0110 Eating mistakes that are making you put on kilos
Time to wake up friend!
If you are just starting a new diet or have been following one for a long, it is possible that you can make some old diet mistakes that can lead to weight gain. It becomes very important to know about the costly diet mistakes you have been making so that you can avoid them before it’s too late. Here is what you need to know!
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Skipping meals
You may be under the impression that skipping meals might help you in losing weight faster. In fact, you tend to eat more when you skip your meals. Our metabolism works more effectively when we eat small meals throughout the day. But, when you starve by skipping meals, you are more likely to stuff yourself later with high-calorie foods. This is one the worst mistakes that will make you fat.
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Dining out
Did you know dining out is one of the dieting mistakes that make you fat? Yes, it makes you fat because most restaurants serve two meals on one plate. One serving of chicken ought to be about the size of a deck of cards but do you remember the last time you had chicken masala at a restaurant? Do you recall it to be huge with at least two servings of the chicken? Try avoiding dining out. But, if you can’t avoid dining out, ask for half of your food to be packed to go before it’s even served to you in order to avoid the temptation to over- indulge.
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Deleting carbs
You must have heard about popular diet plans like Atkins which involve no carbs. You may think deleting carbs would be a good idea but you are making a mistake there. Since fiber is a carb and is good for digestive system, deleting it from the diet won’t be a good idea as it may affect the functioning of your digestive system and brain.
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You can’t give up that fried potato
If you can’t quit eating unhealthy foods, you are getting yourself ready for the unwanted weight gain. You need to make sure that you keep your daily calorie intake under reasonable limits, but for that you need to make sure that you overcome such food cravings.
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Emotional eating
Well, no one can blame you for being sad but what you do when you are sad can make a huge impact on your health. Emotional eating is one of the worst things to do. You need to control yourself before it’s too late. Don’t seek solace in eating. Instead, share your problems with someone close to you.
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Uncontrolled Eating
You may be too hungry, but you cannot over eat. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes, your body takes some time to realise when it’s no longer hungry but the delay allows you a window to overeat. Such overeating may not be harmful under rare circumstances, but if done frequently, it can lead to lot of weight gain and other harmful side-effects on your health.
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Calorie Excess Diet
You need to get only as many calories as you need for the normal functioning of your body. Eating a calorie rich diet that offers way too many calories daily can lead to quick weight gain without you even realizing what’s coming. Eat a balanced diet that offers only the required amount of calories.
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Nut Love
If you are fond of nuts and can be easily found crunching on them now and then, you are very likely to get ample protein supply. But you are also likely to get too many calories than you actually need. Most nuts are calorie-dense and only a handful of nuts daily can do enough damage to your waistline. Don’t quit eating nuts, it’s a good habit. Just eat only as many as you may need.
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Dieting
Ironically, dieting is one of the most misinterpreted terms. Dieting means to eat balanced diet meeting the requirements of the body. But most people, especially women, take dieting for food deprivation. They keep themselves deprived of food to lose weight but it only affects their overall health and increases the risk of putting on even more weight than what they are likely to lose. If you are dieting and not losing weight, there are at least 10 reasons why that is happening and all, unfortunately, are related to your diet itself. Experts say that the truth behind dieting that does not work is that even when someone is really dieting, they may be taking more calories than they ever did.
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Trying to finish eating ASAP
You will not be thinner or fatter if you finish your meal fast. There is no reward whatsoever for finishing a meal unless you are participating in a contest. Rapid eating is an unhealthy habit that we have all taken up to as a result of out hectic schedules. It is important for you to savour what is on your plate, feel the taste of every bite and get signals from your brain before you are already overeating.
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Trading food for liquid calories
Dieting does not mean avoiding eating food and drinking whatever your throat pleases. Liquid calories are the most drunk by dieters and these include smoothies, alcohol, sugar, cream and sweetened juices, sodas and teas. A recent study showed that Americans get about 21 percent of their total calorie intake from beverages. Switch from beverages that have lots of calories in them to water, skim milk, club soda, and small portions of 100 percent fruit juice. Drink alcohol in moderation.
