The one thing that has made the biggest difference in both my body and my lifestyle is savoring my food. Paying attention while I eat leaves me satisfied after every meal, even with smaller portions on my plate.
Imagine a moist dark-as-night piece of chocolate cake is placed in front of you. Most people take one bite, emit some sort of grunt of delight, and then shovel the rest of the cake down their gullet in less time than it takes for a toddler to discover how to unroll toilet paper. When they finish the last two bites, slowing down at last because they see the end is nigh, they sigh and wish for more because “that was so good!” This is how I used to eat cake. And lasagna, and fries, and ice cream, and cereal, and steak and everything.
Next time you have cake, try this instead: savor every bite. That’s right, EVERY bite. Take a bite, emit grunt, take a bite, make mm-mm-mmm! sound, take a bite, paint the inside of your mouth chocolate with your tongue, and so on. Pay attention to the texture, the flavor, the contrast of cake and icing. I guarantee that by the time you’ve finished your piece of cake, you will not want a second piece. Why? You’re bored! Seriously. Five or ten minutes of thinking only about cake is way more time than you need to cover all the bases.
The definition of savor is to “taste (good food or drink) and enjoy it completely.” Food as entertainment; what an interesting thought!
When I savor my food, I find myself feeling grateful for my abundance and for my taste buds. If you look at the anatomy of the human mouth, we were created to enjoy eating. Carnivore teeth can bite and swallow, but not chew. Herbivore teeth can chew, but really, how many taste buds would you want if you were chewing lunch for the fourth time? Don’t get me started on jellyfish; their mouth is also their anus, so you know they thank God that they don’t have taste buds. (And I thank God that I’m not a jellyfish!) The point is, God created food to have flavor and our mouths to detect those flavors. Just as I realize how blessed I am with my family when I pause and think about it, I am more thankful for my food when I pause and think about it. (If I’m inaccurate with the biology lesson, forgive me; I’m still convinced that humans have the best deal meal-wise.)
Paying attention while you eat is harder than it sounds. I never used to sit down to eat without something to do: talk with someone, read something, watch TV. It still feels weird to sit at an empty table and focus on my food, but I enjoy what I eat so much more now.
About a year ago my mom said something that sounded crazy to me at first. She said, “I’m not going to eat Hershey’s chocolate anymore.” But Mom, that reduces your chocolate options by, like, 90%! What kind of insanity is this?!
She loves Harry and David’s dark chocolate truffles and she has good reason to: they’re awesome. They’re so awesome, in fact, that Mom decided not to waste her time, money, or calories on sub-par chocolate. She became a chocolate snob. And she should be applauded!
We need to learn not only to enjoy our food while we eat it so that we don’t wish for more when it’s gone, but we also need to learn to stop eating foods that are not worthy of our time, money, and calories. At church potlucks and family dinners, I used to finish anything I put on my plate, whether it was fabulous, fairly good, or future compost. Now I try many things, but only finish what tastes fabulous, especially when it comes to desserts. If I’m only supposed to consume X number of calories per day, I’m not going to waste them on mediocre food. Does that make me a snob? Yes it does. But I’d rather be a food snob than eat like a garbage disposal as I used to.
There’s one exception to savoring your food, of course: vegetables! Feel free to shovel your veggies in like you’re stoking the engine of an express train. Don’t get me wrong, vegetables can be fabulous (if yours aren’t, try adding garlic) and they should be savored. But if you don’t particularly like veggies and you’re only eating them because they’re good for you, then don’t savor them.
You know how sometimes you just want to plant yourself in front of the TV and stuff your face? You’re not hungry, particularly, but you want that repetitive plate-to-face action happening? Choose a veggie. It’s mindless eating, so do it with a food that won’t hamper your goal when consumed in large quantities.
“So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 8:15
I want you to put your foot in your mouth. Portion control is a big factor in weight loss and healthy eating and –whoa, hey! I did not think you were that flexible. Get your toes away from your nose, it was only a metaphor. I just meant that your foot is about the size of a properly proportioned meal.
