Food Myths

Monday's pitiful lunch

I was too weak from hunger to blog yesterday. ;-) It was a testament to how meaningful good planning can be. We had a busy weekend, so Monday morning snuck up on us too soon. I managed to get ready for work quickly enough so that I was able to accompany Francisco on his morning breakfast run. We stopped at Cafe Royale on campus and I grabbed a large caramel latte and an orange cranberry muffin. I needed to dump in about three extra sugars into my latte to make it more palatable. I intended to eat half the muffin for breakfast and half for a snack later in the day. Breakfast went fine. For lunch, Francisco had just sent me with the leftovers from Noodles & Co. from Friday. He had an exam that day and we weren't going to be able to dine together. It was a pitiful, pitiful lunch - I think Francisco had vastly overestimated just how much was left of my Whole Grain Tuscan Linguine. An hour later, I was positively starving, and I started picking at the other half of my muffin.

By the time work was over, it was all I could do not to shovel in the Mad Mushroom pizza we picked up. Usually, two slices of pizza is acceptable for me, and I'm good for the night. Yesterday, I polished off a couple of slices and then sent Francisco out to Burger King to pick up a strawberry-caramel sundae.

If I were dieting to lose weight, I obviously would have jeoparized my own intentions. Depriving yourself of calories can easily backfire and cause you to consume even more calories later in the day to make up for the deficit. In this case, I just hadn't planned out my meals properly, so I ended up gorging on pizza and ice cream later in the evening.

And we've all heard that eating at night causes weight gain, right? Wrong! A calorie is a calorie no matter when it's consumed.  The problem with eating at night is related to other factors. 

• If you save your largest meal for the end of the day, you may end up consuming larger portion sizes - this was my problem. I ate approximately the normal amount of pizza I would eat, but I didn't stop there. I then devoured an ice cream sundae, plus helped myself to a few generous spoonfuls of Francisco's brownie sundae.   
• The quality of food is important - most people who spend a long day at work or school are content to grab a burger and some fries rather than invest a little more time to whip up something more nutritional. Pizza and a sundae? Not the highest quality. 
• Mindless snacking is also a common issue that tends to crop up at night. Evenings spent watching TV can easily lead to the consumption of excess calories. Luckily, our restaurant experiment limits how much mindless snacking we can do. 

Another common food myth is that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. There's a lot of logic to this - it seems evident that the meal we choose to break our fast would be of paramount importance. Waking up, we're coming off roughly eight - twelve hours of fasting, and a nutrient dense meal should be just the thing to jumpstart our day. True. But breakfast really is no more important than any other meal of the day. 

A satisfying, healthy breakfast can set you up to make smarter decisions throughout the day since you won't be starving by the time lunch rolls around.  Breakfast affects your mental and physical performance throughout the day, but you still need to be making healthy meal choices for lunch and dinner. It is more important that you listen to your body and eat when you are hungry - don't force yourself to down a bowl of Wheaties in the morning. Personally, I wake up around 6:00 AM on a normal workday, exercise for roughly a half-hour, then shower and get ready for work. I don't have my morning coffee until 8:00 AM and I don't eat my breakfast until about 10:00 AM. This system works for me, but everyone's body is different.  By the time I start drinking my morning coffee, I have been fasting for over 12 hours.   

Are there any other food myths out there that affect how you plan your meals??