You Are Not a Dustbin!

I ate out for dinner on Friday. 3 course meal. Amazing. Lentil, bacon and chick pea soup with unbelievably good home-made bread, baked sea bass with sautéed veg and chips, and date and apple crumble for dessert. Loved it. Except the chips. Which were triple fried, really thick, and in a pretty large portion. Now, I love chips, but it seemed like probably half the thickness of each chip was down to the oil it was fried in. This was difficult for me, because I hate wasting food. Even though I encourage my clients to leave food if they’re full or it won’t help with their goals, I do find it really hard to do it myself. However in this case, A, I knew there would be a lot of calories even in each chip, let alone the whole portion B, They didn’t actually taste that great (a bit greasy, surprisingly enough) and C, I wanted to have pudding   So with these three things in mind, I had about a quarter of the chips and left the rest, feeling good that I had left the extra room for some crumble. Something else that came to mind is something I often tell my clients. You are not a dustbin! I had two options in that situation. I either left the chips and they went in the bin. Or I treated myself  like a bin, ate them (without even particularly enjoying them), and with the sheer volume of calories they would have turned into a bit of extra fat on my body. People quite often end up eating more food than they want or need because they were brought up to finish off their plate. Or because they get put under social pressure when out with others. ‘Go on, that last piece won’t hurt. You don’t need to be on a diet anyway!’ It is much better though to leave that bit of food than to end up feeling stuffed and annoyed with yourself. Consistently eating slightly too much food is an easy way to put on a few extra pounds of fat each year. Likewise, consistently listening to your body and your intuition and eating slightly less is an easy way to lose a few pounds without even feeling like you’re trying.