Dieters : When Moderation doesn’t Work

If there’s one habit which will make you lose weight more than
any other it’s reducing the amount you eat by eating only when
you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied rather than
stuffed.

You can usually lose weight with this habit no matter what type
of foods you eat – because we are generally eating far too much
of everything these days.

The temptation to eat too much is everywhere. Standard portion
sizes have grown out of all proportion to our needs so that the
mini muffins of today were the standard size of a few years ago.
A “tall” coffee is the smallest size you can get. Snack foods
come in multi-packs and jumbo bars. We get mounds of food served
up to us in restaurants and we are generally serving bigger
portions at home too. You simply get used to indulging in an
amount of food you can do without.

Most people can pick up on the portion size idea and reduce
their normal intake when they want to lose weight. They relish
being able to eat the foods they like, even if they are not
eating so much of it. They use a bowl, take a handful of
tortilla chips out of the bag and put the rest away. They leave
half a muffin on the plate (better in the trash than on their
hips) and they reduce the pile of food on their plate. They
order less in restaurants and leave what they don’t need without
a qualm.

This is great to avoid a feeling of deprivation that dieting so
often brings about. Reduce portion sizes by just a third and you
drop 500 calories or more from your daily intake losing about a
pound of fat (3500 calories worth) a week without making any
other changes. Although this is not the best way to eat
healthily – for that you’d be better switching foods to include
more nutrient-rich items, it does bring results without having
to change too much at once.

While this is all very well for many people, there are some who
struggle with this whole way of losing weight. That’s the group
who crave a particular item or food group.

In this group, eating just small amount of the food they crave
leads to eating a packetful no matter how much they want to eat
in moderation. It may be the case with chocolate or other
high-sugar foods and sometimes with salty snack type foods.

In this case it’s better to stay away from the food entirely for
a short time while you learn to control portion sizes using
other foods. Then, when you have a sense that you can control
how much you eat with other foods, you’re losing weight and
feeling good, reintroduce a small portion of the food you used
to crave and see how you get on.

It can be a case of trial and error to get this right for your
circumstances. We are all different and have different emotional
and physical reactions to food. It takes longer for some than
for others to be able to cope with a particular craving.
Experiment with reintroducing the food after 3 or 4 weeks to
start with – that’s generally enough to have seen good results
from portion control with the rest of your meals and snacks. If
it leads to eating too much then leave it for double that time
before retrying. Some people have given up eating chocolate or
ice cream forever because it’s almost like an addiction but this
is unnecessary for most people once they get the moderation
habit.

Copyright 2006, Janice Elizabeth Small

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