Why do “bad” foods taste so good?  It’s because they’re designed that way. Manufacturers of ultra-processed foods heavily invest in achieving what they call the “bliss point” of sugar, salt and fat to optimize taste. This requires a long list of additives, synthetic fats and flavourings – plus lots of preservatives to maximize shelf life and profitability. Creating cheap, more-ish foods that don’t perish is big business. Tasty treats are good for the soul but there are five important reasons to keep your indulgence under control.
 
Firstly, ultra-processed foods are high in empty calories. Everyone has an ideal number of calories and profile of ideal macronutrients and micronutrients to hit each day. Ultra-processed foods shoot up  total calories via sugar, fat and salt without adding any nutrients. It’s simple math that the more low quality calories you eat the more body fat you will carry.   
 
Unfortunately the damage doesn’t end with a simple “calories-in/calories-out” equation.  Ultra-processed foods play havoc with blood sugar which can slow metabolic rate and mean that the calories consumed are more likely to be stored as fat.
 
Thirdly, ultra-processed foods are highly addictive. Emotional eating is a common pattern where we’re drawn to sugary, fatty or salty foods in response to negative feelings.  Comfort foods stimulate our happy hormone which reinforces the pattern.  Over time the cravings can feel less like an inclination and more like a compulsion. Just like a drug or alcohol addiction, over time larger amounts of food are needed to achieve the same result.
 
Fourthly, ultra-processed foods are low in water, vitamins and fibre. This means they do little to curb appetite. It also means they increase the risk of digestive difficulty, heart disease, cancer and type 2 diabetes.
 
Finally, too many ultra-processed foods are bad for mental health. There is a well documented mood/food link – good gut health and good mental health go hand in hand. Additives and preservatives compromise the delicate balance of microorganisms in your intestines. This can interfere with the production of serotonin (happy hormone) and melatonin (sleep hormone). Low mood and unsettled sleep are often enough to send a person back to the source for another hit, continuing a downward spiral.
 
Everyone needs to strike their own balance between food for fuel and food for fun. If you want to experience consistent health and energy levels it’s important to base your daily diet around fresh, unprocessed, nutrient-rich choices.

​​In my last post I focused on the importance of getting “five plus” vegetables and fruit per day.  It’s ideal to eat two fruit and three plus vegetables, and to have a variety across the week beyond the five. A variety of colours gives you a mix of nutrients.  But even if you’re eating the same five basics every day it’s a lot better than having a muffin!  
 
Make a shopping list of the vegetables and fruit you enjoy, dividing them into quick-perishing and slow-perishing.  Stock up on slow-perishing and rotate the quick-perishing. For super-slow perishing convenience stock up on frozen and canned goods, but check the sugar content.  Go cautiously with dried fruit which can be very high in sugar.  
 
When shopping for vegetables and fruits shop for convenience – cherry tomatoes, bagged baby carrots, chopped celery, apple slices and salads.  The expense is offset by the fact that you probably won’t buy all in every shop as these tend to be fast-perishing. 
Plan ahead for meals and snacks particularly work lunches. Try cooking extra vegetables with evening meals and use them as a basis for upcoming lunches, meals and snacks. Choose vegetables and fruit from all colours of the rainbow as each color provides a different range of nutrients.  Fritters, curries, stirfrys, mince, pasta sauces, lasagna, moussakas and wraps all provide great options for upping the vegetable intake.  The National Heart Foundation provides a variety of produce-packed recipes. If you’re watching your weight it’s ideal to have your fruit and starchy vegetables prior to 4pm. www.heartfoundation.org.nz/wellbeing/healthy-recipes
 
Many people choose to buy organic vegetables and fruit to optimize their nutrients and minimize their exposure to pesticides. Some types of produce, known as the “Dirty Dozen” are ideally bought organic due to their higher risk of contamination (celery, capsicum, spinach, lettuce, cucumber, potatoes, apples, peaches, strawberries, nectarines, grapes, blueberries).  Others tend to have less pesticide residue on them (the “Clean Fifteen”) and are safer to buy conventionally (onions, sweetcorn, avocado, cabbage, peas, asparagus, eggplant, kumara, mushrooms, pineapple, mangoes, kiwifruit, melon, grapefruit, watermelon).