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Eating mindlessly
A lot of us try to clean others' plates one's ours is over in an attempt to avoid wastage, but when you are dieting it is important to checking your waistline instead of trying to keep a check on how much food is being wasted. When small portions of the food on your plate get multiplied, they add more calories.
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High-calorie toppings
Having a base of boiled vegetables salad is no fun till you put a layer of cream on top of it. Now, this attitude will take you no where. You have got to earn that perfect waistline because with such dieting techniques you will never see yourself slimming. You have a choice here, either go with a low-fat cream topping or nothing at all.
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Overloading on fruit juice consumption
Drinking fruit juice when you are dieting may seem nice because for one, fruits do not have so many calories as a hamburger and two, they are natural. But, the truth is that fruit juice is not what it looks like. It is just a little bit more of water mixed with sugar and fruit concentrate. Yes, in most fruit juices, there isn't a real fruit, but chemicals that taste just like fruits.
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Not reading through the labels
When you are dieting, you should not just read through the words on the label of food, but read through them. A lot of manufacturers of high-sugar foods mislead people through the labels on food products. Because a lot of people do not know much about nutrition, they fall into the trap. The real deal is to read about the different ingredients that make up each food item. Yes, that would be strenuous and time-taking, but it will reduce your waistline.
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02
weight gain
high blood pressure
type 2 diabetes
high cholesterol
boredom
a fight with a friend or spouse
poor performance review
a bad grade on an assignment
an impending project deadline
read a book
call a friend
walk around the block
take a shower or bath
2. Write it down.For one week, write down (a) what and (b) when you eat.
Next to each eating/drinking occasion, write down (a) what you were doing and (b) how you felt at that moment (i.e. happy, sad, bored, anxious, stressed, neutral, hungry, etc.)
meditation
calling a friend
going for a walk
snuggling with an animal
taking a bath
lighting a candle
14. Catch some zzz's.
17 Practical Ways to Stop Emotional Eating, According to Nutritionists
There's no denying it: food can make you feel good. There's nothing better than getting to indulge in your favorite pasta dish at dinner, sip on a warm latte in the morning, or share a stack of fluffy pancakes with your friends over brunch. However, food can also be used for reasons outside of filling an energy need. If you've noticed you resort to eating food during sad, happy, or stressful times, you may be practicing emotional eating.
To combat mindless stress eating, we asked dietitian nutritionists to explain just what emotional eating is, the negative side effects, and how to stop emotional eating.
What is emotional eating, and what causes it?
"Emotional eating means that you eat for reasons other than hunger," says Amy Kimberlain, RDN, LDN, CDE, registered dietitian nutritionist and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "Emotional eating is a recurring, unconscious attraction toward foods that fulfill an emotional void or distracts you from what's really bothering you. This may include emotions ranging from stress, sadness, frustration, and anxiety to name a few."
While it may have negative connotations, emotional eating may not always be prompted by negative emotions.
"Emotional eating can also be linked to happy times," adds Kimberlain. "Think about how you celebrate big achievements and special occasions, or even just define fun outings. We treat ourselves to our favorite foods to define a moment of pride or joy, and we link activities like going to a movie with getting to indulge in candy."
What are the negative side effects of emotional eating?
"Emotional eating can be okay in moderation. It's when this behavior becomes a bad habit where it can be an issue both physically and emotionally," says Kimberlain.
If uncontrolled and repeatedly done over time, Kimberlain tells us that emotional eating can cause a number of possible weight-related health conditions such as:
It also can have a heavy impact on your mental health.
"The mental health consequences can trigger symptoms of anxiety or depression, or worsen symptoms in people already living with these issues," says Kimberlain. "This is when emotional eating is used as a coping mechanism, and you're avoiding dealing with the underlying issue."
17 tips to stop emotional eating.
If you find yourself in the throes of emotional eating, here are 17 tips from dietitian nutritionists to help you stop emotional eating.
1. Identify any triggers you have.
"While eating is emotional and it's okay to occasionally soothe our emotions with food, it becomes problematic if that's the only way we know how to soothe emotions," says Sarah Schlichter, MPH, RDN, registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Bucket List Tummy.
