Everyday Systems

Many times on this board I have read the suggestion to aim for 1/2 Fruits/Vegs + 1/4 Protein + 1/4 Complex Carbs, and I agree that that should be a healthful plate.

However, as I am becoming more comfortable with NoS, I am finding that sometimes I really don't need to eat all that I initially dish up. But sometimes I do... Or at a restaurant or when someone else is dishing up the servings, my plate may be way too full. How to keep the balance when I need to not clean the plate?

One solution I have come up with is to "eat around the clock". And, no, I don't mean perma-snackingjavascript:emoticon(':roll:'). Once I take a bite of calorie-dense food, I must eat at least one bite from every other quadrant of the plate before coming back for more. Eat slowly and savor every taste until I've had enough, then STOP EATING.

Of course, it's not a perfect system, and it doesn't work if the food is served in courses or if you like to save fruit for dessert, but it does encourage me to eat at least some of everything instead of filling up on only one kind of food. It's a way to eat less of everything without upsetting the balance between them.

That sounds like a great plan!

I can see that your idea would be helpful in trying to not eat a whole plate, and in trying to increase your freggie intake, but I would not personally do this for two reasons:

1. It is more rules and therefore would be hard to automate. I can't see myself doing that for the rest of my life.
2. I like to just dive in and enjoy the food and people around me at dinnertime. My fork just picks up what looks yummy. I treasure that, and don't want to "grade" the quality of what my fork picked up!

All that said, to each her own, and if it works for you, more power to you. Your idea may very well resonate with many of the other forum-readers, so thanks for posting it.

Automated:

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I can see how you don't want to add extra rules. I, too, will most likely "go with the flow" someday. But for now, I HAVE to pay more attention as I try to normalize portion sizes for myself.

Thanks for your many helpful posts through the years. As you can see from my signature, I appreciate your style and patterned mine after yours.

Thanks, EP!

I just solve this problem by having a bit of everything on each forkful

I make dinners with veggies/carbs/proteins that complement each other, so I actually prefer it when I get a bit of everything rather than, say, one mouthful of asparagus followed by a mouthful of rice.

Another idea I just recently ran across is hard to describe in words, but easy to do:

Comfortably stretch out your hand with fingers spread into a roughly circular shape - remember making a plaster cast of your hand as a child or leaving your handprint in fresh concrete? Now hold it over the plate. Anything that fits under your hand (including fingers) is YOUR area of free eating.

Of course, you still need to be careful for vertical stacking, and it really helps if there is a design on the plate to help your eyes measure the area. But I've tried it with my plates at home, and it matches quite well with the ones I've determined are the best size for me to eat from, even though I tend to think of my hands as larger than average for my overall body proportions. Hope this idea helps someone else.