Ultimately, all fresh produce provides a variety of health benefits regardless of sugar/ starch content and organic or non-organic status.  
Any improvement you’re able to make in the quantity, quality and variety of vegetables and fruit you eat will greatly benefit your health and vitality. 

“Five plus per day” now seems like quite old-fashioned advice but it’s still one of my cornerstone recommendations for good health. If you believe everything you read then eating fresh produce is no longer good enough. You need special blenders or juicers, the latest “it” green food and if it’s not organic it’s not worth it. Fructose is the devil and probably the thing standing between you and your weight loss.  Ignore the hype and focus on the fresh stuff. There are five ways that vegetables and fruit can help your health. 

Firstly, vegetables are a great source of hydration and vitamins, enabling the body and mind to perform at optimal levels. 

Secondly, vegetables and fruit provide fibre which improves digestive health and helps prevent against bowel cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.  Also, fibre helps regulate your appetite and blood sugar levels, minimizing cravings for treat foods. 

Thirdly, vegetables and fruit enhance your gut health which improves mood, sleep, nutrient absorption and immunity. 

Fourthly, vegetables and fruit reduce your intake of treat foods by crowding out ultra-processed options from your diet. Ultra-processed foods are low in nutrients, high in empty calories and highly addictive.   
Finally, eating vegetables and fruit helps you lose weight. The combination of hydration, digestion, blood sugar control and appetite management all contributes to reduced body fat.  

The Ministry of Health chose “Five plus” (two fruit, three vegetables) as a target because it was judged to be a compromise between what is optimal and what is manageable for the average person.  Currently only 62% of New Zealand adults eat the recommended serving of vegetables and 55% eat the recommended serving of fruit.  When the two recommendations are put together, only 40% of New Zealand adults eat the recommended “five plus” a day.  The National Heart Foundation recommends “ten plus” servings of vegetables and fruit per day (approx. 80 grams per serve) to provide maximum protection from heart disease and cancer.  This quantity is estimated to result in a 31% reduction in likelihood of premature death. 
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“Ten plus” is a lot to consider, but wherever you are now is the starting point for improvement.  Click here for some ideas on how to get more vegetables and fruit into your day … 

​You wouldn’t eat two dinners, right? Except on those days when you kind of do. Uncontrolled night snacking can easily equal the calories of your dinner and undermine a whole day of discipline. There are many hormones and habits that drive us to eat past the point of physical hunger at night.     

Reason one is the melatonin/serotonin seasaw. Melatonin, the sleep hormone, has an inverse relationship with serotonin, the happy hormone. Your circadian rhythm is designed to keep serotonin high during the day and melatonin high at night.  As serotonin dips in the evening your sense of satisfaction can dip too, often leading to emotional eating to escape feelings of stress, boredom or loneliness.

Reason two is a lack of control over appetite. Once you start eating it can be hard to stop. The appetite hormones telling you when to begin eating and when to finish eating are much better regulated during the day. The later it gets the harder it becomes to make good food choices.   

Reason three is tiredness. Snacking can give you the lift you need to stay awake but it can also be used to procrastinate on going to bed. The irony is that the more time you are awake snacking the less time you are asleep, and the less sleep you get the more likely you’ll be up late snacking tomorrow. A longer day means more opportunities to eat, and the extra calories can easily snowball, not just over the course of the day but over the course of the year.   

Reason four is lack of structure in the evenings. It’s a time to let it all hang out, quite literally. Night snacking can be associated with unwinding from a stressful day.  It’s a reward for getting through work and it’s even more comfortable to pair it with a sedentary screen-based activity.