It can be helpful to identify any triggers you have that may cause you to turn to food. Some common examples include:
If you have awareness of what the stress trigger is, you can try to proactively put some other self-care measures in place to help ease the emotions. Schlichter recommends these self-care replacements for emotional eating triggers:
"Now's the time to buy that new food journal you've been eyeing!" says Charlotte Martin, MS, RDN, CSOWM, CPT, registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Shaped by Charlotte. Martin gives the following simple instructions:
"Although it may seem daunting at first, tracking both your food intake AND any emotions you were experiencing at each eating occasion can help you identify emotional eating behaviors and what's triggering them. It can also make you aware of the types of foods you tend to gravitate towards when you eat emotionally," says Martin.
3. Reward yourself with something other than food.
"If you are always associating happy or bad events with food this could very easily lead to emotional eating that happens frequently," says Maggie Michalczyk, RDN, a Chicago-based registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Once Upon a Pumpkin. "Instead replace a food reward of let's say ice cream with something like painting your nails, or taking some 'me time' to read or journal."
4. Eat consistently throughout the day.
"Oftentimes I see clients eat from a place of emotions in the evening because they're under-nourished during the day," says Chelsey Amer, MS, RDN, CDN, registered dietitian nutritionist and owner of Chelsey Amer Nutrition and author of Thrive in 5. "Aim to eat balanced meals (with a protein, veggies, carbohydrates, and healthy fats) when you feel hungry throughout the day. Avoid getting over-hungry because that makes it more difficult to eat well-balanced meals."
5. Find other ways to deal with stress.
"Discovering another way to deal with negative emotions is often the first step toward overcoming emotional eating," says Kimberlain. "This could mean writing in a journal, reading a book, or finding a few minutes to otherwise relax and decompress from the day. It takes time to shift your mindset from reaching for food to engaging in other forms of stress relief, so experiment with a variety of activities to find what works for you."
6. Get moving.
"Some people find relief in getting regular exercise. A walk or jog around the block or a quick yoga routine may help in particularly emotional moments," says Kimberlain.
In one study, participants were asked to engage in eight weeks of yoga. Researchers then assessed participants on their mindfulness and insightful understanding—basically their understanding of themselves and of situations surrounding them. The results showed that regular yoga may be a useful preventative measure to help diffuse emotional states such as anxiety and depression.
7. Slow down when eating.
"When you eat to feed your feelings, you tend to do so quickly, mindlessly consuming food on autopilot. You eat so fast you miss out on the different tastes and textures of your food—as well as your body's cues that you're full and no longer hungry," says Kimberlain. "But by slowing down and savoring every bite, you'll not only enjoy your food more, but you'll also be less likely to overeat."
8. Keep trigger foods out of your pantry.
"Identify what foods you typically gravitate towards when eating emotionally and try removing them from your pantry and eyesight," says Martin. "The reason emotional eating can turn into such a huge health issue is because we typically gravitate towards high-fat, high-sugar foods, and beverages during these times, not leafy greens and water. By removing these foods, and replacing them with something a little healthier, you may be more likely to take pause before emotionally eating and/or engage in something non-food-related. And if you decide to go for it, you'll fill up on more fiber-rich and protein-rich foods, which help reduce cravings later on."
Adds Martin, "For example, if you indulge in something sweet like cookies when feeling sad, replace it with fruit and nut butter. If you indulge in something savory like chips when stressed, replace it with roasted chickpea snacks."
9. Ask yourself WHY you're eating.
"Emotional eating is not always inherently a bad thing. However, it's important to partake mindfully," says Amer. "If you notice yourself emotionally eating, pause and ask yourself why. Just identifying that you're eating from an emotional state is a step in the right direction."
10. Don't deprive yourself of your favorite foods.
"One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle is avoiding certain foods not perceived as healthy," says Kristen Smith, MS, RD, a registered dietitian at Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, GA, and spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "It's common for people to overindulge in foods when they avoid certain foods in their diet, especially when they experience emotional triggers."
