Satisfaction – aka Portion Control

September 21, 2012 1 Comment

If you have been following my weekly menus you may have noticed that they really don’t sound all that much like diet food. Yeah, we eat lots of fruits and veggies, but you will never see a week full of salad or anything close to a juice cleanse. You will never see me recommend low-fat or light products (I’ll explain more about this particular bit in a later post). So you may be wondering, how can this girl be eating this stuff, like homemade buttery croissants and biscuits and gravy made with whole milk, and have lost all this weight?

There are two reasons that this has worked for me. One reason is compensation, which I will be covering in a blog post later on. The other reason is portion control.

Ok, stop right there! I saw the little dialogue that just went through your head.  “Portion control, blah, blah. I’ve heard all this before, and it never works for me because I just get too hungry! I guess I’ll skip this blog post.” But hang in there! This girl talking to you is the one that used to eat a dozen cookies in one sitting. I totally get it, I know what it’s like to be hungry, to want to keep eating until I feel like I am going to burst. I just thought I wasn’t a person who could eat the smaller portions and be satisfied.

What I have learned is that that word right there, “satisfied,” is the key. What you are really wanting at the end of the meal is not to feel stuffed, bloated and yucky. What you are wanting is to feel satisfied. The hard part is that most of us have been trained to satisfy ourselves with quantity instead of quality. We eat until we are stuffed and we associate that feeling with satisfaction.

So how do you achieve satisfaction without stuffing your guts? Here are a few tricks I have learned.

1. Eat high quality food. It’s so simple, if you eat good quality food, it will take less of it to make you feel full. Not only is the food naturally more filling, but you will enjoy the experience more, and therefore be more satisfied. Eating high quality food doesn’t mean eating expensive food, and it doesn’t mean eating food that is complicated or takes a lot of time. It simply means eating food made with wholesome, unprocessed ingredients. Buy whole fruits and veggies to cook with, avoid premade meals in the freezer section or anything that comes in a box or a jar and avoid anything that has a huge list of ingredients on the package, especially if most of them sound like some crazy science experiment.

2. Make eating an experience. Shut off the TV, shut the laptop, walk away from any and all distractions. Sit down at the table with people you love and enjoy food together. Even better, take the time to get out your pretty serving dishes and your fancy tablecloth, light some candles and make it an experience. Why do we have to wait for a special occasion to get these things out? Isn’t spending quality time with your family enjoying a meal special occasion enough, even though it’s a Wednesday night and you’ll be leaving for dance lessons right after dinner? Setting the scene for a dinner experience makes even the most boring dinner extra special, and the entire experience more satisfying. Did you know that lighting a few candles and sitting down together at the table would help you eat less? Pretty awesome, right?

3. Learn to enjoy cooking. I’m not saying you have to be good at it, although that will automatically come with time and practice. I’m saying that taking whole ingredients and making them come together into a meal can be immensely satisfying. Again, this doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated, sometimes the most simple dishes can be the most delicious. Watch cooking shows (Tyler Florence is a handsome man who makes delicious food, his shows are not a bad place to start), read cooking blogs, try strange recipes you never would have tried before, play fun music while you cook and get your family involved in the kitchen. Your eating experience can start in the kitchen before you even start eating, and it all adds up to a more satisfying experience overall.

4. Use smaller plates and spread out your food. Here is my dinner from last night:

Coconut ginger chicken over brown rice. It was super yummy. But here’s a secret. That plate right there? That’s a salad plate. We have the gigantic dinner plates in the cupboard and I still use them sometimes, but I’ve found that if I grab a salad plate and really spread out my food to cover it, it feels like more, and I feel more satisfied. Yes, I’m playing mind games with myself, but it really works! A teeny portion swimming all alone in the middle of a giant plate just makes me feel deprived, starts me thinking about seconds before I’ve even had a second bite of my firsts. But that plate above was very satisfying, the perfect amount of food. I also have the problem of being a plate cleaner. I’ve heard it preached over and over that you need to stop eating when you are full, but I just can’t seem to do it! I have a hard time stopping until the plate is empty, so if I start with a smaller plate with less food, it’s ok that I just can’t follow this one piece of advice.
5. Slow down! I know, I know! I have a million things I need to do, too, and I’m terrible about scarfing my dinner in about two seconds so that I can get on with life. You’ve heard it a million times, I’m sure, but it takes about 20 minutes for the message to get from your belly to your head that you are full. Usually by then most of us have eaten so much that we suddenly feel very overfull, bloated and gross. I used to think that my belly had two settings, starving and stuffed. It is so much more pleasant to be simply full, satisfied without the bloat. Slowing down also gives you the time to really experience your food. What do you really think of the texture of the dish? What different flavors are you experiencing? What do you think would make this meal better the next time you make it? Are you putting your fork down between bites so that you can really focus on what you are tasting? Or are you getting the next bite ready to shovel in as fast as possible?
6. Load the plate with veggies and eat those first. On the nights we have something more indulgent for dinner (homemade mac’n’cheese with 5 different cheese, caramelized onions and bacon anyone?) I will take a small serving of whatever deliciousness we are having and then I will fill the rest of the plate with salad or whatever veggies we are having or both. I will eat the veggies first and then take my time enjoying the rest. I have been able to lose tons of weight while still eating all my favorite foods this way, all while still feeling satisfied!
One last story before I go. I once heard a story about a woman who had lost a whole bunch of weight, and not long after she had some friends over for dinner. She was a fantastic cook, and the subject of conversation of course turned to how she could possibly have lost so much weight while eating such delicious food. One of her dinner guests, pointing at her piece of yummy cake for dessert, laughed and said, “If only you could make something this good with half the calories, maybe I’d lose weight, too!” The woman laughed back, and then reached over and removed half the piece of cake from her friend’s plate. Voila! Wish granted. I love that story!

 

1 thought on “Satisfaction – aka Portion Control”

  1. OMG OMG that last story is awesome!!!! I love it. I have a serious problem with portion control and consistency. I don’t go on fad diets but even saying I am going to eat healthy lasts 2 wks max… well sorry 3 months when I went to the naturopath and after it didn’t seem to make a diff with my pain I slowly went back to eating blah. But love that cutting it in half.
    However then I get back to the I am still hungry. Hubby and I can eat the same breakfast and same portion and he will say whew, I am stuffed, me oh really I can eat more usually toast… and yes it can be we, multi grain or gluten free ( I don’t eat soft processed even more bread) and I can eat 2 more slices if I let myself. He says your saity switch is broken. I am beginning to wonder…. and I am 57 and about 40 lbs overweight with arthritis and fibromyalgia.

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