Office holiday snacking can sap energy, spirits
MINNEAPOLIS – Every afternoon, is your office suddenly filled with workers who are lethargic and cranky? Are you one of them?
The culprit likely is the eating free-for-all that takes place during the holidays. Eating too much high-sugar, high-carbohydrate, high-fat food can produce an office full of people who lack energy and are moody.
“We talk about comfort food making us feel better,” Dr. Henry Emmons said. “And it does, for half an hour or 45 minutes. An hour or two later, our energy drops, our mood drops and we can feel more anxious.”
And if we really overdo it, “it doesn’t stop at the end of the holidays,” he warned. “You can get into a pattern that continues for months.”
Nonetheless, the office holiday pig-out remains a tradition. In addition to potluck buffets, many co-workers bring in brownies, cookies and cupcakes to share with their office mates.
They don’t bring bunches of bananas. That’s also part of the tradition.
“Most people equate the holidays with sugar bombs,” Dr. Gregory Plotnikoff said. “That’s strictly social conditioning and marketing. There’s nothing natural to that.”
Emmons and Plotnikoff are part of a movement to change eating habits by making people aware of how the food we eat can affect everything from bad breath to mental health. Emmons, a psychiatrist at Minneapolis-based Partners in Resilience, is author of the books “The Chemistry of Joy” and “The Chemistry of Calm.” Plotnikoff is an integrative-medicine physician at the Penny George Institute for Health and Healing in Minneapolis and author of “Trust Your Gut.”
“Most people are oblivious to how food can affect us,” Emmons said.
The impact often is magnified this time of year, he said. In addition to there being a lot more snacking going on, people also are dealing with the stress of the busy season as well as the heightened emotional sensitivity that many folks feel around the holidays.
“When your mood already is on a downward slide, having your diet out of balance is going to push it further down,” he said.
Lisa Kane, a licensed dietitian for Pink Pantry Solutions, a Minneapolis clinic that focuses on modifying the diets of cancer patients, teaches a class on Food & Mood at Pathways, a health resource center in Minneapolis. She warns clients about the ways rampant snacking causes blood sugar levels to roller-coaster.
“How our blood sugar spikes and crashes really determines our ability to stay cheerful and even-keeled,” she said. “Running back and forth to the sweets or showing up at your desk with the biggest bowl of M&Ms can mess with your head.”
Office politics can make it tricky to turn up your nose on the snacks, Plotnikoff said. The folks who bring in the food, “which is often homemade, see it as an expression of love and caring,” he said. Snubbing the treats could be taken as an insult.
That’s why Plotnikoff and Emmons preach moderation. And they don’t sugarcoat the self-control that requires.
“I know, it stinks,” Emmons said with a laugh. “I love holiday treats. If I didn’t get any holiday treats, I’d feel deprived. But I don’t overdo it. If I do have a sweet, I’ll eat it with a protein to help soften the blow.”