Reason five is the opposite of reason four – for some people the evening is one of the busiest times of day. It’s very easy to mindlessly snack your way around the house as you do chores, errands and preparations for the following day.   
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Whether night snacking is a prop for feeling better, winding up or winding down it’s a recipe for weight gain. And worse, it’s not even a particularly fun way to gain weight. Check out my post on how to manage your night time snacking and save your calories for things you truly enjoy.

​During the day it can be relatively easy to stick to your diet and exercise goals but many people find that their eating goes off the rails in the late evening.  It’s the time of day your body has the lowest need for calories but the window in which you are most likely to overeat. My last post detailed why we snack at night, here are five ways to stop.

Number one is make a plan. Eat regularly throughout the day, including plenty of protein, to keep your blood sugar stable. This way you avoid playing calorie-catchup at the end of the day, when you end up doing a lot more than catching up. Try the reverse food diary technique – log your choices in advance. That way you can budget for a smart snack in the evening that fits in with your calorie count for the day.  

Number two is to manage your emotions. It’s not too tricky to work out why you want to eat a lot at night. Bad food tastes good. It’s more fun to eat it than to go through the boring process of getting ready for bed. But there will be specific triggers for you, check out my post on the main causes of emotional eating.  

Number three is to manage your evening activities.  Have a ritual to signal to yourself when you’re done with eating for the day – have a herbal tea, chew gum, clean your teeth.  Organise activities that are incompatible with eating. Fold the washing while you watch TV, go for walk, have a shower, read a book.  

Number four is to create a no fail environment in your kitchen.  We’re all visually triggered so keep treat foods at the back of the fridge and pantry, ideally not in transparent containers. If you struggle to control treat-eating then try to avoid bringing treats into the house until the day they are required. No matter how low your mood or how boring your evening you can’t eat food that isn’t there.   

Number five is go to bed earlier. The easiest way to not be eating is to be sleeping. This can be easier said than done, check out my post for some tips on how to achieve it.  

If you’re serious about living within a healthy weight zone it’s demoralizing to do well all day and let yourself down right at the end. Don’t mindlessly sabotage yourself every evening, save your treats for times when you can really enjoy them.

Emotional eating is using food as a way to suppress negative feelings. These patterns can start very young. Well-meaning parents can link comfort and soothing with food and as you get older it’s easy to gravitate towards the sweet stodgy foods of youth when adult life is unpleasant.  

Emotional eating is different to enjoying a treat. It often happens mindlessly, before you know it a whole bag of chips is gone without you really paying attention or even enjoying it. When eating to satisfy your feelings and not your physical hunger it can be hard to stop, even when your stomach is full.

The problem with emotional eating is that the feelings driving the eating return not long after the fleeting high of the eating has abated. Usually the emotions are joined by guilt and a sense of inadequacy which can spiral into further emotional eating.      

The number one cause of emotional eating is stress. When you’re under pressure the “fight or flight” response is the body’s primitive automatic reaction preparing us to “fight” or “flee” from a perceived threat. Under the influence of stress hormone cortisol you are less sensitive to leptin, the hormone which makes you feel full. Your instincts drive you to refuel with calorie-dense even though most modern stresses do not require any extra calories.   

Two other common reasons for emotional eating are boredom and loneliness. A sense of emptiness or hollowness can leave you looking for ways to occupy your mouth and your time. Eating can momentarily distract from underlying feelings of purposelessness and dissatisfaction.

If you routinely eat in response to negative feelings this creates a habit, which creates a neural pathway. Eating carbohydrates stimulates serotonin, the “feel good” hormone, which reinforces the pattern. This makes cravings for unhealthy foods feel less like an inclination and more like a compulsion.

The first step to managing emotional eating is knowing which emotions drive you to eat when you aren’t hungry. Become mindful of your moment to moment emotional experience and what seems to trigger your cravings.   This can help you rein in stress and repair the emotional problems that lead you to be triggered. Emotional eating is often a symptom of a deeper problem and you may need professional assistance to address it.   

