Nuggets of information from my recent read!

I feel as if I chose my foods wisely yesterday. We went to a church party last night.....and yes, I did eat a bit there. We ate late though...at roughly 9PM. So, this morning, when I was going about my normal routine, I was getting ready to step onto the scales and decided not to. My reasoning. Number one, I ate late last night. Number two, lets just say that elmination hadn't occured yet! Nuff said!

I just finished a book called Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink, PH.D. I found the book to be fascinating. It talked in depth about how certain things in our surroundings cause us to be unaware of our food choices, portions, and perceptions. Quite interesting for me, as I'm someone that is working to conquer my food addiction! So, here are some more little nuggets from the book.

If a person believs that a food is healthy, the food has what can be reffered to as a "health halo" where we imbibe in that food becuase it is "healthy". The problem is..this healthy halo frequently causes us to eat something, or more than we would normally eat. In essence, if we eat more of something because of the health halo, then the food is no longer good. I've seen people chose a healthy option of food, lets say the 25% less fat oreos. But they eat 4 instead of one...because it's 25% less which to them equates to being able to eat 3 extra!

The second nugget of information is the ice water versus room temperature water. I'll just do a direct quote on this one versus paraphrasing. "Interestingly, if you load that drink (32 ounces) with ice, you'll actually burn off a few of those calories. Since your body has to use energy to heat up an iced beverage, you actually burn about one calorie for every ice cold ounce you drink. So that 32 ounce drink will take you about 32 ounces to warm up in your body.

The third thing is the types of eaters out there. The first is the meal stuffer. This person doesn't eat badly any other time...but during meals they eat to excess. The second is the Snack Grazer...this person eats anytime food is available. The third is The party Binger. This person eats mostly and heavily at high distraction events. The fourth is the restaurant indulger. This person eats dinner out a LOT! The fifth is the desktop diner or dashboard diner...they are always eating on the run...multi tasking.

I can see myself mainly as a meal stuffer and also a bit of a restaurant indulger! Looks to me like the tips that he gave for these two tips of eaters are things I'm already doing....EXCEPT for the half plate thing...half the plate is filled with veggies and the other half is proten and starch. The other thing that I don't religiously do is to use a smaller plate!!! I'm goign to try to use the smaller plate at Christmas!!!