How Much to Eat

Michael Pollan advises us in "In Defense of Food":

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Inspired by the book I am making a few changes to my eating habits. I am a fairly good handle on the first and third parts of the advice. Now I want to tackle the middle one. Pollan lists a few recomendations by Brian Wansink (Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More than We Think - wait, that's me!). He is right - they are "vaguely insulting to your sense of yourself as a creature in possession of free will" ! But I know better. Unless I change something, nothing is going to change. So here's what I am going to try to do:

• Use smaller plates to eat from: Apparently the human tendency (not my kids' though!) is to keep eating until all your food is gone.
• Eat slower. It takes 20 minutes for the feeling of satiation to travel from your stomach to the brain. So eating has to last longer than that!
• Eat at the kitchen table.
• I also want to get used to the feeling of 80% full. I realize that I do not know how to tell that!

This is going to be my experiment to increase my enjoyment of food and eat less at the same time. Stay tuned...