Design your diet
20. Greatest Diet Danger.
What is the greatest diet danger that slimmers face?
Sugar?
No
Fatty food?
No
What then?
Your long-term custom of ... ‘a-little-bit-more’ is the greatest danger.
At almost every meal you will have choices that you hardly recognise as being important, when you have to choose the size of what you are about to eat. In its simplest form it may be the choice of which cake to take from a selection on a plate.
Is your immediate reaction to look for the smallest or the biggest one?
Be honest.
It’s not something that you normally think about, is it?
You run on autopilot.
The cake
A cake has been divided into different portions.
Etiquette says that you should select the one nearest to you when they are offered.
You look. You evaluate.
You are checking sizes.
The one to the left near you, is slightly thinner than the one to the right
Which one will you take?
You always take the ‘little-bit-more. option.
You feel happy.
The extra amount may be infinitesimally small, but you still make that choice.
How would it feel to take the smaller slice?
How important is it?
Could you bring yourself to do it?
If you did, would you feel less happy?
A lifetime of making such choices has conditioned you.
Two boys
When we opened a box of buns made by machines in commercial bakeries where every portion is automatically produced as an exact clone of every other portion, so they are utterly identical, the immediate reaction from the two boys was to scan the contents for the ‘biggest’ cake. With some cakes such as Cherry Bakewells, the choice came down to the size, or the offset location, of the cherry on top. This tiny fluctuation was sufficient to trigger the choice.
It's a natural reaction.
In evolution, it was maximising your chance of survival.
Fairness strategy.
If cake had to be divided equally between two boys, the strategy to avoid dispute, was for one boy to cut the cake, but the other boy had the first choice of which piece he wanted. This ensured fairness.
The principle of ‘a little bit more’ applies many times a day.
More-heaped sugar on your cereal spoon.
Loaded marmalade on your toast knife.
Getting the very last crisp-bits out of the bag.
Just one more chocolate biscuit.
Only an extra spoonful of custard.
These are very small things.
Surely, they don’t make me FAT?
This is not the full story.
There is the similar issue of ‘eating-up’.
Most people - RIGHTLY – do not like food waste.
I don’t like food waste.
When a meal is being prepared, there are containers to be scraped
Utensils to be cleaned.
An easy way is to lick the spoon.
When a meal has been eaten, there is often a little left-over that has not been served out.
It is not right to bin it. It needs eating-up.
So, you eat it, to clean up the bowl or plate, ready for washing.
And there’s more …
And there’s worse …
Some food is sold in pre-arranged quantities.
Let’s look at Fish & Chips
In shops, they give you huge amounts of chips, these days.
In a restaurant they put your chips into an individual container.
This restricts the portion size, but makes it look a reasonable quantity.
There may be only one-third the quantity of chips compared with the chip-shop amount.
You accept this smaller amount as a 'meal amount' – or should do.
Back to the chip-shop chips
Do you eat ALL of the chip-shop chips?
OR
Do you use only the chips needed for a reasonable meal?
When you are eating them, do you add tomato sauce?
Do you add baked beans, mushy peas, or curry sauce?
You have CHOICES.
If you open a tin of baked beans for yourself, do you put half of them into the fridge for next time?
Do you save excess chips for reheating in another meal?
On joint orders, do you look at the battered-fish dimensions to select the biggest for yourself?
These individual described-dangers may be small by themselves.
You may think that they don’t matter – but they DO.
They accumulate.
They add up and they’ve always been adding up
For YEARS!
You need to know about them –
Be conscious of them.
Your lifetime of 'a-little-bit-more’ habit can be changed,
if you know the dangers.
I know it sounds crazy, but you need to start experimenting
With ‘a-little-bit-LESS’.
It will be hard to begin with, but if you want to make progress -
Choose a place to start
With cake slices make the decision that you will automatically take the small piece
Always
With quantities on a spoon, you will knock a bit off
rather than adding another extra quarter
Always
Find a way to deal with excess chips.
Order ‘Small’
Buy one portion between two.
Save and grill/air fry them next day.
They’ll make another meal.
They’ll save you money.
This small, subtle shift can be the start of helping you
But only you can do it.
Look for your own examples.
Where do you think you could start?
Let's Do it!
Moving More
I’ve been walking, walking, walking and I hope that you have too.
Without exercise you’ll never lose weight.
I said, right at the beginning,
that you do NOT have to take exercise to extremes.
You don’t have to run or jog.
I have also said that
exercise alone won’t make you slim.
You should walk to make yourself feel better.
As you walk, you see people.
You see and hear nature.
You find time to think.
When you look at my latest picture
It may give you a clue as to
my latest experience.
I never thought I’d do it.
I’ll say more next time.