You need to learn to listen to your body, which has a portion control feature already built in. They’re called hunger hormones, and they’re truly amazing. When your body needs fuel, a hormone called ghrelin will alert you: time to eat! So you eat. Then, a second hormone called leptin will inform you when you…
Category: how to stop binge eating
Just a friendly reminder that bathroom scales have nothing to do with health
And everything to do with marketing. I’ve rounded up a few old ads for bathroom scales, and they are doozies. From the late 19th century and into the Depression era, scale manufacturers successfully parlayed their machinery into a smaller moneymaker for humans: a novelty item where people could pay a penny to find out their weight at department…
Just because it doesn’t happen to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen
Months ago, when the New York Times published a piece about the former Biggest Loser contestants, I noticed a reader comment that has stuck with me ever since. As a rule, I aggressively avoid comment sections of…pretty much anything. But there it was, highlighted in the sidebar, in all its judge-y, preach-y glory: “Sorry. But cravings are…
Flexible dieting is dieting
I see athletes and bodybuilders and impossibly fit-looking people on the interwebs extolling the virtues of macros, and it alllllmost sounds kind of science-y, so I just want to put this out there: if you are counting macros, you are on a diet. It’s right there in the name. Macronutrients are the hallmark of an…
Enough with the cheat days
Cheating on…what exactly? Cheat days seem to imply that food is a game, or a test, or a relationship. It is none of those things. Food is just food. Just an inanimate object, chillin’ on a plate. It doesn’t have moral goodness or badness. It doesn’t make rules, or punish you for breaking them. It is…
If I hear the word skinny one more time, I will hurl myself out this window
As a descriptor for food, it’s meaningless and manipulative. As a diet goal, it’s straight-up dangerous. The first time I remember encountering a food product called “skinny” was at Starbucks, probably a decade ago (yikes). I found out that you could order any drink “skinny” and you’d get fat-free milk, sugar-free syrup, the whole nine yards. I…
six months to sanity 