On the dieter’s calendar, summer looms large. On one hand, it is meant to be the time to show off all your hard work slimming. On the other, it’s party time, and party time means food time. Big celebrations are difficult moments in which to keep an even dietary keel. Mounds of gorgeous food aside, it seems antisocial and plain odd to be calorie-counting when your friend has just got hitched, or at a birthday lunch in the sunshine. It’s also joyless.
So, in advance of a weekend in which I faced a heavy onslaught of summery celebrations, including a dinner party, a bar mitzvah and a birthday barbecue, I decided to look into damage control.
The experts
How could I prepare mentally, physically and logistically for these events and, once there, how could I enjoy them healthfully? I sought the advice of four experts, some of whom help people with severe eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, or those who are severely obese. They are Beanne Jade, a psychologist and the head of the National Centre of Eating Disorders; Dr Janet Treasure, a professor of psychiatry at Maudsley Hospital, London; Catherine Collins, the chief dietitian at St George’s Hospital, South London; and Sophie Wale, a nutritional expert for WeightWatchers. Mental preparation I was advised to be realistic. “Historically, food is how we celebrate,” says Jade. “We are designed to eat socially. To keep to your diet is, on some level, not to participate.” So to vow in advance not to let your eating be swayed by the sense of occasion is to be almost impossibly hard on yourself. Instead, Jade says, try to stay away from extremity: go knowing that you are not a machine, but do not write off all restraint. Aim for a kind of moderate moderation.
WeightWatchers recommends a more combative kind of realism: knowing your enemy. Wale says: “While you know the food will be in abundance, keep in control of your portions.
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You don’t have to avoid bread and rich sauce dishes, but fill half your plate with salad and veg, then go easy on the other stuff.” Collins tells me to allow myself a realistic amount of food in advance; then to stick to it. If I’m off to a barbecue, I can decide that two pieces of meat and two rolls or the equivalent are fine.
Readjust your viewpoint
Get the food element of the occasion in proportion to the social element, the experts advise. If food is a bugbear for you, it is natural to think too much about it. Wale says: “If your association with all these events is heavily focused on the food, try and slant what might be a 50-50 ratio of thinking about food to other aspects in favour of the social element.” In shifting the focus from eating, you diminish its power to explode, metaphorically, in your face. Jade agrees that moderation in food intake will come with moderation in attitude towards food. “Stay away from the all-or-nothing way of thinking. This is what leads to abandoning all restraint and absolving yourself of choice,” she says.
Physical preparation
Don’t turn up starving. “Do not skip meals or fast to prepare for a social event,” the psychologist Dr Treasure advises. She says that eating low-glycaemic foods beforehand will help to reduce rapid fluctuations in blood sugar and fat, which can trigger uncontrollable eating. Jade recommends a cup of vegetable soup or a milky drink beforehand to curb the impulse to gorge and WeightWatchers recommends taking along some snacks, such as cereal bars and dried fruit in your handbag to ward off hunger. “At any social do there is usually a wait for the food to be served and waiting with an empty tummy is dangerous territory,” Wale says.
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What to eat and drink
Everybody warned me off alcohol because it inhibits your ability to say no. With each drink comes an increase in the dreaded “damn restraint to hell, I’m on a calorie bender” mindframe. And booze is calorific; an average glass of wine (175ml) contains about 140 calories. However, not drinking at all is unrealistic, so tips from the four experts included refusing refills until your glass is empty (Collins), and having a nonalcoholic drink for every boozy one (WeightWatchers).
There are usually diet-friendly foods on hand at big parties; this is your chance to load your plate with vegetables and to choose more fruit than cake for dessert. The experts all agreed that plates should be roughly two parts vegetable, one part protein and one part carbs. Once you have got this on your plate, eat it slowly, take a breather, and think very, very, carefully about whether you really want seconds. If, however, you are being served a meal rather than selecting your own from a buffet, as I was at the bar mitzvah evening party, you can still say no to certain things and ask for more of others.
At buffets and barbecues, go for plain meats, such as a piece of chicken or steak, which contain less fat, additives, sugar and salt than processed meats such as burgers, kebabs and sausages. Eat bread if you like, but don’t put butter or margarine on it. As for dessert, if there are cupcakes or tartlets, you can have three or four, not more. If there are several types of cakes on offer, choose one – but only one.
If you’re being served at a dinner party or posh meal, be on the lookout for roasted or fried foods, such as potatoes. Collins says that you don’t have to refuse them, but to go for one or two of the largest roast potatoes instead of four or five smaller ones, as the total surface area exposed to fat is far less this way. Nobody will be offended if you say: “Hold the sauce.” In doing so, you may well be shielding yourself from an onslaught of cream, sugar and salt. Ask for more salad.
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What worked?
Thus I went: armed with wisdom and a heavy load of good intentions. Before the dinner party and the barbecue, I ate a bowl of chickpea soup. As a result, I found it easy to be moderate; my appetite had been punctured. I also made use of Collins’s advice to be realistic. For example, knowing that I’d be faced with challah, the best bread in the world, at the dinner party, I had a few pieces but didn’t gobble the whole loaf. And Collins’s advice about the meat came in handy. My friend Rob’s annual barbecue feast was no less splendid than ever and I did well to fill up with two pieces of mint-encrusted lamb with yoghurt and couscous, and three beers, leaving aside burgers, potatoes and many more beers.
The bar mitzvah dinner was harder. I turned up having eaten little all day. The place was buzzing with gourmet canap?s and champagne. I partook helplessly, but not entirely thoughtlessly, avoiding the sweet potato crisps and pastry-based canap?s. But I had no thought for water; I was celebrating with family I had not seen in ages and champagne is something I can’t easily refuse. Dinner was beautiful and the spaghetti with truffle oil and cream was so good that instead of asking for a small amount, I asked for seconds. At this point, increasingly tipsy, I felt there was little hope of return. My guard was down.
Ultimately, the advice I was given had power over my actions only when I turned up without a burning appetite. Once I got going at the bar mitzvah, I was making up for having eaten too little beforehand by going into food overdrive, psychologically and physically.
My conclusion
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My weekend suggests that eating a bit beforehand was the best practical advice, though the wisdom of the bigger picture – achieving a moderate attitude to food – seems the most sage. Sadly though, rewiring my brain so that I no longer say “I’ve started now, so I’m going all out” isn’t going to be easy. Dr Treasure says that dropping this all-or-nothing way of thinking can take years, and a lot of effort. In the meantime, there’s always chickpea soup.