(Don't) Finish What You Start

One of the painful realizations I made about myself during my quest to not look like the Michelin Man's girlfriend was that I was addicted to food.  When I started working with my trainer, one of the first things he said was "If something is a trigger food, don't eat it.  Don't even keep it in your house." He told me that a trigger food was anything that you couldn't control the amount you ate, or anything that made you want to eat other food.

What he couldn't tell me was that anything sweet was a trigger food for me.  It didn't much matter what it was.  Once I tasted sugar, that's all I wanted.  Sometimes I felt like if my entire town was made into a gingerbread house, I could eat all of it.  I think I tried a few times.

But since stating what I now call "My Life: 2.0", I've started paying attention to why I eat (which as a trainer, is really why people eat). I've realized that most of us have at least a small addiction to food, and with good reason.  If you want to know more about how the food industry spends bajillions (technical term for a helluva lot) on making you powerless to say no to certain foods, read The End of Overeating, by David Kessler. But that aside, our addiction to food isn't always about the food itself.  Sometimes it's about the way food makes us feel (hello, eating our emotions!) or the way it invokes memories of happy times.  Some of us, like my father (who is actually trim, so I can say this), were raised to be members of the clean plate club-- and taught that you don't let perfectly good food go to waste. Turns out, though, perfectly good food usually goes to waist.  

But given the fact that 100 extra calories per day over what your body needs can cause you to be 10!!! pounds heavier at the end of a year... I'll pause while that sinks in and you get really mad and assume I'm making that up...  this is more problematic than we realize. It's not just a harmless habit, especially when modern portion sizes are really designed for a small army.

So how does anyone start to get the upper hand on this? I learned something by watching my trainer/best friend eat.  No matter how good something is, he never finishes it.  I've never once seen him completely clean his plate. This annoyed me at first, especially since he is 60 and still looks like he could be a competition body builder without much work. Don't misunderstand.  The man likes cheat meals!  But I finally realized this was a coping skill he had taught himself.  If he leaves food on his plate, he is in control, not the food.  It's a small act of daily willpower that when done repeatedly teaches his brain how to handle being around really great food. Even when he has a cheat meal, leaving a few bites uneaten on his plate signals to him that while he had a "food vacation", he's had enough.

Try it. Yes, there are starving people in China (and here!)  But you cleaning your plate isn't helping them... or probably you!  Go against the grain.  Don't finish what you start.