11. Make a mindful food decision.
"The truth of the matter is that food is connected to our emotions, and certain foods may remind you of your childhood, or certain ones you hate because they made you sick," says Michalczyk. "Rather than fighting this urge in every situation, make a mindful choice when you are turning to food in emotional situations. Can you make a pizza healthier by adding vegetables? Could you bake something healthy and delicious? Reframing emotional eating from, let's say, turning to fast food every time something bad or good happens to perhaps making something at home, etc. can make a huge difference, too."
12. Try a mindful eating exercise.
"Slowing down and savoring your food is an important aspect of mindful eating, the opposite of mindless, emotional eating," says Kimberlain. "Put your utensils down between bites, and really focusing on the experience of eating. Pay attention to the textures, shapes, colors, and smells of your food." Ask yourself:
How does each mouthful taste?How does it make your body feel?
"By slowing down in this way, you'll find you appreciate each bite of food much more. You can even indulge in your favorite foods and feel full on much less. It takes time for the body's fullness signal to reach your brain, so taking a few moments to consider how you feel after each bite—hungry or satiated—can help you avoid overeating," says Kimberlain.
13. Focus on your breath and count to 10.
"The act of focusing on your breath and counting forces you to stay in the present," says Schlichter. "If you find yourself heading into a territory where you feel powerless and out of control, try to focus on your breath to bring you back to the present moment. Check in with yourself and see if there are any other coping mechanisms you could utilize in this moment."
Schlichter recommends coping mechanisms to stress eating like:
"Aim for 7 to 9 hours of good quality sleep per night," says Martin. "We know that sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on our stress and appetite-regulating hormones, which then leads to cravings for high-fat and high-sugar foods. There's also evidence to suggest that sleep deprivation can predispose us to emotional eating because a tired brain is less able to handle emotional experiences with controlled and logical responses. A well-rested brain is better able to deliberately respond to emotional triggers, making you more likely to think twice about reaching for a cookie after a stressful day."
15. You can help prep for a full night's sleep by trying a few things.
"To help you fall and stay asleep, try engaging in relaxation techniques before bed, like yoga, meditation, or guided imagery," says Martin. "Tone down the blue light at least two hours before bed, and consider turning on a diffuser with lavender essential oil to set a calming mood. You can also try a magnesium supplement (specifically magnesium glycinate) before bed. Magnesium helps promote natural calm and relaxation."
16. Get support.
"Similar to rewarding yourself with something other than food, exploring a different coping mechanism is another good option if you feel like emotional eating is becoming a problem. Perhaps it's time to meet with a registered dietitian, or talk to someone," says Michalczyk.
"Just like with anything we deal with on our own, things can feel very lonely and isolating. But it's important to know that you're not alone, and you can learn to cope with your emotions differently no matter where you are on your journey with your emotional health or nutrition choices."
17. Ask yourself if you're really hungry.
"When you have a need to fuel your body with food, you will likely experience physical hunger signs such as stomach emptiness and growling, or weakness and fatigue," says Smith. To stop emotional eating, "learn how to identify head hunger versus physical hunger. Being able to identify true physical hunger will help you better understand when your body actually needs fuel." One of the best ways to do this is by using a hunger scale.
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03
Chaim Bloom’s Diamond Life
When you walk into the office of Chaim Bloom, the senior vice president of baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, one of the first things that stands out is a large jar of gefilte fish.
It has been there for over a decade, a testament to one of the most unusual—and certainly one of the most Jewish—bets in baseball history. As Bloom explains, the fish is a holdover from Passover circa 2006-2007. Thanks to the holiday’s dietary restrictions, Bloom subsists throughout on jars of store-bought gefilte fish that he brings to the office. That year, one of the team’s longtime employees was passing through and asked about the stuff.
Did Bloom like it? The man inquired dubiously. “I said, ‘No, I actually think it’s sort of gross, but it’s just kind of what you do,’” Bloom recalled, “Which I do—I think it’s sort of gross.” Bloom promptly offered his interlocutor a taste, who declined. “He said, ‘No way, that sounds terrible.’” Then, however, came the challenge: “He said, ‘I’ll tell you what, if we win the World Series, I’ll eat that jar of gefilte fish.’”
