Common Sense Diet: Eating for Weight LossCuriously most people will stick religiously to
servings guidelines when eating something like oatmeal, rice, or their half cup of broccoli, yet when they eat chips, crackers, cookies and ice cream they have as much as they want. It makes more sense to eat all you want of vegetables and fruit snacks and limit processed food treats though. If you want permanent weight loss try Common Sense Diet.
Eat As Much As you Want of Real Foods
Consider having as much "real" food as it takes to satisfy, then limit processed foods. Eating double ingredients in your sandwich is still better than having half a sandwich and a whole bag of greasy chips. If you look at box for hot cereal, it suggests a pretty small serving size. Just ignore it. Fix as many "servings" as you want, then eat a nice big bowl of hot cereal. I usually cook enough for four and split it between two of us. Am I as big as a barn? Hardly. But half that amount of cereal would not satisfy me and I'd be looking for something else to eat pretty quickly. Eating plenty in first place makes much more sense and I'm generally satisfied for several hours.
So what if I eat more than recommended serving size? The suggested servings have nothing to do with you and everything to do with what manufacturer wanted to list as "calories per serving," or to be able to make a claim of "less than 2 net carbs," both of which are essentially meaningless. What matters is how much food will you need to be satisfied? It makes little sense for a 130 pound woman to be served and to eat same amount as a 200 pound man.
I eat as much as it takes to satisfy my hunger, and then no more. That doesn't mean I eat until I'm stuffed so full I'll be ill, or I have to lie down, it means I'm satisfied. I get busy and forget all about eating when I'm well fed.
If you're following a pre-prescribed eating plan and you still want more to eat, it's unlikely you'll stay with that plan for long. Everyone of us is unique in our food requirements, so following a prescribed diet plan may just need to be modified to better suit you. It's okay to add another half cup of vegetables and it could make difference between success and failure in your dieting efforts.
Add an apple or other piece of fruit a couple times during day to get you over those hungry times. Most fruit has less than 100 calories in a piece. You can get 100 calories eating a piece of candy, but of two which is going to satisfy you longest? I'd suspect real food would.
I like a certain brand of sandwich from health food store. At first I would eat a whole sandwich, then one day it struck me that maybe half would be enough, so I tried and what do you know, half a sandwich was plenty. Now I always eat a half and save rest for next day. Is this a breakthrough? For me it was because before I would use my eye to judge what I needed to eat (Mom used to tell me, "Your eyes are bigger than your stomach," and I guess she was right!). These sandwiches I'm referring to are big, and they are filling. They contain healthy but oddball ingredients you may not have thought would be good in a sandwich like shredded carrots and cabbage. They require substantial chewing, and they are very nourishing and satisfying. That's what you want from a sandwich, right?
When eating good, wholesome foods I don't crave chips and cookies, but if I eat a regular grilled cheese or tuna sandwich, I'm off looking for chips and ice cream for later. The association when you eat one food with another food is strong. Consider, french fries with ketchup, apple pie with ice cream (some eat it with cheddar cheese), peanut butter and jelly, ham and eggs. Some things just seem right paired together, or so we think, but what if you could shake up those associations? If you've got a real habit of eating chips for instance, what else is going on at same time? Is it TV show you're watching, time of day, other foods? Try switiching things up, moving to another room to eat, changing channel or try a completely different type of chips.