Eating proper portion sizes is easy to do with the measuring tools you have on you: your fists. Your two fists are the size of your one stomach, so you can use your fists to quickly gauge how much food will fill your belly. A meal is equal to four fists and two of those fists should be fruits or vegetables. Four fists is roughly the size of your foot, so when you’ve put your foot in your mouth, you stop eating. I repeat: you stop eating. It’s that simple and it’s that hard.
Another study found that eating smaller bites (nickel sized) and chewing a little longer (9 seconds) helped participants eat 65% less food than those who took larger bites (3 nickels) and chewed less (3 seconds). That’s a lot of numbers… look, forget the numbers and just make an effort to chew more and eat more slowly. The longer you take to eat, the more time your stomach has to notify your brain that it’s full. Perhaps it’s not the amount of food on the plate, but the time we spend eating that makes us feel satisfied. Metaphoric translation: put your foot in your mouth and nibble your toes. If you’re still hungry after eating two fists of food and two fists of veggies, keep thinking about feet near your mouth. Toe jam near your tongue, bunions touching your boca, sweaty soles approaching your saliva… your appetite should disappear in no time.
Calories to count
Count, count, count your calories
Halloween night after the kids are in bed, my husband and I have a naughty ritual: we claim our “Parent Tax” from the kids’ candy bags – preferred payment is in chocolate – and we gorge ourselves on candy bars we haven’t tasted since last Halloween. Candy is a rarity in our house for the simple reason that if we have it, I eat it and if we don’t, I don’t. To stay on track with my health and weight loss goals, I’ve created a Post Halloween Candy Survival Guide for my benefit and, hopefully, yours.
Samaritan’s Purse runs 
Another option is 
5. Make yourself a rule and stick to it. For example, you can eat a snack sized Twix only after you’ve done ten push-ups and thirty sit-ups and jogged up and down the stairs twice. Whatever balances you out calorie-wise so that your net intake is zero.
Freeze it/Hide it. Chocolate keeps for a nice long time in the freezer and if you hide it in the back or in a freezer in the garage, you’ll probably forget it’s there. When you do remember, the frozen solid nature of the treat slows down how many you can consume before you come to your senses. For non-chocolate candy, hide it somewhere you don’t go often, like with the dusting supplies or filed with the income tax papers. When a birthday rolls around and it’s your turn to fill a piñata or party favor bags, pull out your hidden stash and you’re ready to go!
Most of us want to eat healthier than we do now and in general there are two ways to go about it: the Tortoise and the Hare. The Hare jumps in with both feet: throw out the junk food, learn to cook tofu, and say goodbye to bread, dairy, sugar, fat, and caffeine. The Hare is quick and passionate and her way works well unless you really want to eat bread, dairy, sugar, fat, and caffeine. It’s hard to say goodbye forever. I prefer to say “I need some space! But we can still be friends so don’t leave town.”
The taste of real syrup is a little different than the fake stuff. If your kids balk at change, try mixing the real and fake maple syrups. I started with a 50:50 ratio mixed in a squeeze bottle. Each time the mixture bottle ran out of syrup, I filled it with a slightly higher ratio of pure syrup to fake: 60:40, 70:20, etc. until I eventually set out that same bottle with pure maple syrup and my kids didn’t notice. Pure maple syrup is more expensive, but your kids will be pouring minerals and antioxidants on their pancakes; totally worth it. To use less syrup, give each kid a small bowl of syrup and have them dip each bite of pancake into the bowl. No more cries of “my syrup is gone! I need more!” as it soaks into the pancake.
-Veggies for noodles: noodles are delicious, but most of the time they’re smothered in some sort of sauce and we can’t taste them, so why not smother vegetables instead? Layer sliced eggplant in your lasagna, grate zucchini into your ziti, and sauté some thinly sliced cabbage for spaghetti sauce and meatballs.
Sex, Soup, and 2 Fisted Eating 