Post
by Nicest of the Damned » Tue Oct 19, 2010 10:50 pm
I'm not sure if these are really mods, or just extra food rules:
If you are at home, you must be sitting to eat (or reclining, if it's Passover Seder). This applies to snacks on S days as well. It's just not civilized to eat in any other position, and you're more likely to make a mess. I have named this one the Sitting mod.
No eating from the package unless it is a single-serving package (and no, the last serving left in the package is not the same as a single-serve package). Even then, it's better to put the food on a plate or in a bowl before eating it. This rule applies at all times, not just on N days.
The package must be closed up and put away before you can eat. This is another rule that applies at all times. I call this and the rule about not eating from packages the NEP mod, for No Eating from Packages.
The Sitting and NEP mods together make it difficult to "graze" on snack food all day. NEP makes it less likely that, when you do eat snack food, you'll end up eating a whole bag of chips.
If you must buy snack foods or sweets, always buy the smallest possible package (a single serving, or one for each person in the house, is best), with the smallest possible individual serving. Bite-size candy bars are preferable to fun-size or full-size ones, for example. There's research that shows that people eat more from larger packages.
Never buy more than one package of sweets or snack foods at a time, even if they're on a two-for-one sale. This is related to the large-packages issue.
Only buy non-food items, fresh fruits and vegetables, canned foods, and things that get cooked (or used as ingredients in recipes) at Costco. Don't even go to the parts of Costco where the other stuff is. This has to do with eating more from large packages.
Unless you're having a party, one kind of sweets or snack foods, or one favorite for each person in the house, is enough. Don't have more than one kind per person in the house at any one time. Finish or throw out what you've got before buying any other sweets or snacks (in our house, this was the Dad Rule). There's research showing that people eat more when there is a wider variety of foods to eat.
If it's not meal time or time to prepare a meal, no hanging around the kitchen. Seeing food makes you hungry, and it's easier to eat if it's convenient. Don't have a TV or chairs in the kitchen, to make it a less inviting place to hang out. There is one chair in our kitchen, and it's a cheap folding chair by the table where the cats get fed. If food is too conveniently accessible, you'll eat too much.
No food or caloric beverages can be kept anywhere other than the kitchen. You can take food to places outside the kitchen to eat it, but you can't keep any caches of food anywhere but the kitchen. No candy dishes or bowls of chips in the living room unless guests are here in the house, right now. My mom always had candy dishes around when I was growing up, and I learned some terrible habits from it. I learned that I could clear out a candy dish during a 1-hour TV show, even if it was filled with candy I didn't particularly like. Now that I'm grown up, my home is a candy-dish-free zone. If questioned, I tell people this is because the cats can't be trusted not to eat from or knock over a candy dish, but the truth is that their humans can't be trusted not to eat too much from it.
It's OK to taste food while cooking, with a teaspoon. The teaspoon goes in the sink with the dirty dishes immediately afterward, because it is now a dirty dish. Doing anything else with it is just nasty, as is sticking your fingers into the pot (ewww). If you need another taste, get another teaspoon. If you already know what something tastes like, it's snacking, not tasting.
All meals, with the exception of a few holiday meals with guests, are served buffet-style. You take your plate into the kitchen, put food on it, then bring it to the table. There are no serving platters of food on the table (we generally serve the food right out of the pots it was cooked in, except on really special occasions). You may not nibble on the food on the way to the table (it's ten feet, for God's sake), and no eating directly from the pots in the kitchen is allowed. People eat less when food is served this way, it's easier to serve yourself from a kitchen counter or island than to pass dishes around the table, and there are fewer dishes to wash. Win-win-win. I don't track these, since we've always served meals buffet style, and I never got into the habit of eating directly from pots.
It's OK to not clean your plate. Really. Eating food you don't want is more, not less, wasteful than throwing the food in the garbage. It really doesn't help the starving kids in Africa (or China, or wherever they were when you were growing up) if you eat more. They won't know how much you eat, and if they did, they wouldn't care.
"To use it up" or "It will go bad if I don't eat it now" is never a valid reason to snack or eat sweets, even on S days. It could be a valid reason to eat something as part of a single-plate meal, but it's not a good enough reason to eat between meals, or to eat a dessert.
Make an effort to cook things you really like and look forward to for meals on S days. S days aren't the time to use up leftovers, unless they are something you really enjoy and look forward to (Thanksgiving leftovers would fit in this category for many people). S days are for enjoying food, not simply for consuming more of it. You are not a garbage disposal. You are not the family pig who gets fed leftovers to get rid of them.
If you're ordering something in a restaurant that comes in more than one size, never order the largest size. The only exception is non-caloric beverages. If it's an S day and you're ordering a snack or dessert, always order a small. I know it costs more per ounce this way, but getting the most food for the least money is NOT the goal here. Eating a reasonable amount is. You enjoy the first few bites of any food the most, anyway.
You "get your money's worth" at buffets by enjoying the food and leaving without feeling unpleasantly stuffed. You do not get your money's worth by eating more than you should. Nonetheless, buffets should be a "less than once a week" thing, because it is so easy to overeat at them.
If you're eating pizza, don't eat more than one slice for breakfast or lunch, or two slices for dinner. Personal pizzas are not allowed, except for frozen french bread pizzas (and only one of those at a time). This is the Pizza rule, and applies on N days. I used to eat a whole pizza at CPK for dinner. Pizza is a food I can easily eat too much of, so I instated a special pizza rule.