“So now we’re still waiting 10-plus years later, but I have not gotten rid of the jar,” said Bloom. “I don’t know if it’s actually still edible. But we’re gonna find out.”
Because if there’s one thing Bloom intends to do, it’s to win that World Series. At age 36, the Yale-educated executive oversees some 200 employees at what the New York Times calls “baseball’s most innovative think tank,” the Tampa Bay Rays. Last season, the team had the sixth-best record in the American League, despite running the lowest payroll of all 30 teams in the sport. The Rays’ ability to outperform their resources and expectations has put Bloom in high demand. Over the summer, he was runner-up for the position of New York Mets general manager, and he has been courted by many other clubs looking to integrate the techniques that have bolstered the Rays.
How did a Jewish day school kid from Philadelphia rise to the upper echelons of baseball? What are the secrets to his team’s success? And does anyone actually know how to pronounce his name? I spent some time shadowing Bloom as he oversaw the end of spring training to find out.
***
There is only one Rays executive whose official bio begins with a pronunciation guide for his first name: “HIGH-em” Bloom. I asked Bloom if he often finds himself in the position of explaining to people in the industry how to say it. “All the time,” he said. Most people, he added, “figure it out or they figure out something close enough that they can call me.” He’s given up on the guttural “ch” sound, though. “The ‘ch’ to me is sort of a varsity-level thing with my name,” he joked. “In this game, if the worst thing you’re being called is some mispronounced version of your actual name, you’re doing pretty well.”
Rays General Manager Erik Neander, Bloom’s partner in crime in running the team, remembers how one security guard on their floor would regularly call him “Chaym.” Bloom never corrected him, so at one point, Neander called out of his office to helpfully offer the proper pronunciation. “The guy looked at the nameplate on Chaim’s office again and was like, ‘nah,’ and kept going with Chaym,” Neander recalled with a chuckle.
Of course, the name isn’t the only thing that tips people off about Bloom’s Jewishness. As the gefilte fish in his office shows, there’s also his unusual diet. “His kashrut is one of the things about his Judaism, other than obviously his name, that people notice the most,” his wife, Aliza Hochman Bloom, told me, “because he eats a lot and because there are notable things that he can’t eat all the time.” Bloom visits every Rays minor league affiliate each year, and whether he’s taking staff out to eat or dining in the clubhouse, the restrictions are readily apparent and accommodated by the team chefs. “He’s been with the organization for 14 years,” said Hochman Bloom. “They all know.”
Bloom and Hochman met at Yale, where he studied classics and dreamed of a career in baseball. They split up when he graduated in 2004 and left to work as a summer intern for the San Diego Padres, but reconnected years later. He would visit her in New York, where Hochman attended Columbia Law School, and she would visit him in Tampa, where he’d begun working for the Rays. Today, they live with their two sons in St. Petersburg, close to Tropicana Field, in part so that Bloom is able to return home on Friday nights and make Shabbat with the family, before returning to the stadium to watch the Rays play on homestands.
“The idea that your Judaism is an impediment to your career is something that I have not experienced at all, to my knowledge,” Bloom told me, “even as I’m aware that there’s plenty of anti-Semitism in the U.S. at large. I’m fortunate. I don’t think my parents felt that growing up; I think they felt it was a strike against them.”
“People have been awesome, incredibly respectful of everything having to do with it,” he said. But while the Rays have been very accommodating of Bloom’s Jewish practice, the Jewish calendar has been less forgiving when it comes to the Rays. Back in 2011, the team found itself in a clinching final game against the New York Yankees that would determine whether the Rays would make the playoffs. The catch: It was on Rosh Hashanah.
The contest was the capstone event of a historic comeback. At the start of September, the final month of the season, the Rays had trailed the Boston Red Sox for the final playoff spot—the Wild Card—by nine games. No team in baseball history had ever overcome a deficit that large to make the postseason. The Rays needed one more win to accomplish the feat. It was the sort of moment every baseball executive and player lives for. But Bloom had other commitments to honor.
“Leaving town that morning to go to Boston to spend Rosh Hashanah with my in-laws was one of the more difficult things we’d done in my career,” he recalled. “Basically, I decided that my commitments to my family were more important than being around for a game whose outcome I was at that point not going to be able to influence.”
