Kristina Chetcuti, a registered health coach (UKIHCA) specialising in behaviour change and lifestyle medicine (ELMO), answers your lifestyle dilemmas.
Q: Can I blame the EU for my pastry habit? At work, there are croissants at breakfast meetings, biscuits with every coffee break, desserts at working lunches, birthday cakes, farewell cakes, and someone always turns up with some chocolates from a trip abroad. I have to admit I’m not very good at resisting them.
I tell myself I don’t really need a croissant, then find myself reaching for one because everyone else is having one. And if someone has gone to the trouble of bringing a cake into the office, saying no somehow feels rather rude.
I’m reasonably healthy, but I’m beginning to wonder if I am doing myself any favours by eating all this sugar several times a week. Should I be trying harder to say no, or am I worrying unnecessarily?
A: I’ll put your mind at rest immediately: the answer to your question is not "don’t eat cake." Life's little pleasures should not be banned. I’d also add that sometimes it’s not even over when you leave the office.
We’re totally surrounded by smells wafting from Brussels’ patisseries and their seductive works of art in their shop windows. I live in the middle of a boulangerie triangle: I have Brood on one side, Le Saint-Aulaye on another and Wittamer on the third, and it’s gastronomic torture, I tell you.
First things first: get it out of your mind that you are lacking willpower. You work in an environment where irresistible food is constantly visible, available and socially encouraged. How are you supposed to refuse it?
Grazing on EU foods
Our ancestors didn't have to start their day with a plate of croissants while they were having their morning cave pow-wow, or think, “Oh, nice, maybe I’ll have one tomorrow.” No, if they had, they would have scoffed at them.
We are evolutionary built to notice food – particularly food that is rich in energy – and to take advantage of it when it is available, because it might not always be. Par contre, now we have created an utterly bonkers environment for ourselves: we have surrounded ourselves with food and then somehow expect ourselves to say no to it (Daniel Lieberman’s book Fed Up is a compelling read on this).
As a matter of fact, one piece of cake here and there doesn't suddenly damage your health. However, if you're constantly grazing on EU treats while crowding out more nutritious foods, then yes, that pattern is worth looking at.
In fact, sometimes it becomes a vicious circle: the more croissants you eat, the more you crave. It’s not your will, it’s our physiology. Therefore, let's start by improving the conditions in which you're making food choices.
Illustration shows an employee bringing croissants and pains au chocolat to journalists in front of the Prime Minister's office for a ministers council meeting, Friday 25 April 2014. Credit: Belga/Dirk Waem
First, let's understand what's happening in your body when you eat croissants/pastries/biscuits/cake. These are all foods containing easily digested sugary carbohydrates. If you eat them on an empty stomach, especially when you're already hungry, they can produce a fairly rapid rise in blood glucose, followed by a rise in insulin.
This isn't a bad thing in itself: insulin is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, helping move glucose out of the bloodstream and into your cells.
The problem is what happens when a food gives you plenty of energy super quickly, but not much in the way of fibre, protein or other good stuff that helps keep you full.
Your blood glucose can rise and then fall relatively quickly, and you may find yourself hungry again sooner than you'd like. Which means that from the corner of the meeting table you’ll hear those croissants calling you “Coucou, I’m here just for you…come on, just a bite…”
I go by one rule: if you're going to have the cake, don't make the cake your meal. This is how I go about it: the very first meal of the day, whether that’s at 06:00 or 11:00, should be a proper, satisfying meal with protein, fibre and fat, rather than something sugary.
'Let them'
I leave the cake/croissants/biscuits for after my lunch or my dinner meals. When you're properly fed with your first meal, it's amazing how much less attractive those office treats suddenly become, and how much easier it is to decide whether you actually want one.
You might be sitting in a meeting discussing a delicate staff matter and find yourself reaching for a biscuit because you're stressed, not because you particularly fancy it.
In fact, you might not even notice you're eating it. So, give yourself permission to say, “You know what, I'm fine, I don’t need this.” Don't worry too much about what everyone else thinks if you don’t partake; as Marie Antoinette might have put it, let them eat cake.
But sometimes it will be the end of a meeting, the problem has been sorted, everyone is relieved and someone brings out the cake. And you think, yes, I'd love some. Then have it and enjoy it: take a bite, notice its buttery deliciousness and think, “Mmm, now isn’t this something else?”
Listen to your body so you know when you actually want cake.
Credit: Pexels
There’s another important point: food is social glue. In an international workplace like yours, someone comes back from Spain with turrón, or Baklava from Greece and then there’s a moelleux au chocolat because someone has had a baby or got married.
Sometimes the cake is part of the celebration, not just something to eat, and sometimes you want to be part of that.
Health isn't the absence of cake. It's not about walking past every office meeting with the grim determination of that mayor in Chocolat. It's about being able to make a choice without feeling compelled, guilty or deprived. So, eat cake because you genuinely want it, and enjoy it without guilt.
Plus, no one's ever said it's a piece of cake to turn down a piece of cake (I couldn't help it)!
