How To Improve Your Eating Style

Try and reflect for a minute what your eating style says about you.  What are your thoughts towards food, and what food means to you? Do you eat to survive, to enjoy, or both? What about your speed to get through meals and the quantity you consume in a single serving.

The people who struggle with overweight problems often have common features of an eating style that encourages excess weight gain.  For instance do you gulp down your food in a hurry or eat on the go?  Do you pile heaps of food on your plate?  Do you push another bite into your mouth before finishing the last one?  Eating too much and too fast are two common habits that trigger weight gain.

When you eat too fast, your brain doesn’t have the opportunity to acknowledge that your body has been fed and turn off the hunger signal.  Since it takes roughly 20 minutes before your brain receives the ‘full’ signal from your stomach and intestines, if you eat too fast, you will be overfilled and bloated by the time the signal reaches your brain.

Experts suggest two methods you can adopt immediately which will encourage you to increase the time you spend on eating: 1. Decrease the amount of food you eat, and 2. Teach yourself to enjoy your food more.  These techniques are not as easy as you think, so the best advice is to take one task at a time, adjust it into your eating style before you go on to the next. 

1. Put your fork, knifes or spoons down between each bite

Practice this technique first because it will greatly increase the amount of time you spend eating.  This is how to do it.  Put your fork or spoon down after putting a portion of food into your mouth, and don’t pick up, or put another bite on it, until you have swallowed the previous bite. It takes a lot of conscious effort to practice this strategy without the temptation to quickly grab another bite. Start training your children on this technique so they grow with it.

Chatting with some friends about this tip, the reaction is that if you’re served individually that works because then you can control the pace of your eating. But when you have to share food in a big dish with 10 hungry adults, then you had better be fast! Otherwise you’ll remain perpetually hungry. Food for thought, yeah?

2. Stop at some point during the meal for three minutes and don’t eat at all.

Wow‼  Seems like a tall order.  Don't worry if you can only pause for one minute at first.  Keep working your way up to three minutes.  Anyway the point is to tune into how you're feeling at this point during the meal.  How does the food taste?  Are you beginning to feel satisfied?  How does the food feel in your body?  Another way to make you wait is to introduce another course into your meal.  Start your meal with a prawn cocktail or healthy vegetable salad.  When finished with the first course, clear the dishes and wait three to five minutes before serving the second course.  Spend this time taking deep breaths, tuning into your feeling.  If you’re having the meal with someone, engage in conversation during this waiting period.

I was out with my close friends to a restaurant, overseeing a beautiful lake. We had a three course meal served in four or five small plates per course. There were jumbo prawns with salad, grilled chicken wings. By the time I had about 4 jumbo prawns I was filled up. The second set of meal came in tiny bowls of fried rice, jollof rice and Basmati rice, a couple of fried plantains as garnish, grilled fish, side salad etc. I could only manage two tablespoon of fried rice with small pieces of grilled fish, though I must confess the dessert of chocolate cake, I couldn’t resist and ate with relish and without guilt. The beauty is that we were satisfied with little bits here and there; we took our time over each meal course, discussed, laughed and didn’t focus too much on the food, though delicious, but more on the fantastic outing and companionship.

3. Agree on portion

Before your meal, agree on the amount of food you will eat.   Controlling your share of food is a major factor in weight management.  Don’t let your eyes dictate what you pile on your plate.  The amount of food you eat should depend on your specific energy needs.  If there are high fat items in the meal, make it a special treat and take only a small portion.  Then eat the low fat, healthier, items as the bulk of your meal.

Several people are guilty in this aspect, whether at home or at a public function – so long as you have the privilege to pick your own food, or using the familiar phrase ‘serve yourself’. When you look at the combination of different foods on some people’s plate, you can’t resist gasping and wondering where all the food will go. The thinking probably is that ‘I better take what I can now, just in case it’s all gone when I decide to go for a second helping.’ The strategy is very clear on this, resist the temptation to let your eyes dictate your stomach; otherwise you eat too much or waste the food.

4. Cook only enough to eat for each meal

This may sound a bit stingy, considering our culture of offering food to our guest, hence making far more than the family require.  You’re likely to eat more if you prepare a large amount of food than you would if you had assessed the actual amount of food that will be eaten and cook accordingly.  Sounds a bit farfetched and I can feel some housewives’ pain.  Anyway, if you have to cook for the family, ensure there are no tempting leftovers, which lures you to go and have second or third helpings. Or better still, pack the remaining and stick in the freezer for another day when the urgent need arises.

5. Focus on your appetite.

It is common to begin a meal eating fairly rapidly when you are physically hungry, but midway into the meal your pace slows down.  Notice that as you progress through your meal, the food stop tasting delicious as when you first started. When you’re no longer feeling hungry and savouring your meal, it’s a sign to stop eating. Which again means it’s all about serving smaller portion of food to start with and then move to extra portions, if you’re still hungry.

6. It’s not a must to finish your food

Leaving unfinished food on your plate in some culture sends negative signals.  If you’re visiting, ensure you insist on what you can consume.  If you’re making your own, don’t be afraid to leave food on your plate.  As children we were always reminded of the poor who couldn’t afford to eat, as such we were reprimanded for leaving food on the plate.   It’s time to break free; it’s not a must to mop up all the food on your plate if you're already full. Then again it’s still about serving with caution initially.  

This having been said, it’s also important to keep food wastage to the minimum by learning to evaluate your hunger.  Take small portions that you’re likely to finish.  If you’re still hungry, go back for seconds and take a smaller portion.  If you do it this way, you save throwing a plate of food into the garbage.

7. Use a small plate

Using a small plate to serve your food is a smart way of controlling your portion and it may trick your mind into thinking you have fed your body more than you actually have.  Although this strategy will not be effective if at the end of the day you have helped yourself to two or three extra servings because it is a small plate.  It only works when you treat the small plate as a full size when it comes to portion control.

I have often joked about this ‘small plate’ strategy, particularly for those of us who are used to super-size plates. How do we cope? But the delightful thing you soon find out is that you will actually be filled and satisfied eating from a small plate. The only problem may be the food dropping on the table very often; then again you just have to master how to do it without dropping a piece of vegetable. Can you guess which plate has more food?

Photo Credit: Creative Commons.