It’s a new habit Monday!

PN’s visual representation of 80%

Remember all the way back to two weeks again when I said something silly like “Wow things are getting tough!” when we were told to eat slowly?

Well, I didn’t mean it. NOW things are getting tough.

The new habit?  Stop eating when I’m 80% full.  What?  I can’t top off the tank?  Eat until I’m not hungry any longer?  I’m not even sure I know how to do this.

This is our second “super habit” — eating slowly and eating to 80% are the two cornerstone habits of the Lean Eating program.

PN suggests things like leaving a few bites of food on your plate or simply serving up smaller portion sizes. In theory, this should be easy.  In practice, I’m not entirely sure how to implement it, to be honest.  Smaller portion sizes seems straightforward, but what is smaller?  I don’t know that I have a good enough sense of what my portion size normally is to make it 20% smaller.  

And leaving a few bites on my plate?  This seems logical, but my latent Catholic “you must clean your plate there are starving children in Africa” guilt makes that a challenge.  I’ve been very well trained to eat everything!  I hate wasting food, especially when it’s something I’ve gone through the trouble of making.

What about when it’s lunchtime and I’m not necessarily hungry (but have to eat because that’s the one time I get to sit down for it)… what’s 80% when I wasn’t starving to begin with?  Or a small snack?  Do I eat one less slice of pepper or cucumber?

(do I sound a little stressed about this?)

So, right now I’m just concentrating on staying calm … breathe… breathe… breathe… and trusting that there will be a ton more information on this topic in the next week which will give me some clear guidelines and the tools I need to be able to implement this habit.  I get the concept, but that’s about where it ends.  Just gotta play with it, I suppose. Relax a little… understand that this isn’t rocket science and — once again — trust the process.