Madeline
Obsessing over food is now a great American pastime. Restaurant dishes, fast food, and packaged food all are loaded with fat, sugar, and salt. Just the way we like it. There is now an anti culture to fight the love of these types of food. This is why we not only have a food culture but also a dieting culture to counteract the food culture that has been developed.
Personally, being a big supporter of the Keto diet, I have bought into this a bit. But I have come to learn, eating all the fatty protein I can stuff into my mouth is not the way to change my weight and feel satisfied. I need a bit more. Hence learning how to eat to lose.
Premise Of Mindless Eating
The entire premise of this book, Mindless Eating, is that weight loss can be done slowly by making very small changes to how you eat. We use queues to know when to stop eating and there are small hacks to change these queues to cut out a hundred or so calories a day. Since our bodies will barely notice such a small change, changing how to eat instead of what to eat can lead to a weight loss that sticks without cutting anything out.
Examples of Changes To Make To Learn How to Eat To Lose
Each person will need to make their own changes. For example, I have never liked soda, so all queues about how to cut down on soda, do not apply to me. Same for adding vegetables to my diet, I have been doing this for years. That being said, I still eat more of everything than I should. So to help get an idea of suggestions given in Mindless Eating, these are the things I plan to change:
- Smaller dishes: A smaller dish means putting less food on it. Less food on a single plate means less food to be eaten in that particular sitting.
- Putting away food after serving: Along with smaller dishes, if I make it more difficult to get seconds, I will think about it before I get up and heat up a new plate. I now am both eating a smaller portion and only getting up for seconds if I am hungry enough to do so.
- Skipping the variety when eating out especially when ordering in: The more variety, the more likely a person will jump around from food to food. With less variety, a person will get burned out quicker and not be likely to eat more. When ordering Chinese food, I get at least three dishes and appetizers. If instead I order one or two and that is it, I am likely to put only a few things on my small plate and not feel like I am missing out on any of the other dishes.
- Tracking alcoholic drinks: It is not unlike me to have a martini more than I should. My solution to this is to be aware of how much I am drinking and gamily it. This is easier than tracking food as a drink is a drink and although a beer has different calories than a vodka soda, the difference is much smaller than an apple compared to a hamburger.
- Continue to focus on vegetables: The perfect proportion is 50% vegetables and 50% protein and starches.
- Learn to be okay with leaving food on the plate: A common queue and one I know I have is that I am not done eating when I am full. I am done eating when the plate is empty. My goal is to remove that queue and be okay with leaving food on the plate even if it is a single bite.
- Eat with the slowest eater at the table: When eating with others, not to start before them and to pay attention to the slowest eater at the table. This gives time for my body to tell me I am full and also for the opportunity to check in with myself now and again through the meal.
Final Thoughts
Does this work? It is too early to tell. What I can comment on is that I am eating less than I normally would at any given meal. In theory, these calories I am not consuming should add up and get me to lose the weight I have been struggling to get off with just the Keto Diet and work outs. The one word of caution I will give, is that changing the way I eat because I now have these rules will likely result in weight gain. At this point, I am going to just keep chugging along.