There will likely always be red zones in your life that will trigger bouts of emotional eating. Fortunately there are plenty of ways you can minimise the power of these zones to gain control of your eating and live in an appropriate weight zone and in a healthy emotional space. 

​When it comes to weight loss coffee is a controversial topic. Coffee can impact the waistline positively or negatively depending on the individual and how it’s consumed. Caffeine is a stimulant which creates a thermogenic response in the body. This means it speeds up metabolic rate and causes more calories to be burned. The stimulant effect is due to the release of adrenaline which is a stress-triggered hormone. Adrenaline heightens physical strength for a short period of time, giving you more energy and motivation for exercise which allows you to burn more calories.
 
Stimulants have their place but with every peak comes the risk of a trough. For many people their adrenal glands are overused already and further stimulation can cause fatigue and illness. Caffeine can be part of a process that hinders weight loss if used in a way to keep you “tired and wired” – check out my articles on how stress and sleep deprivation affect your metabolic rate and motivation to exercise. Coffee also causes dehydration which further slows metabolic rate.   And of course the number of calories you drink with your coffee affect your weight loss. Studies have shown that caffeine can suppress the appetite but the benefits can soon be undone if your elaborate coffee concoction contains the calories of an entire meal (check out your favourite beverage on myfitnesspal).   

The recommended caffeine limit is 400mg per day, which is actually quite a lot of coffee considering most café shots are around 75mgs.  A standard flat white or long black has around 150mg of caffeine,   Volume aside, whether coffee is positive or negative for weight management and health depends on the individual. Quick metabolisers can have a cup of coffee just before bed and still sleep, while slow metabolisers eliminate the caffeine more steadily and can feel the effects many hours afterwards.  People who don't regularly drink caffeine tend to be more sensitive to its negative effects. If you are in good health generally and keep your caffeine well within recommended limits then coffee can be a happy habit as part of a balanced lifestyle.  

When it comes to spending the treat budget alcohol is a popular choice! Unfortunately alcohol impacts on a weight loss plan well beyond the calories in the drink.

Alcohol increases your appetite and decreases your will power – a bad combination! You end up eating foods and portions you wouldn’t normally have. Many foods that accompany drinking are very salty which can make you thirsty, causing you to drink more. From the first glass of wine you’re in a downward spiral of calorie retention!   A heavy meal at night is a bad idea for weight loss at the best of times.  It’s much easier for the body to store fat when you go to bed with a lot of food in your stomach. As if this heavy load of calories is not enough, alcohol reduces your metabolic rate. When the body is focused on processing alcohol, it is not able to properly break down foods containing carbohydrates and fat. Everything else you are eating has to get in the queue. These calories are easily converted into body fat.

Unfortunately the damage doesn’t end when the evening does. Drinking can help induce sleep, but the sleep you get isn't very deep. As a result, you get less rest, check out my article on sleep to understand how deprivation can trigger hormones and behaviours that throw out your eating and exercise the next day. 

Dehydration is another problem caused by alcohol. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning that it causes water loss. Keeping the body in a hydrated state is very important for weight control.  Alcohol strikes metabolic rate again!

Alcohol is so much more than just empty calories. It encourages you to eat additional empty calories and it encourages your body to store them as fat. The obvious recommendation is don’t drink at all but I never ask clients to do anything I wouldn’t do myself! A more realistic recommendation is to drink in a way that limits the damage.

On the day of your evening out try to get some exercise to earn yourself a few extra calories and speed your metabolic rate. Exceed your water target and avoid treats. If your festivities do not include a meal then eat a substantial healthy meal before you go. The more you separate alcohol from other treat foods the less impact the alcohol will have on your weight. Use MyFitnessPal in advance to compare your favourite drinks and make an advance decision about approximately how much it’s appropriate for you to eat and drink on this occasion. Have another glass of water before bed and have a bottle of water in the fridge ready for the morning.

Drinking can be fun and relaxing but it’s ultimately more satisfying to indulge in a way that does not sabotage all your goals.   Alcohol should be approached like all treats – moderation is the key.