Incidental Eating: The Food We Eat When We’re Not Eating

Over the years, I’ve worked with plenty of overweight and obese people who “hardly eat anything”. Apparently. You’ve probably met a few. You may have even been one at some stage. I have. For the practical requirements of my work, I classify these folks into three groups:

1. Those who have a genetic or medical condition which predisposes them to significant and, seemingly inexplicable, weight gain. Despite what some people tell you, this is a very small percentage of the population.
2. Those who tell fibs about what they put in their mouth. Plenty in this group.
3. Those who eat a lot when they’re not (officially) eating. So to speak. This is called incidental eating. That is, the calories consumed outside of main meals. This is the biggest group.

You’d be amazed to know how much food many of us consume when we’re not partaking in (what we call) our main meals. Many people actually consume more calories from their incidental eating than they do from their breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As you read this article, keep in mind that anything containing calories is a food source. The fact that you might find those calories on a plate or in a bowl, cup, glass, bottle, can, wrapper, box or bag makes no difference to the impact they might have on your body. Neither does it matter if that food is solid, liquid or somewhere in between.

Many people delude themselves that drinks are not really food and therefore underestimate the potential damage that high-calorie, high-sugar drinks can do to an otherwise healthy body. Right now our culinary landscape is littered (litter being the key term) with more calorie-dense, nutrition-less, chemically-treated crap drinks than ever before. Many of them masquerading as ‘health’ products to the ignorant, gullible, misled and sugar-addicted masses.

Our kids are growing up drinking crap. And their parents are leading the charge.  

Anything with calories will have an impact on how we look, feel and function. That is, a physiological impact – big or small. A cappuccino, fruit juice or a beer is as much ‘food’ as is a chicken breast, a slice of pizza or an apple. Of course, just because something has calories and qualifies as food doesn’t mean (1) we need it or (2) it’s good for us.

A while back, I met with a rather distressed woman who was “eating three healthy meals a day” yet still not losing weight (her goal). I looked at her diet and she was right; she was eating three healthy, relatively small meals each day. Each of those meals was calculated to be around five-hundred calories, for a daily total of around fifteen-hundred calories. While I’m not one to endorse arbitrary calorie intakes, her three ‘set’ meals (and the accompanying calories) seemed to be somewhere in the ballpark for her body-type, exercise load, lifestyle and weight-loss goals.

However, it was the calories she was throwing down around those meals that were doing the damage. She proudly told me that she had cut out post-dinner desserts, chocolate, all cakes and biscuits (apparently, her weakness) but let’s take a peek at what she was eating when she wasn’t ‘eating’:

• A mid-afternoon 600 ml (1 pint) fruit and yoghurt smoothie (600 cals)
• 2 all-milk coffees (300 cals)
• 3 other home-made hot drinks (100 cals)
• ‘Quite a few’ fat-free (but sugar-loaded) lollies (200 cals)
• A post-dinner glass of wine (150 cals)
• A little pre-dinner picking and sampling of the food she was preparing (200 cals)

So, while her ‘set’ daily intake (established with a dietician) was fifteen-hundred calories, most days she was also consuming an extra fifteen-hundred (plus) calories around her three meals. This is easy to do because the things we snack on are typically calorie dense so it doesn’t take much to push the calories through the roof. Think about it: when was the last time you snacked on lettuce or a raw carrot when nobody was looking? Or had a mad craving for some tuna in brine?

By the way, once she dropped the non-essential calories (the incidental eating) the weight fell off. Her mind hated the change (for a few weeks) but her body loved it. And then her mind fell in love with her new body.

If we’re being totally honest here, for many of us, there are times when our calorie consumption becomes a distorted blur. At times, a high-calorie frenzy. Which is fine if we can do that and maintain our best (healthiest) body. But, here on Planet Reality, it doesn’t work like that.

While it’s important that we don’t become obsessed with our diet (or any aspect of our health management for that matter), it’s also important to keep in mind a few things:

1. Bodies aren’t replaceable.
2. For some people (I’m one of them), it’s better to leave the eating for meal times only.
3. All calories have consequences.
4. What our head wants and what our body needs are often very different things.
5. Fat doesn’t grow spontaneously.
6. Awareness, acknowledgement and honesty is where lasting change starts.

Ciao x

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