What's portion paralysis?
That's when your brain and your eyes have become so accustomed to a particular portion size for a particular meal, that change isn't even remotely automatic.
But sometimes it's wise to reduce portions.
Take me for instance. In December I injured my back - pretty badly. Consequently my exercise regime went out the window. Rehab was very slow. Despite knowing better, I didn't adjust my portions with my drop off in exercise and sure enough, over 3 months time, I gained a tiny bit of weight.
When I realized what was going on, I resumed keeping a careful food diary and re-recognized which were my higher calorie meals.
One really stuck with me. It was pita pizza - a go-to meal for when I'm in a hurry and I want comfort-y food, but certainly not terrifically low in calories. Back in my exercising days, I'd have 3 pitas worth, and so my simple quick fix, was to downshift my pita pizza portion to only have 2. What was fascinating to me, was that especially when I was in a hurry or distracted, despite mentally decided to eat less, sometimes I'd literally forget.
And sometimes I still do, and before I know it, there are 3 out on the pizza stone.
It's important for me to mention, it's not because I'm still hungry after 2, that I eat 3. I think that it's just after years of always having 3, unless I consciously challenge my portion sizes, whether it's pita pizzas or otherwise, I automatically revert to my established larger portions.
I've lost the weight I gained, and I'm slowly starting to retrain, but given this experience I've taken to really analyzing what I feel I need portion wise prior to cooking or plating, and more often than not, I'm having just a tiny bit less than what had become habitual, and more importantly, I'm not missing what's gone.
Do you have any automated portions?
Posts
It's so easy to over-portion! For me, quantity has always trumped quality with respect to eating, I definitely appreciate the feeling of fullness moreso than exquisite taste. So I've learned to stuff my meals full of veggies, rather than anything more calorific.
ReplyDeleteAfter nearly 4 yrs of weighing/measuring pretty much everything, I've gotten scarily accurate at guesstimating portion size for meats & grains. However, after 42 yrs as a peanut butter addict I am sure I notoriously lowball the amount of the demon spread I am adding to my breakfast wrap and conveniently forget the spoonsful I shovel in my mouth whilst making the wrap.
ReplyDeleteWell I wouldn't exactly say suffer, but I have found recently that the amount of food I have put on my plate is more than I am comfortable eating. Seems that a recent reduction in activity level has resulted in less hunger. I do agree though that it takes a conscious effort to put less on the plate - if serving dinner on auto-pilot, appetite takes over and the usual portions appear - results in waste unfortunately and eating more than I need. Here's to conscious eating.
ReplyDeletePita pizza, a processed food? Oy. My emergency meal would be a can of sardines and a plateful of sliced summer tomato plus thin slices of English cucumber, drizzled with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette that I always keep on the counter.
ReplyDeleteI think this happens to us all... I am with Norma about licking the PB spoon when making anything with that delicious, devilishly good spread.
ReplyDeleteIf I think there's a problem with my portions (usually in winter when I eat more for warmth and comfort and my metabolism slows because I'm not outside and sweating as much), I try to tackle this by using smaller plates. I will put my lunch on a dessert plate and my supper on a salad plate so that visually, the portions look bigger than they are. While this requires having a lot of plates, downshifting the plate size is a quick and simple way for me to challenge my auto-pilot assessment of what I need. If it doesn't fit on the plate, I'm less likely to put it in my mouth!
The great news about eating a healthy diet is you can eat more. Here's one example: Zucchini Pasta ... http://bit.ly/no7ZT2
ReplyDeleteHow many more bowls of this can you eat compared to spaghetti? A lot!
Eat More ... of the right stuff ... that tastes great.
I have found that not having access to "satisfying exercise" sometimes leads me to seek more comfort from food. So, I try to be compassionate with myself about sometimes wanting more when I'm in pain or haven't yet found a suitable exercise substitute. As far as portions go, I don't have a "no seconds" rule, so I have the freedom to take less to begin with, and if I really want more, I have it. This lets me adjust to having as much or as little as I might need or want on a particular day.
ReplyDeleteKeeping a food diary for me has been a revelation, in terms of sorting out when I eat and why I eat. For me, extra eating is clearly linked to boredom and being sedentary. I've been weighing portions for a while, just to get a sense of what a portion size is and now I find portion sizes from my past - e.g. buckets of cappuccinos, rather than a cupful - offputting.
ReplyDeleteI've also discovered that a lot of my eating behaviour isn't driven by rational thought at all.
For example, I often have the urge to cheat my own food diary. Sometimes I'll eat something, which takes me over my optimal calorie amount for the day, and this little voice in my head says "don't worry about writing that one down, that didn't count". It's a peculiar thing. Why do I want to cheat on my own record keeping? I know perfectly well what I've eaten - I can't hide it from myself.
I've wondered if it's actually an attempt by my body to get me to eat more, as per the research that says the body will try and find ways to thwart the weight maintenance activities of people who have lost a significant amount of weight.
@Roman Koral
ReplyDeleteSlightly confused here. Sardines are "processed"... technically peeled baby carrots, boneless skinless chicken breasts, pasteurized milk, rolled oats, and canned chickpeas are processed too. Processed does not mean unhealthy per se, but has become a "catch-all" term for junk food.
Apologies if you were being slightly facetious... sarcasm tends toget lost in translation on the web. :)
If I don't constantly measure my food, my portions grow bigger and bigger and bigger every day, little by little. Other people can pull off perfect guesstimates all the time, but I am not so lucky. I also think I have a problem with potion sizes ingrained in my head from how I was raised. It keeps coming back to haunt me. My mind keeps wanting to adjust my plate to what it used to look like.
ReplyDelete@ Katherine B,
ReplyDeleteTune in at summertomato.com tonight Aug 17th at 9 PM EST, to watch the live show on the topic of: Why Processed Foods Are So Bad. Activate the following link in your browser
http://summertomato.com/processed-foods-bread-cooking-healthy-food/
If you miss it, you're in luck just the same because you can pick it up later on You Tube. Cheers.
Thank you, Dr. Freedhoff, for being an expert who's willing to air his dirty laundry in public.
ReplyDeleteFar too many nutrition professionals make healthful eating sound too easy, and like they are perfect. I believe that does more harm than good.
Bravo to you for telling it like it is!
@Roman Koral
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll check the video out on youtube. Note that I'm not disputing that junk processed foods (chips, pop tarts, fast food, etc.) are bad for you, just that the term "processed" has a broader meaning (at least in the context of food science). Cooking from scratch is a form of processing. Semantics! :)
It's really easy to gobble down big portions mindlessly. We all do it! (Me? Guilty. Don't even talk to me about movie popcorn). I've been reading a great book on this lately: Mindless Eating (by Brian Wansink). Actually, I think I've seen that book mentioned in this blog, in the past.
ReplyDeleteFortunately there are lots of jedi-mind tricks to help deal with portion problems. I just wrote a post on this, actually: 7 Secrets of Portion Control http://wp.me/p1q6vt-8m ...if you're interested.