“I can only imagine how painful it must have been for him to miss it,” said Neander. In the end, the baseball gods—and perhaps the Jewish God—smiled on the Rays. They defeated the Yankees in dramatic fashion, coming back after trailing 7-0 in the eighth inning, and sniped the playoff spot from the Red Sox at the finish line. “I’m not sure there were that many baseball fans celebrating in the Boston suburbs that night,” said Bloom, “but my in-laws’ household certainly was.”
***
Star players like Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg famously opted not to play on Yom Kippur. That Bloom would follow in their footsteps, after a fashion, is no surprise given his background. He attended Jewish day schools in Philadelphia, first Solomon Schechter and then Akiba Academy. His mother is a recently retired Hebrew and French teacher. His cousin is Yale Judaic Studies professor (and Tablet contributor) Eli Stern. His wife’s uncle, who performed their wedding, is Rabbi Lyle Fishman of Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Maryland, whose connection to Bloom was memorably uncovered by a popular baseball podcast:
But beyond balancing his Jewish life and baseball life, Bloom has his work cut out for him with the Rays. Because the team perennially runs one of the lowest payrolls in the sport, it has much less margin for error than big spenders like the New York Yankees. Cash-flush franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox are like pitchers who throw 100 miles an hour—the extra oomph on the fastball, like the extra money, enables them to get away with many more mistakes and still overpower their adversaries by sheer brute force. The Rays, by contrast, are the crafty finesse pitcher of baseball franchises, the sort of player who compensates for the lack of mustard on his fastball by locating it exceptionally well. In practice, this means that Bloom and Neander are constantly looking for the next competitive edge over their better-funded opponents.
Last year, they found one.
Perhaps no innovation has more fundamentally changed the game of baseball in the last decade than one that the Rays introduced last season: “the opener.” Traditionally, baseball teams have fielded a five-man rotation of starting pitchers, each one of whom is expected to pitch the bulk of the game that he starts. Faced with a spate of injuries to their starters and a thin roster of credible replacements, however, the Rays did something in 2018 that no team had done before. They began using their best relief pitchers to “open” their games, before replacing them with the normal starter, who would pitch a handful of innings before giving way to other relievers. Essentially, instead of one pitcher going as far into the game as he was able, the Rays opted for a calculated tag-team approach.
The strategy behind the opener was simple. Major League teams stack their line-ups with their best hitters at the top, to ensure that those hitters get the maximum number of plate appearances per game. That means that the most dangerous hitters come up in the first inning. This is particularly perilous for many starters, who work with multiple pitches and tend to use that inning to figure out which are working and how the ball is moving. For this reason, across the league, starting pitchers typically give up the most runs in the first inning. Relief pitchers, unlike starters, tend to have fewer pitches and are trained to enter the game in the middle of jams and be immediately effective. While they don’t have the deep arsenal or arm strength to start games and go many innings, they are uniquely suited to taking on the top of the line-up. Realizing this, the Rays decided to put their pitchers in the best position to succeed, which meant using relievers in the first inning, before having the “starter” enter and begin their day against weaker hitters.
The gambit worked. The team went from having one of the worst records in baseball before the opener, to one of the best by the end of the season. Their pitching staff’s earned run average clocked in at 3.76 per nine innings, the second best in the American League, trailing only the defending World Champion Astros. But the greatest evidence of their stratagem’s success was how it spread. Across the league, other teams began deploying openers, and while the Rays did not make the playoffs, others in the postseason used openers throughout, including the Oakland Athletics and Colorado Rockies. As one baseball analyst put it, “Because the Rays volunteered to go first, and because the Rays have been successful, other teams are more motivated and willing to play around with the starting-pitcher role.”
I asked Bloom how the decision to use an opener came about. He said that it wasn’t the result of any single conversation, and it wasn’t even entirely the Rays’ own idea. “This is not something that we had just come up with, or necessarily that we came up with at all,” he explained. “This is something that I think was part of baseball conversations certainly for as long as I’ve been in the game.” Many teams had pondered whether there might be a more efficient way to use their pitchers, rather than cramming them into a rigid rotational structure. But until 2018, none had done much about it.
