To re-iterate, lowering your expectations as to how much food you think you need is key to getting your food consumption in line with your actual physical needs and not your emotional or psychic needs. I'm sure we all can think of examples where our eyes got too big for our stomachs, and you can also probably think of other people's over ambition when it comes time to order or fill their plates. A lot of it has to do with the situation, eg. if we're at a holiday feast or an all you can eat buffet ( going to those is just setting yourself up for over-indulgence), where we are expected to "put on the feed bag". What I'm talking about here, though, is everyday practices, because it's not what you do once in awhile, it's what you do on a daily basis that makes the difference. Now, if you go to all-you-can-eat buffets often then you are asking to be in the super heavy weight crowd.
I'm going to share with you a fairly recent example of how someone I worked with let his runaway conception of his appetite order a bunch of food he did not need nor could finish. It was around lunch time and my stomach was telling me I needed to put something in it, because when I get hungry I can't concentrate, and do things of a mental nature (I do not do physical work for a living anymore). That is because I'm just sitting there not doing anything physical, if I were doing manual labor or exercising the pure physical exertion would override the appetite, and the appetite only comes back when we stop what were doing and rest for a while. If you doubt me try working out before dinner, and then go right to the table after your workout. You won't have an appetite for about twenty to thirty minutes after you stopped working out. I may have just hit on a good weight loss technique there. Anyway, back to my to story, so I'm thinking about going to Taco Bell for one of those burritos I'd seen them advertise for 89 cents, a good sized and good quality sandwich for next to nothing in price. How can you beat it? Well I made the mistake of announcing that I was going out and if anybody wanted anything brought back. I say mistake because my boss decided to take me up on it. Well he's a "stocky" guy in his mid-thirties who still has these grand delusions, shall we say, of how much food he needs to order when it's time to eat. He proceeds to order five (5!) hard shell tacos. I guess that was just the appetizer course because then he said to get him one of these "grande" something platters. If that weren't enough he added some other item to it that was a stand alone meal in itself. OK, I asked for it, so what's the problem? All I had to do was just pick it up, right? Well, it was a mistake because he did not have any cash on him. Typical boss, right? My spend went from less than a dollar to twenty bucks and some change! Here I am trying to economize in this hard-scrabble economy that's so hard to make a buck in, and I get way-layed having to shell out enough for twenty lunches if I ate that special burrito everyday! I rationalized it because he is a generous guy who buys pizza for the office frequently, and it was just my turn to reciprocate.
As it turns out, he gets burned-out trying to force feed himself all that food before he's even half way through what he ordered. So he ended up giving it to this other young guy in the office who had the good fortune of just walking in after a morning of beating the bushes on the street. My boss did give it his best shot at trying to finish, though. As a result he was painfully stuffed to the gills and in that semi-comatose state that we all seem to find ourselves in after gorging ourselves on a Thanks Giving Day feast. Well, this is a pretty regular occurrence for him, almost daily I would say. I mean you could count on hearing him say everyday after lunch "Oh God, am I stuffed!" This is just a long standing habit with him, and, regrettably, he has the girth to prove it. The guy is carrying about fifty pounds too much weight. I think it's pretty obvious why. It's what he does almost systematically on a daily basis. OVER EAT! He has programmed himself to do it. That's what I'm talking about with Tip#1. I'm Basically giving you a way to gradually de-program yourself from your destructive over-eating habits, and it starts with what portion you allot for yourself before you put the first bite in your mouth.
See Tip #1
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