As I was going through the day being careful about what I was eating and dutifully writing it all down, I had a craving for pancakes. I knew I couldn't spend any calories on the luxury of pancakes on a day when I was being careful and I dealt with the craving by telling myself, "tomorrow, I can have them for breakfast."
Yes, I do allow myself pancakes on occasion. However, I only eat two of them about the size of my palm with about a pat of butter and reduced calorie syrup. Still, with a small cup of coffee, and slow eating where I'm tasting and enjoying the texture of every bite, this is just fine. I deal with the portion issue by making all of the pancakes that the amount of batter allows, cooling them on a rack, wrapping them in packets of two in foil, and heating them in the toaster oven when I want them. That not only allows great portion control, but means it's easy to have them any time without hassle. They come out of the toaster oven as good as fresh.
My point is that any time I really want something, but know I can't really accommodate them in the day's calorie totals, I tell myself that I can have it tomorrow. Sometimes I don't want the thing I craved anymore and sometimes I do. The important point is that when I eat it, it's at a controlled moment and as part of the meal plan for the entire day. By waiting, I am also better to limit portions effectively since I'm not acting on an impulse.
I don't want to undermine the difficulty of reaching this stage in my approach to food. It took me a long time and a lot of mental energy to get to the point where I could manage this. In the beginning, telling myself "tomorrow" was mainly based on the fact that I wasn't counting calories on Friday (well, I'm still not, but I'm being very careful without counting on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). That "tomorrow" meant I could indulge if I really wanted to. This was my emotional "trap door" for escaping the feeling that I was seriously confined by a "diet". That early exercise in behavior modification has transmuted into a newer, more profound control over my eating on non-counting days.
Getting to today though, the total was 1445 and it was pretty good. I had sweet potato bread with low calorie margarine, coffee, chef's salad, tomato soup (homemade), rice crackers, a persimmon, chicken, onion soup, hot chocolate, and a couple of tiny treats - a chocolate wafer about half the size of a KitKat finger and a tiny, tiny cake (40 calories for the morsel). It almost felt like a lot of food, though there were times when I was really, really hungry.
Showing posts with label portions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portions. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Matters of Size
Recently, I watched an old episode of Saturday Night Live from the days when Dan Akroyd and John Belushi were part of the cast. I saw many of these episodes in re-runs when I was a kid in the days when you couldn't record T.V. programs unless you had a VCR and enough tapes around to waste on things like SNL. There are plenty of things that I didn't notice then that I'm noticing now. One of them was how incredibly thin both Gilda Radner and Laraine Newman were. Both of these women had eating disorders (bulimia in Radner's case). Jane Curtain was the only woman who had something resembling a real body, but even she was quite thin.
There was one of the "cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi, Pepsi" skits in the episode that I was watching and I was noting the atmospheric parts of the skit. Since the show is now a part of the increasingly distant past, I often try to note the hairstyles, clothes, and set details for things which indicate the flavor of the time.
One of the things I noticed was that the grill that Dan Akroyd was using in his role as the cook was real and he was using pre-made burger patties and plastic-wrapped cheese slices. The other thing I noticed was how small the burgers looked when they were served and how the cheese slices, which I believe were almost certainly 1 ounce Kraft slices, loomed rather large on top of the smallish hamburgers. Since the patties were perfectly round and flat, I'd also wager that someone just bought them frozen for use as a prop on the show. That means that these were considered a normal burger size at that time.
One of the things I have realized since starting to modify my eating habits is how restaurants have distorted our view of what constitutes a serving size. Seeing those small burgers being served on SNL only 30 years ago goes a long way toward explaining how we got to where we are today in terms of the dramatic increase in obese and overweight people.
The portion size ballooning has been based on the economic interests of restaurants and their employees. The main expense of running a restaurant is not from the food itself, but from the people who prepare and serve it and the investment in equipment and space rental. Giving people bigger servings gives them the perception of value for the experience. For a marginal increase in food purchase expense, they can greatly increase the prices and subsequently make a higher profit while attracting value-minded people who want to get a substantial meal for the expense and effort of going to a restaurant.
If you read comments by waiters and waitresses, they actually want people to order as much as possible so that they get a bigger tip. The last thing they want is for a couple or group to order and split appetizers, desserts, and entrees to reduce calories because the total bill is lower, but their time spent doing the job is the same. If you try to reduce calories by splitting your huge order, you are often treated badly or given worse service by resentful service staff.
I think people used to regard the value of going to a restaurant differently than they do now. People used to be happy just to go to one as a rare and special experience with differently prepared food. Now, they are going to restaurants more often and instead of cooking and shopping. They want to eat more so that they get value for their money, but the portions are so epically large that they're overeating. What is more, they get a distorted view of what one serving should look like from repeated exposure to over-sized portions. At this point in time, any restaurant that attempted to offer reasonable serving sizes would be seen as skimping and lose business.
I don't know that there is a solution to this problem aside from education and encouraging restaurants of all types to at least offer smaller portion options. I think that what is commonly see as the "child's" menu portions may actually be what we're supposed to be eating as adults to stay at a healthy weight. That's rather a scary thought.
There was one of the "cheeseburger, cheeseburger, Pepsi, Pepsi" skits in the episode that I was watching and I was noting the atmospheric parts of the skit. Since the show is now a part of the increasingly distant past, I often try to note the hairstyles, clothes, and set details for things which indicate the flavor of the time.
One of the things I noticed was that the grill that Dan Akroyd was using in his role as the cook was real and he was using pre-made burger patties and plastic-wrapped cheese slices. The other thing I noticed was how small the burgers looked when they were served and how the cheese slices, which I believe were almost certainly 1 ounce Kraft slices, loomed rather large on top of the smallish hamburgers. Since the patties were perfectly round and flat, I'd also wager that someone just bought them frozen for use as a prop on the show. That means that these were considered a normal burger size at that time.
One of the things I have realized since starting to modify my eating habits is how restaurants have distorted our view of what constitutes a serving size. Seeing those small burgers being served on SNL only 30 years ago goes a long way toward explaining how we got to where we are today in terms of the dramatic increase in obese and overweight people.
The portion size ballooning has been based on the economic interests of restaurants and their employees. The main expense of running a restaurant is not from the food itself, but from the people who prepare and serve it and the investment in equipment and space rental. Giving people bigger servings gives them the perception of value for the experience. For a marginal increase in food purchase expense, they can greatly increase the prices and subsequently make a higher profit while attracting value-minded people who want to get a substantial meal for the expense and effort of going to a restaurant.
If you read comments by waiters and waitresses, they actually want people to order as much as possible so that they get a bigger tip. The last thing they want is for a couple or group to order and split appetizers, desserts, and entrees to reduce calories because the total bill is lower, but their time spent doing the job is the same. If you try to reduce calories by splitting your huge order, you are often treated badly or given worse service by resentful service staff.
I think people used to regard the value of going to a restaurant differently than they do now. People used to be happy just to go to one as a rare and special experience with differently prepared food. Now, they are going to restaurants more often and instead of cooking and shopping. They want to eat more so that they get value for their money, but the portions are so epically large that they're overeating. What is more, they get a distorted view of what one serving should look like from repeated exposure to over-sized portions. At this point in time, any restaurant that attempted to offer reasonable serving sizes would be seen as skimping and lose business.
I don't know that there is a solution to this problem aside from education and encouraging restaurants of all types to at least offer smaller portion options. I think that what is commonly see as the "child's" menu portions may actually be what we're supposed to be eating as adults to stay at a healthy weight. That's rather a scary thought.
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