Part of the problem was simply the reputational risk of trying something new. “If you do something conventionally and it doesn’t work, you don’t take the blame,” noted Bloom. “If you do something differently and it doesn’t work, you’re going to be under a microscope, and people are going to be pointing fingers at you.” He credits his organizational staff for taking the plunge. “They were unafraid to risk that.”
The other difficulty was the human component. Even if the opener concept looked good on paper, executing it meant getting players who had trained to play the game one way to play it very differently. “It’s easy to come up with an idea,” said Bloom. “The trick is implementing the idea and communicating it and getting buy-in and getting everybody on board.” In other words, rather than treating players like cogs in a machine who can be manipulated at will, one has to treat them like human beings. “Our field staff did such a tremendous job of that,” Bloom continued. “They were willing to put in the hard work of communicating to the players: This is what we’re doing, and why. Here’s how we think it can help you, and how we think it can help us win games.” The results were apparent in interviews with Rays pitchers, who became enthusiastic evangelists for the opener.
***
This careful process was emblematic of Bloom’s people-first approach to baseball. On paper, he is easy to typecast as an Ivy League nerd who entered baseball at the height of the Moneyball statistical revolution, and who came to upend the traditions of the game with computational analysis. Because of his age and background, many presume that Bloom is the sort of person more comfortable with databases and spreadsheets than actual players, coaches, and staff. But while Bloom is certainly fluent in advanced analytics, that’s not his calling card.
This was evident when we sat behind home plate watching the Rays take on the Phillies in one of the final games of spring training. Throughout the contest, Bloom ticked off not numbers, but the names of individual prospects, where they signed from, and what was exciting about them.
“I think that because of Yale, and Classics, and frankly the name ‘Chaim,’ people assume that he’s a quant-guy, and what they don’t realize is that he’s a hangout guy,” said his wife, Aliza. “He’s the one who stays in the clubhouse having beers with them until really late. He’s the one who all the training staff and the strength and conditioning guys and the coaches go to when they want to talk about something personal.”
“It’s easy to stereotype Chaim,” said Neander, “because of his age and his Ivy League education, as one of those people”—stat-heads with disdain for the old guard—“but Chaim is the furthest thing from them. He has deep respect for the game and knowledge of its history.”
That respect is evident from his office, which aside from gefilte fish, is filled with baseball memorabilia. Much of it pertains to Don Zimmer, the legendary infielder who spent six decades as a player, manager, and coach for countless Major League teams. He died in 2014, in the employ of the Rays, where he served as a senior adviser. “I miss him, so I like keeping that stuff out there,” Bloom said quietly. “He was a pretty special guy.” The two shared a personal bond. In his final years, Zimmer was no longer able to sit in the Rays stands for the entire game, but “he would still come pre-game and hang out with the staff and he would watch the first few innings on TV in the clubhouse” before going home. “So I used to watch the first couple innings of most games with him,” said Bloom. “And then you lose him and you’re really glad you did that, because you never know how much time you have left with somebody.”
As Hochman Bloom puts it, when it comes to baseball, “the thing Chaim loves the most is the relationships.” Bloom himself credits the Jewish values he was raised with for instilling this sensitivity to the human side of his work. “This is a very competitive business,” he said. “It’s a zero-sum business and we’re all fighting over the same number of wins every year, and there is that cutthroat aspect of it. But one of the things that I’ve learned over time, which I think ties into my upbringing and the Jewish values I was brought up with, is that in whatever you do, whatever passion you follow, whatever line of work you’re in, there are opportunities every day to bring your values positively to people.”
“I think I probably fall short every day of doing that perfectly well,” he continued, “but it’s something that as I’ve gone on in my career, I see more and more.” Not only is being attentive to the needs of everyone he oversees “important to me personally, but I think it makes me better at my job, and I can trace a lot of that to the values that I was brought up with about recognizing that there are things beyond you and your own desires, and that the impact you have on other people and on the world is really important.”
“That can be true in any walk of life,” he said, “and I’ve found that certainly in this business, it’s true every day.”
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Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Subscribe to his newsletter, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
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