your boss gave your co-workers chocolates as well - so that idea may not work too well. (pic is of muffin top)
2. You could “re-gift” it. A handy gift for your manicurist or mailman… and you save some money. A win win solution. I like this solution the best!
3. You could give it to your boyfriend or husband to take to their office.
4. Or if you have extreme discipline, you could take the box home and eat one a day. FYI - one Lindt truffle has 70 calories and 6 gm fat.  So the average person (me!) might eat 5 of them before stopping. This is 350 calories and 30 grams of fat. A city girl would need to run for about 35 - 40 minutes to burn this off.
5. You could give it to a homeless person in the street. You’d make his/her night!  

Problem #2: From a city guy: His mother-in-law keeps sending over new batches of homemade cookies. He could can see his belly growing by the minute …
My Proposed Solutions:
1. This is a tough one as you do NOT want to insult your mother-in-law by refusing homemade food. 
2. Chances are that your spouse is also trying to watch her weight. Therefore you could suggest that SHE (not you) talk to her mother about cutting back on the baking.
3. It sometimes helps to bring health into the picture. Perhaps your cholesterol, blood pressure or blood sugar is slightly elevated. I would bet the mother-in-law would take the request to cut back on baking more seriously if she knew her son-in-law’s health was at stake.
3. If the mother-in-law insists on continuing to deliver the cookies, you could re-gift as I mentioned above. Or take a big tin of them to your office.
4. Freeze some of them and eat one a day
5. Same suggestion as above - give them to your doorman   

 Tips to Handle Tempting Goodies or Gifts of Food:
1. In your office, keep them in another room out of your sight. Try to avoid the room where they are kept as much as possible. The more you see them, the more you will want to eat them!  Check out my previous post on my encounter with chocolates in the office. I actually had to leave the room as I was losing control.

2. At home, keep them in a container (not a see through one) and put them out of sight. Studies have shown that we eat significantly more candy/sweets if they are placed in a clear container versus an opaque container.

3. Allow yourself 1-2 of your favorite holiday goodies a day (maybe 150 calories). Choose what you really want, eat it slow and enjoy it. Then stop!

4. If eating these goodies opens the floodgates and leads to uncontrolled eating, then you will really need to avoid them. Check out my interview with Christy the Sugar Addict. Or my previous post describing my own  “chocoholism”. Don’t even start with foods that get you going. Bring in healthy snacks from home to have when everyone else is munching on fattening cookies.

5.  As you are avoiding (or limiting) the tempting goodies, think about all the calories your co-workers will be consuming!

6. If you do overindulge, get back on track at the next meal or next day. Don’t beat yourself up or let the overindulgence fuel thoughts of “Well, I blew it, so I might as well keep on eating”.

7. As per my proposed solutions above, if you get a gift tempting gift of food , consider giving it away. Better to have the calories on someone else’s hips!  I’ve been given holiday gifts of cookies and chocolate and have learned the hard way that I’m not very good at controlling my intake of these foods, so I now know to give them away before I even open the package.  Check out my previous post called “Can Nutritionists Control Their Intake of Sweets?” to get ideas of how other nutritionists deal with problem foods.

So the next time your mother-in-law shows up at your apartment with a fresh baked batch of cookies or another food basket arrives in your office, plan ahead as to how you will handle it.

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What is the best gift you could give or receive this holiday season? A beautiful necklace, a pair of Prada boots, a new iphone?  No, the best gift is the gift of health. Why not purchase a gift certificate for a nutrition counseling session with me?

This is the ideal gift for:
1. A parent (who already has everything)
2. Your boss (my sessions can help even out blood sugar which can improve moods!)
3. A loved one who has gained a few pounds
4. Your brother who will be competing in his first triathalon this spring
5. Yourself (start off the New Year right!)
6. Your spouse who could use some improvements in their eating habits (see pic)

All my eating plans are tailored to the individual. I will take into acount the your work schedule, eating and exercise habits, food likes and dislikes, etc. No “cookie cutter” diets! The first session is an hour and follow up sessions are half an hour. You will receive your individually tailored meal plan on the first session.

I specialize in:
1. Overall healthy eating for the busy person
2. Medical conditions such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, PCOS, irritable bowel
3. Sports nutrition
4. Increasing energy levels
5. Taming carbohyrate cravings

Check out my website for more info. Call or email me for pricing or to book an appointment. My office is located in convenient midtown Manhattan. I am also available for email / phone sessions.

Happy Holidays!

