By Lindsay Sax
Kansas City is known for its barbecue. Chiefs fans are known for their tailgates. But maybe the two don’t mix so well.
According to an article in “Psychological Science”, the performance of the NFL team closest to your heart may not be so good for your waistline. The study says on Mondays after games “saturated-fat and food-calorie intake increase significantly in cities with losing teams, decrease in cities with winning teams, and remain at their usual levels in comparable cities without an NFL team or with an NFL team that did not play.”
In case you aren’t into the Chiefs, let’s catch up. They were tied for the league worst at 2-14 last season. That’s a lot of extra calories and saturated fat for the poor fans on Mondays.
Sadly for KC, it is known to appear in the list of fattest cities the past few years. According to “Men’s Health” in 2011, KC ranked the sixth fattest city, and they had been ranked in the top 10 consecutively from 2007 to 2011. During those years the Chiefs went 27-53.
Could the two be correlated, maybe? The study did only look at two seasons, the 2004 and 2005 seasons accounting for 475 NFL games.
As a new season is under way, what will happen is still a mystery, but Adam Teicher for ESPN.com predicts the Chiefs going 8-8. So in the end all the bad food you eat after a loss should be canceled out by the good food you eat after a win. But it’s not a perfect world, and those extra celebratory beers after a win aren’t going to matter what veggies you eat the next day. If you’re going to drink those extra beers, remember, Reese Witherspoon said it best in the movie “Sweet Home Alabama,” “light beer, less calories.”
As I sit here now, the Royals just gave up the two go ahead runs on eight straight balls in the bottom of the eighth inning for a loss. Good thing I don’t think this emotional eating study works the same with baseball, or I wouldn’t be able to fit in this chair after all the losing seasons that Royals have had.
If you are an emotional eater and the Chiefs decide they don’t want to win this year — or you start stressing over classes — here are some tips on how to curb that emotional eating from the Mayo Clinic.
-Tame your stress. Try yoga or meditation.
-Have a hunger reality check. If you know you aren’t hungry but want to eat anyway, sit back, don’t eat, and give that craving time to pass. Drink some water, take the dog for a walk, and fight boredom with activities.
-Keep a food diary. Write down what you eat when. Also add how you’re feeling when you’re eating. This could allow you to see a connection between your mood and what you’re eating.
-Get support. If you’re watching the game with your friends or studying with classmates, make sure you are all on the same page and try to stay away from those fatty bad for you foods.
-Take away temptation. Don’t keep your favorite snacks in the house; you’ll be tempted to eat them all the time. But don’t deprive yourself either. Just keep a small amount of your favorite junk food hidden in a cabinet somewhere you won’t see it, but if you get that craving it’s still available to you.
-Snack healthy. Just keep vegetables handy with a dip. Celery and peanut butter is always a good choice.
Contact Lindsay Sax, copy editor, at lsax@jccc.edu.