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October 18, 2005

Just some techniques I use

I’ve been asked how I manage portion control. Answer: Not very well. It’s the biggest challenge. Here are some of my techniques.

1. When eating out I encourage people to have some of my food. So basically I try and pass it off before I dig into it. Most often I’m forcing my husband to eat it.
2. Again when eating out I visually cut the portion in half and force myself to stop there. I also don’t eat anything that wasn’t served on my main plate. So no extras.
3. At home I gorge myself on a steamed veggie of some kind, chased with crystal light lemonade, so I leave little room for anything else.
4. I buy snack sized bags of microwave popcorn. That is my indulgent snack (so sad, but I do love it)
5. I rip my husband a new one if he puts a huge plate of tater tots on the table and expects me to grab only the nine allotted by the portion size. If he doesn’t portion out my nine and hide the rest I beat him up.
6. On that note, I only make my meals serving sizes that I could live with eating the whole thing. I’ll never expect myself to leave leftovers.
7. I never take leftovers home from a restaurant. Sometimes my husband does, but I refuse to eat leftovers now.
8. The best bet is to limit eating out as much as I can.
9. Try to come up with meals that are low in fat, calories, and carbs but have a lot of mass. Something like a big bowl of steamed broccoli and two veggie dogs (one with bun, one without) with tons of sauerkraut, mustard and ketchup.
10. I never pick at or taste anything unless it’s my dedicated meal.
11. Knowing that I eat like boulder going down hill, picking up momentum until I can pretty much level a city, I only eat three meals a day. If I tried to eat 5 small meals it would really be 5 too big meals. I have the occasional popcorn snack when I’m watching TV at night.

Another thing that I noticed has helped me A LOT is not watching TV and not buying magazines. Not just because TV is a sedentary activity but I think that it’s damaging to be exposed to those unrealistic body images and life styles. I think they affect us even more than we are conscious of. I do watch some TV but I’ve chosen a few shows I want to watch and only watch TV during them. The TV has to be off before and after, etc. I also don’t chose to watch shows that have an ongoing story line, so I don’t ever feel like I have to watch them. Don’t get me wrong, this was hard for me. I love TV. I had to cancel cable to make this work. I keep telling myself I’ll buy something nice with the $55 bucks I save each month (and that was for the bare minimum!)

Not watching TV has also helped me develop more of an imagination. I know it sounds corny but figuring out what to do with my free time and putting more effort into it (since TV requires no effort) has strengthened my ability to battle the food cravings, etc.

Posted by hopeful @ October 18, 2005 10:30 AM