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Do you exercise on a regular basis and have strong cravings for sugar? If so, you may be able to relate to the story of one of my clients, Jenny. (Of course, her name and minor details of her story has been changed). Here is the story of Jenny and my recommendations as how to help her decrease her sugar cravings…

Jenny is a 27 year old female who came to my office seeking guidance on how to deal with her sugar cravings. These cravings were at their worst late in the evening and she would often end up eating jumbo muffins, cookies by the handful or large amouts of candy. She was very upset regarding her “lack of control” with these sweets. Jenny was a very active women; she usually ran 5-7 miles a day 6 days a week. I obtained her diet history which reveal the following:

Jenny’s diet / exercise history
Exercise   7 am: ran 5-8 miles
Breakfast   9:30 am: egg white omelet with vegetables
Snack:  11 am: midmorning: nonfat yogurt
Lunch:  1 pm:  big salad with grilled chicken, fat free dressing
Snack:   4 pm:  100 calorie pack of cookies
Dinner:  7-8 pm: piece of  grilled chicken or fish, vegetables, sometimes (but usually not) a moderate portion of rice or sweet potato
Snacking   8 pm onward: at least 600 calories of sweets (jumbo muffin, black and white cookie, sugar free gummy bears, etc. )

My assessment of Jenny’s situation: I was not suprised at all by the fact that she had uncontrollable sugar cravings at night. Jenny was a very active woman (maybe a little too active!) and therefore had fairly high caloric and carb needs. Carbs are the preferred fuel during exercise and Jenny was not giving her body adequate carbs during the day. This led to strong sugar cravings at night - her body was trying to play catch up. As I noted in my previous post on causes of sugar cravings, taking your caloric or carb intake too low will cause your body to secrete neurotransmitters that can increase your desire for carbs. In addition, eating too few carbs will cause your energy levels to plummet for your workouts.

Here were the problem areas in Jenny’s diet and the solutions I came up with:

1. Problem: Not eating prior to exercise.  Jenny started off her day with a run at 7 am without fueling up beforehand. Her body was already in a fasted state since the night before.  Studies have shown that eating a light carb snack prior to cardio exercise can improve performance.  
 Solution: I often recommend eating a small carb snack(~ 80 - 100 calories)  prior to exercise. Examples: fruit, nonfat yogurt, handful of cereal, small energy bar, piece of toast. However, that being said, some people can’t tolerate eating really early in the morning prior to exercise. Jenny chose not to eat a pre-exercise snack as she felt it was too early to eat.

2. Problem: Inadequate carb intake after cardio exericse. After a cardio workout (especially a fairly long one like a 7 mile run), you have a 20-30 minute “window” to best replete your energy stores in your liver and muscles (called glycogen). Repleting these stores will help to energize you for the rest of the day, as well as keep you energized for your workouts the following days. I also felt that adding carbs to breakfast might help decrease Jenny’s carb cravings later in the day. Jenny was totally missing her window of opportunity to replete her glycogen stores.
Solution: Add 2 slices of whole wheat toast or a cup of cooked oatmeal to her egg white omelet at breakfast.

3. Problem: Fat intake is too low. Fat helps to keep you satiated and can help ward off carb cravings. Jenny’s diet was too low in fat. It is very typical to see women who are concerned with their weight be fat phobic!
Solution: Add some fat spread to toast in the morning, a little olive oil to her salad at lunch and a tablespoon of peanut butter on apple for an afternoon snack instead of the 100 calorie pack of cookies.

4. Problem: Not eating enough carbs during her lunch and dinner.
Solution: Add a whole grain roll to lunch and a cup of brown rice or small sweet potato to dinner

5. Problem: Unbalanced exercise program. Jenny was already very lean and didn’t need to run 6 days a week for over an hour to control her weight.
Solution: I recommended that she add in 2 days of weight training and cut the running down to 5 days a week (4 if possible!). I also suggested she experiment with cross training with the cardio (cycling, elipitical machine, spinning classes, etc.) to help reduce risk of injury.

6. Problem: Excessive amounts of sweets late a night
Solution: Hopefully eating more healthy high fiber carbs during the day and at dinner would help to diminish her cravings. I told Jenny to avoid keeping any sugary tempting foods in the house and stock up on fruit, yogurt and individually wrapped treats like Skinny Cow bars.

Additional recommendation: add a general multivitamin with minerals as well as a calcium with Vit D supplement daily.

The results: I met with Jenny after 3 weeks of trying my suggestions. She was amazed at how much better she felt during the day, and most importantly, how her carb cravings had significantly decreased in the evening. She was able to satisfy her sweet tooth with a piece of fruit or a nonfat Skinny Cow Bar. Jenny’s weight had not changed despite adding in more carbs and fat during the day and decreasing her cardio to 5 times a week. She also tried my suggestion of running only 4 days a week and taking a spinning class or using the eliptical machine the other day. She was still working on adding in the weight training.

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